Category: Mountains and Memories
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Confessions Of A Gravestone Photographer
[At work in St. Patrick’s Cemetery, Chateaugay, NY] I would strongly object to anyone who would dare call me morbid. It is not morbid, in any sense, to appreciate and love old (and new) cemeteries. It is not morbid to stand over a grave of a total stranger and contemplate his or her life. I…
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583.74
This post is a puzzle for my readers who want a challenge or something to keep them busy if they have too much time on their hands. I suppose that the former is what they want. So, anyone out there who is up to the challenge? Last week, or perhaps it was the week before…or maybe…
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Gathering Dust
I was dusting some items in our home the other day. If you find that unusual, you should see the amount of dust that can accumulate in a house that was empty for almost six months. We weren’t even here. So, where did it come from? And, it’s not that we keep an unclean home.…
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The Forever Road Turns East
[Near Fort Lenard, Kansas] I didn’t write the following paragraph, but I wish to the eternal sky that I did… Look out from the mountains edge once more. A dusk is gathering on the desert’s face, and over the eastern horizon the purple shadow of the world is reaching up to the sky. The light…
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A Rock, A Pumpkin And The Grateful Dead
“May I top you up?” –Anonymous bartender. “You can’t top that!” –Patrick Egan People like to put things on top of things. Nature likes to just leave things where they were put originally. I remember one afternoon, in mid-October, 1997, (if you…
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A Silent Eulogy: Late But Heartfelt
Is it possible that a eulogy can take forty-one years to deliver? The dreaded answer is yes. I know because I spoke that eulogy…silently, silently so that only I heard the words. It was a rambling prayer over a heart-breaking death. I knew the young man who had died. In truth, I was with him…
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A Last Look At The North Country: A Journey For The Right Hemisphere
This is a good-bye of sorts. I drove into Saranac Lake this afternoon to pick up a few last-minute goodies, I see that the recent rains have taken so much of the brilliant foliage that, a few days ago, dazzled your eye against the azure sky. I heard the word “snow” in a recent conversation.…
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Do You Really Want To Go There?
It’s early Autumn. The air is crisp. The broad leaves of the oaks and maples are sharp and bright in the sun. Against the darker conifers, the reds and yellows are more muted–less distinct and less joyful. There is a lane. It seems to possess a faint voice calling for you to follow to wherever…
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Elegy From The North Country
The Curfew tolls the knell of parting day; The lowing herd wind slowly o’er the lea; The ploughman homeward plods his weary way, And leaves the world to darkness and to me. -Thomas Gray Well, if you’re…
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When A Leaf Dances A Snowflake Will Soon Fall
I’m sitting on the front deck of our house which sits on a small rise above Rainbow Lake. It’s late September in the North Country of New York State. The trees are oddly out-of-tune with the season. Some are brown, dead and waiting to drop to the ground. Some are just hinting at the blast…
patrickjegan 