I have had to suppress many things. In the hospital beds when I was young with my guts rotting inside of me, I would suppress the woods and the waters, because I thought I might never see them again, or because remembering them made me go mad. For those many years I lived abroad I had to suppress who I... READ MORE >
First the boys went in and Sunday was clear blue and white in the sugarbush. They went up the old road on snowshoes and dragged the toboggan heavy with gear and carried things and humped packs and up through the mixed woods to a high ground and slowly it turned to maple and leveled and wound and now there was... READ MORE >
The plague of polio has been a part of my life only two iota, and in my life as an outdoorsman only one. The Brule River is a difficult river to fish. It is a powerful river, sucking water from its watershed of scores of miles in length and some hundreds of square miles in breadth. Downstream of the Still... READ MORE >
On cold dark nights there is always flies to tie and painting. During the polar vortex the world becomes small and simple. Back-and-forth into town for off-season work, filling the truck up with gas, a few errands. There’s no anxiety about heavy or deep snow falls. In the yard my beaten path leads from the cabin door to the outhouse... READ MORE >
IFrom Huonville we drove out of the Huon River valley to the Tasmanian highlands. It was the Aussies Adrian and Tony in front with a small lorry and my Aussie friend Glen and myself following in the Jeep, me sitting passenger on the left side. We drove into the timeless forests and the roads became narrower and less paved, then... READ MORE >
In those days I used picture hanging wire. It would only take eighteen inches or maybe two feet, which back then I didn’t know how to measure but cut on sight. You formed a fist-sized loop at the tag end and made a slipknot and then wound around, around, the tag very tightly upon itself and that knot was even... READ MORE >
Commonly one may go through emotional or spiritual or existential crises. Some have crises of faith although I have had none for a long time. Because I am me, myself, my crises came early and often. I have joked that I moved from the crises of puberty and adolescence to existential angst in my young adulthood to midlife crisis, with... READ MORE >
There were two worst things about my adventure from Dublin to the Wicklow Mountains, and then my hitchhiking from the town of Aughrim to the hamlet of Avoca and to the Avoca River to fly-fish for trout in the old world. I was a student in my early twenties on my first adventure in another country. I hitchhiked to Avoca... READ MORE >
We walk when I come home from the hardware store in the afternoon, the girls and I. It is cold because I dress light, only a wool shirt and hat and yellow cotton gloves. You do not feel the cold. You do not feel yourself. Like that Thanksgiving morning out in the pothole country where there were pheasants when there... READ MORE >
I do have some affinity toward the skunk. I would never keep a skunk as a domestic pet, as some rare people do. I do not find it cute. The skunk has a nasty face, with a pig’s snoot and sharp fangs, and with eyes that are ever egomaniacal, with furrowed brows and tiny pupils. And its feet are long,... READ MORE >
