Tag: Snowshoeing
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Play Daily
From our first fanciful forays — pipe dreaming and what-iffing — Rosslyn represented for Susan and for me an opportunity to play more. Or so we imagined back in 2005 and 2006 as we slowly talked each other into a monumental life change. Although fantasy and reality haven’t overlapped exactly the way we conceived, most…
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Christmas Eve
This evening I would like to share a memory of our first Christmas Eve at Rosslyn in 2008. It was to be our first Christmas at Rosslyn. For weeks we had been racing the calendar, coaxing the team forward, cramming days into hours to ensure that construction would finally end and Rosslyn would at last…
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Griffin & Gator
Thirteen years ago, on November 14, 2010, I snapped a few blurry Blackberry photographs (remember those?) of Susan and our Labrador retriever, Griffin. The snapshots were taken beyond the barns, looking west over the meadows we were recovering after decades forgotten, feral, and overgrown. Griffin thoroughly enjoyed jumping into the small bed for a cruise…
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Beyond Brook Bushwhack
A chilly afternoon warmed with laughter while bushwhacking on snowshoes, today Susan, Denise and John Davis, and I ventured into Rosslyn’s westernmost woods to trailblaze a new loop through a maturing pine forest located between Library Brook, the Essex Firehouse, and Essex Farm. Long anticipated, this remote route will extend and diversify our existing trail…
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Ruffed Grouse
The male ruffed grouse in the photo above was documented on a Rosslyn wildlife camera about a year ago. Fancy fowl! And the two images below were recorded a few weeks ago. Rosslyn’s backlands are fortunately flush with ruffed grouse (Bonasa umbellus), a welcome reminder that wildlife gravitates — as if by some primal sense…
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Winter Solstice: Longer Days Ahead
Welcome to day one of the Adirondack Coast‘s coldest season. Today is the winter solstice, the first official day of winter, and — more importantly for the likes of my mother and others who favor longer days and shorter nights — the threshold between the briefest day and the most prolonged night and imperceptibly-but-steadily lengthening…
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Autumn Landscape Poetry
TGIF… time to put another log on the fire, pour yourself something refreshing, and unwind for a moment together. Busy-ness and a continuous cascade of commitments can gradually hypnotize us during the weekly hurly-burly, so let’s take a few minutes to exhale and redirect our attention at this dramatic time of year. Transformation all around…
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Leaping & Untethering
In the spring and summer of 2006, when Susan and I took a leap of faith and made the decision to pursue Rosslyn as our future home, it was apparent to both of us that we were biting off considerably more than we could chew. Dream big. Dream a little bigger. And then leap! From…
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ADK Oasis Highlawn
If you’ve ever wanted to visit the Adirondack Coast, I have some good news for you. Late last year we decided to purchase a new property north of Rosslyn, and as of last month we’ve launched an AirBnB that we’re calling ADK Oasis (www.adkoasis.com as well as www.airbnb.com and @adkoasis). (Updated in 2019 to ADK Oasis…
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Decrypting Bird Tracks in Snow
I don’t recall whether or not I was fascinated with animal and bird tracks in snow as a child, but I suspect I was. I am now… (Fox Tracks, Foxtrot & X-Country Skiing) It wasn’t until my nephews (now teenagers but still “pocket sized” then) began asking me to identify bird tracks in snow, four…
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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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Almost Logical
Within minutes we were tripping over each other, drunk with excitement, imagining one whimsical “What if…” scenario after another. No filter, no caution. Our reveries flitted from one idyllic snapshot to another. “What if I finally sat down and finished my novel?” After dawdling self indulgently for a dozen years – writing, rewriting, discarding, rewriting,…