The wild things are on the move. Last night during the lunar eclipse I passed two skunks meandering on the verge of the road at dusk. At the Unitarian church in town, Larry Redman has set out the traps to try and relocate the amorous skunk pairs from beneath the Parish Hall—again. He gets $30 … Continue reading
Category Archives: Seasons
Reaching Summer’s Outer Buoy
John Keats never climbed Mount Wallamatogus in Penobscot, Maine, the rusty mound of scuffed granite that slopes down to the Northern Bay of the Bagaduce. But had he been with Lesley and me yesterday, it definitely would have inspired an ode to Autumn. Surely we were wandering in the romantic poet’s “season of mists and … Continue reading
The Outer Buoy of Summer
John Keats never climbed Mt. Wallamatogus, the rusty mound of scuffed granite that slopes down to the Northern Bay of the Bagaduce River. But it would surely have inspired an ode to autumn, one late August morning when I found myself walking its barrens. Surely I was wandering in the Romantic poet’s “season of mists … Continue reading
We will have our syrup
Cold nights; warm days. The forest is speaking to us in sugar. Long ago, during a late winter ski week in New Hampshire, my father took me down the road to visit Mr. Lucy’s sugarhouse. At one time, the Lucy family had owned and farmed much of the Saco River valley land on the west … Continue reading
Cold Spell
by Todd R. Nelson EVEN THE DOGS refuse to go outside. Our big black retriever, Gus, will at least point his nose into the wind from the safety of the back porch and give a sniff, but the little brown dog, Ivy, just turns tail and trots back to the sofa by the wood stove. … Continue reading
Heirloom Sounds
I miss the Cape Racer, even though I never got to ride on one. Unfortunately, they don’t make them anymore. It was a wooden ladder-like sled with metal runners that was used to haul smelt-fishing supplies—and, presumably, fish—on and off the frozen lakes I thought of it when I heard some of our senior citizens … Continue reading
The Annual Rings of Christmas
The first flakes of a Nor’easter were already falling as my daughter Ariel and I tiptoed across the frozen stream and walked up the hill into our fir stand. She had already scouted out a suitable tree to cut, if we could find that tree for the forest. We had to hurry. The chickadees were … Continue reading
BTUs, Student Age, and Academic Subjects: Notes towards a new theory of elementary school heating.
The school building is cold—again. That is, the rest of the building is cold. My office and Mrs. Thomas’s office are saunas. But Bill McWeeny’s room is glacial (yesterday it was a sauna); so is the art room. We’ve come to expect the lobby to be cold, given the constant traipsing in and out during … Continue reading
Plowing by Woods on a Snowy Evening
A Nor’easter has us in its talons—finally. The entire East Coast has been hammered, there is a record twenty-two inches of snow in New York’s Central Park, and this storm might just bury us too. It has taken until Sunday, February 12th for a proper winter storm to arrive here in Castine, Maine. The kids … Continue reading
Fishin’ Blues
For my family, last summer was the summer of mackerel. On the second evening of our vacation in Castine, Maine my son Spencer caught his first fish, a shimmering black, green and silver mackerel of between 12 and 20 inches in length, depending on the time at which Spencer regaled us with the story. The … Continue reading
