Category: Nature
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The Summer We Never Had Is Gone
“I see your true colors shining through…” -Cyndi Lauper Green is still the dominant color in the foliage around Rainbow Lake. Each day, however, brings out a few hundred more leaves that have lost their Chlorophyll and are showing their true colors. We’ve had our first frost warning on my weather app…and that was in…
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The Winters Of My Life
“Talk of your cold! through the parka’s fold it stabbed like a driven nail. If our eyes we’d close, then the lashes froze till sometimes we couldn’t see.” –Robert Service. The Cremation of Sam Magee I live in the Adirondack mountains of upstate New York. I don’t live in the Yukon. But lately, I feel…
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Walking In A Winter Wonderland
Sure, I could be walking down this snowy, quiet and picturesque road. I could be thinking about the approaching holidays, the snow men, the fire in our downstairs living room wood burner…but I don’t imagine I’ll be making this walk. Don’t get me wrong, I love snow. I always have. But as I stand in…
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Thirty Feet From My Pillow: A Tale Of Love, Sex And Perhaps Death Outside My Bedroom Window
I can’t recall seeing so many clusters and varieties of Fungi in my front yard in the sixteen years we have owned our home on the hill above Rainbow Lake. I was on my knees examining a species that was unfamiliar to me. I was on my knees in three inches of yellow, red and…
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The Great And Silent Feast
I felt the breeze… I stumbled on a tree root when… Finally, we reached the pond… Concentrate. Start over. When I was a teacher I was often given the dubious privilege of “lunch duty”. A room, nearly the size of a gym, filled with 5th & 6th graders…or 9th & 10th graders and a hand…
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The Masts…Oh, the Masts
Here I am once again. I’m sitting with friends at the Naked Turtle for dinner. It’s located on the shore of Lake Champlain in Plattsburgh. I listen to the conversation but I’m drawn to the eastern view, toward Vermont. The marina is filled with boats of all sorts…but it’s the sailboats that attract me. Where…
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Two Trees
A man and woman have four children–two boys and two girls. The same seed…the same egg. One boy grows up, attends college and eventually becomes a doctor and later joins Doctors Without Borders. His brother sits in a small cell at the Clinton Correctional Facility in Dannemora, NY. He did something unspeakable to an eleven…
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Where Are The Castles In The Sky?
When I was a young boy, my mother would walk with me down through our backyard and toward the river. There was a decline on the property that, in very old times, was the bank of our river. Now, it was simply a gentle slope down to a lawn that took my father decades to…
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Roadside Attractions From The Rearview Mirror
I feel like I’ve driven half-way around the earth’s diameter. Actually, according to the odometer on the red Ford Escape, we did indeed travel that far. Our total distance driven, including side trips for sight-seeing, came to an astounding 13,589 miles! If you’re into engine care and maintenance, that’s would be three oil changes (and…
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Measuring The Final Miles
[Divider antique tool provided by D’Arcy Havill. Used with permission} “Why” That seems to be the operative word rolling around in my mind as I sit and write this post, this nearly final post of our Epic Trip of 2015-1016. We’re at our friend’s house in Camp Dennison, Ohio. I’ve written of D’Arcy and Judy…
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