Category: North Country Life
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The Impossibly Long Life of a Snowflake
It’s a simple act of nature. A billion snowflakes drifting slowly earthward…sometimes rising, sometimes blown sideways…but always downward. If they each made a sound like a bird, someone stepping out onto a frozen porch in the North Country of the Adirondacks would be deafened. But each flake makes a sound only it can hear. It…
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Cooks of the North (A True Story of Survival)
If you’re traveling in the north country fair where the winds hit heavy on the borderline… –Bob Dylan “Girl From The North Country” We who chose to live here in the North Country are a hardy breed. You can see signs of this all around you. The cows have thicker hides, the trees have…
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The Great Hiking Pants Problem
If a sweater was hanging in an empty forest, would it still be Cobalt Blue? I ponder these kinds of questions…maybe a little too much. Every time my wife suggests a hike, I can find some kind of excuse. And most of them are real concerns of mine. It’s not that I don’t like to…
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Gratitude From A Dragonfly
It was one of those rare days in mid-summer here in the north country. The sky was free of the clouds that seemed to linger…day after day after day. I was walking across our front deck and something caught my eye. It was a dragonfly trapped in a spider’s web. I wrote a blog about…
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The Day I Saw My Heart
I am well aware that many people have watched their own brain surgery on a monitor. I know people have watched their own heart being operated on…but I am not one of those people. I understand the whole medical thing about blood vessels and nerve endings. I totally get the concept that there are certain…
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Two-Tree Island (How Do I Live Without You?)
The physical geography of the place can be hard to describe. One has to see it from the air…from the height of a soaring hawk or eagle, or, better yet, from the seat of a kayak or canoe. But one can get lost in the words…just as easily as one can get lost in the…
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Where are the Corn Girls of Summer?
In northern New York State, in late summer, hot sunny days are not uncommon. It was the height of the corn season. I practically left skid marks on Rte. 37 when I saw the corn stand to my right. I had once been scolded by the robotic female voice on my GPS about making illegal…
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On a Night Like This
‘I remember it was on a night very much like this…’ —Words spoken around 10,000 campfires by a billion storytellers for a million years. I found myself staring at the clouds drifting slowly past the quarter moon. In these early days of autumn, it should be a little cooler, but it was a mild evening.…
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Waiting For All Hallow’s Eve VIII: “My Night as a Ghostbuster: A True Story”
One night in June of 2013, my wife and I entered a bar in Hogansburg, NY…just a few miles beyond the Akwesasne Mohawk Casino. We were part of a local “ghost investigation” group based in Malone. There had been reports of strange happenings at the bar. The staff refused to go to certain rooms alone…only…
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When Life Ends: Still Rich: Still Poor
One of my pastimes is to wander cemeteries. The older the better–and more interesting. The artwork on gravestones is full of imagery and symbolism. I’ve been in classic world-famous cemeteries like Pere Lachaise, in Paris, Evergreen, in my hometown and quaint very old graveyards that sit in the quiet spaces beside churches in England. And,…
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