Tag: Adirondacks
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Adirondack Birding and Squirreling
Rather than whining through another verse of the Bali Blues on my harmonica, I awoke on my first morning back at Rosslyn in a fever to jump-start autumn/winter rituals. Top of the list was setting up the bird feeders in anticipation of Adirondack birding. A recent radio report on Vermont Public Radio had mentioned that…
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Leaf Peeping in the High Peaks
On Wednesday afternoon my bride and I departed Essex and headed south on Interstate 87. Driving one of the Adirondack highway’s most handsome stretches always affords decadent views, but yesterday spoiled us with near peak Adirondack fall foliage. It was breathtaking despite overcast conditions. The flat light desaturated autumn’s cacophonous palette, rendering a landscape more nuanced…
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Old Glory & Mud Season
I recently returned to Rosslyn after almost two months away. It was my single longest absence since buying the house in July 2006, and the extended hiatus was a bit surreal. I departed Essex in February and returned in April! For readers familiar with life in the Adirondacks, you’ll remember that we have the distinction…
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Hawk Attacks Dove
Last Sunday my bride and I settled in for a post-lunch-tea-and-snooze in the parlor. The previous week’s unseasonably temperate spring-going-on-summer weather had yielded to cold and rain, so we weren’t feeling too guilty about playing hooky. No gardening or tidying up the waterfront for spring boating. No orchard pruning or apple tree grafting for us.…
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Fox & Squirrel
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h8vmPSvUNps] When I was in middle school my parents moved our family from a circa 1876 manse in Wadhams that they’d restored gradually over a decade, to a new home tucked into a tree-lined meadow near Lake Champlain. Formerly part of the Higginson farm, the homeowners association comprised a little over a half dozen camps…
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Serene, Patinaed Fantasy
Accustomed to living out of a suitcase, I pendulumed back and forth between Manhattan where Susan was wrapping up a degree in interior design following a decade-long career in video production, and Westport, New York, where both of our parents owned homes and where we’d met a couple of years prior. Susan had recently refinished…
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See you at Depot Theatre
Adirondack storyteller and writer, George Davis, needs you to help him kill a few stories on Wednesday, August 3 at The Depot Theatre in Westport, NY. Prepare for a pell-mell parade of vignettes, monologues and readings ranging from a wader-wearing Amazon named Rosslyn to a perennially pickled bathtub yachtsman… This solo performance pokes fun at…
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Totally, unabashedly, irreversibly seduced
Today’s question from Al Katkowsky‘s Question of the Day book was the perfect invitation to reflect on Rosslyn Redux, the “big picture”! What should you definitely not have done that turned out okay anyway? In the summer of 2006 I definitely should not have purchased a dilapidated, almost two hundred year old house in Essex,…
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Adirondack Chairs Revisited
“To all whom it may concern: Be it known that I, Harry C. Bunnell, a citizen of the United States, residing at Westport, in the county of Essex and the State of New York, have invented a new and useful Improvement in Chairs. … ” So begins patent number 794,777, dated July 18, 1905, in…
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Hyde Gate For Sale or Rent
Rosslyn artifacts pop up all over the place! And they’re not always Rosslyn artifacts; sometimes they’re Hyde Gate artifacts or Sherwood Inn artifacts… Honestly one of the most enjoyable aspects of owning and renovating our home is stumbling across interesting relics of its almost 200 year history. I originally came across the advertisement above on…
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Rosslyn Roundup, June 27
It’s time for another Rosslyn Roundup to share everything Rosslyn-related that I didn’t get a chance to post this past week. Summer in the Champlain Valley has a way of inching along slowly, slowly, slowly and then suddenly galloping off! This summer was not exception, but the transition was even more apparent because of protracted…
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Crooning to the Adirondack Sunset
This afternoon I offer you an enchanting video of musician Martin Sexton sunset-serenading (reminiscent of a loon delivering the quintessential Adirondack sundowners soundtrack.) The video’s minimalist description states, “Martin Sexton croons to the Adirondack sunset”. Enjoy. Another video for Martin Sexton’s Over My Head reads, “Martin Sexton sings before the sunrise over Loon Lake, Adirondack…