Northeastern woods are pretty familiar and do not harbor a great number of the world’s bizarre creatures. And you feel that anything you experience you’ll have an explanation for. But occasionally I encounter a phenomenon I really do not understand.
The past few nights - and occasionally during the day - the woods have been making [...]
Summer is just about here; the entire forest is dark brown and green, fertility promised and fertility delivered. The green awakens some kind of unknowable desire - I can walk through the woods and stop and stare at the leaves glowing green, utterly confounded as to what I am.
Lots of writing and lots of discipline [...]
Summer weather arrived this weekend - ninety degree days - and with it, an astonishing ascension of complexity in the life around me. In April solitary individuals would break the stillness - “What is that bird? Where is he? Let me figure it out.” - but now the forest is never silent, [...]
From the Phoenicia Times:
A Sullivan County man shot and killed a large adult black bear that was menacing his daughter at her home Sunday, the state DEC has reported. The woman was inside with her four children when the bear attempted to break into a bedroom window of the home and swatted at their dog [...]
While it’s certainly likely that we’ll have a bit more snow - and I see 20 degree temperatures in the forecast - the snow is now almost all gone. Yesterday it rained all day, and I watched it eagerly, thinking - “It’s rain! Water! From the sky! Not snow! What a miracle!” I would look [...]
We are having weather which is more usual to April, in March; it has been so warm and pleasant, it feels like a great gift. Everyone is in a good mood. On my way down here my neighbors were sitting on deck chairs on their lawn - and raised their hands to me in complacent [...]
As I came up here I saw one thing which told me almost everything I needed to know about conditions on the ground in the Catskills: I passed the Neversink Reservoir and saw that it was not yet overflowing. That meant the river was not flooding, which meant the snow had not melted yet.
That was [...]