Tag: Watersports
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Before Undocking
Last day of summer. Yesterday. First day of autumn. Today. Liminal moments. Time to remove the boats and docks. But, just before, Susan snapped these potent images. Before undocking… Before undocking, putting summer 2023 behind us, there was calm. Placid waters. Almost mirror flat. And a sunrise as sensuous as it was poignant. Rosslyn’s waterfront.…
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Framing Vintage Artifacts
After a year of icehouse rehab, it’s been rewarding to add art and artifacts to showcase in this new space. Yesterday Susan and I returned from another creative collab with Nico Sardet at Furchgott Sourdiffe, mostly transforming and framing vintage artifacts that will be displayed in the icehouse. The warmly sepia-tinged photograph above captures the…
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Before Time Runs Out
Since returning home to Rosslyn almost two months ago after a capricious walkabout with Susan, Denise, and John, some of the joy and celebration of homecoming has been overshadowed with waiting, delays, anticipation, setbacks, deferring, etc. This tension between ebullient gratitude and serial deferral is sometimes motivating, sometimes profoundly vexing. Lately, more of the latter…
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Dockside Monochrome
Mercurial, unsettled weather lately. Pendulum swings. Dark and light. Sunny and soggy. Unsettled hours and days. My moody meditation is inspired by this dockside monochrome. Snapped this photo after an unsuccessful first foray into waterskiing and freshwater surfing for the 2023 season. Too rough. Susan tried. A valiant effort. Abbreviated… Today’s words and thoughts are…
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Artifacts & Ephemera: Regattas & Ferries
At a time when we’re inundated 24×7 with digital marketing and messaging, it’s fun to flip the calendar back 60+ years to some equivalent pre-digital promotions for regattas at the Sherwood Inn and Lake Champlain ferries (including the Essex-Charlotte ferry.) Today’s post highlights a few quotidian artifacts that offer a bridge into an earlier time.…
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Champlaining
I like to joke around with our friends, Amy Guglielmo and Brian Giebel about “Champlaining” (aka “Lake Champlaining”) when we’re puttering about on our glorious front yard: Lake Champlain. A common refrain, “Stop Champlaining!” is actually a lighthearted reminder that even on the clunkiest of days, time spent plying (or playing i/on) the waters of America’s greatest lake is…
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Sundown Surf
Slightly less than two months ago, celebrating a peak-of-summer day with a sensational sundown surf. Actually, concluding a wake surf (closer to sunset than normal or advisable). Sundown Surf Haiku Wake lifting, cresting,board surging and legs pumping,surfing into dusk.— Geo Davis Champlaining Relived Today we start the first day of October. So much change from…
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Seasonality
Seasonality might strike you as a strange menu for organizing a blog (and an even stranger way to navigate a narrative.) But in many respects it may well be the *only* useful way to structure a circular story that’s slim on plot, chronically a-chronological, and deeply immersed in the poetics of place. Summer’s End Haiku As if…
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Essex Day
We returned home from a heat-indexed 102° Essex Day for a languid lunch — quiche and garden-to-table Caprese salad (with aromatic purple basil) followed by watermelon — under the shady American Linden. A subtle breeze freshened just enough to wick the perspiration from our necks, and for a moment, it was perfection. Sated. Shaded. Contemplating…
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Waterfront Winterization
There comes a time each autumn when summer has faded and winter is whispering over the waves. Or when work, travel, something eclipses the languid stretch of fall boating and watersports. Sometimes earlier, sometimes later, and as inevitable and bittersweet as fall foliage, waterfront winterization is an annual ritual that braces us practically and emotionally for the North Country’s…
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Demolition: Rosslyn Dedux
When it was built it was just right for the times. But it didn’t adapt… Rooms were shut off and fell out of use. Neglect left the paint chipped, with bare wood and brick showing through… rehabilitation fails with no sustainable plan for use. ~ Stef Noble (www.stef.net) I don’t recollect how I came across Demolition, a…