The Magic Tray – Shortened 2023 – Written Fall, 2013

Teens, Adolescence, Writing, Teens and Writing, Teaching Writing, Education, Middle School, Title I Schools, Poverty and education, Civility, Teaching Teens Civility, Classroom Management, Culture, , , , , Leave a comment

There once was a class of middle school writing students who were terribly behaved around food of any kind.  After school they acted as if they’d been starved for days, rushing up and edging one another out of the way so they could get at the table laden with bags of Oreos, Chips Ahoy, and Snyder’s pretzels.  One would imagine they had just come off a 10 day trek on the Gobi desert by the way they ripped open the plastic loops holding the water bottles.  As they gingerly negotiated the classroom desks getting back to their own, their 13 year old hands overflowed with eight or ten cookies (Were they hypoglycemic?), three or four pretzels (Were they salt deprived?) Then once seated (and that was a tricky business if they’d pushed their chairs back under their desks) each child stacked and sorted their loot in his or her own way upon the napkin I’d placed there. Some stacked their cookies six high, some in short stacks of two or three. Either way they wiped out the snacks on the snack table within minutes.  It was a frantic and chaotic business at the start of every club meeting. 

 Reminding them to share and slow down made absolutely no difference. These young writers were deaf to me and to the other two teachers who coordinated this Young Writers’ afterschool program for adolescents who actually love to write.  This love of writing made them anomalies of their Title I middle school.  They were the smart ones, the ones who loved to read and write and talk about fiction and poetry with one another.  They were a polite and serious group of over-achievers, so their uniquely sensitive behavior juxtaposed to their Darwinian behavior when it came to cookies was hard to fathom. Why did they greedily and without regard for one another attack the snacks I brought each week?  Were they truly that hungry? Or was it something else?

We teachers tried sending them to the snack table one or two at a time, but this strategy left the last students with the broken bits and only one or two whole cookies a piece.  We said over and over again, “Remember your friends are hungry, too. Only take two cookies and two pretzels at a time.”  This sort of worked. But as soon as our attention shifted to working with the student writers individually, their club-mates stealthily made their way to the snack table and grabbed as many cookies and pretzels as they could without our noticing.

After several weeks of watching this weekly drama unfold, I decided to come up with a plan. I wasn’t sure what this plan would be, but I was determined to change this uncivil and uncivilized behavior.  But how?

 That very weekend of my resolution, I was visiting my Dad to help him sort out our family home filled with 50 plus years of stuff. My mother had died a few months earlier.  As we worked together on the kitchen cabinets, we came upon the tray cabinet which held 5 trays. My Dad asked, “Would you like the tray your mother won at a golf tournament?” I said, “Yes, absolutely!” Next to us, my mother’s passion was golf. And so, I left that Sunday afternoon with the only golf prize my mother ever won – a brand new plexi -glass tray.

And so that next week when I awoke as usual at 4:00 AM thinking about work or children or both, it suddenly came to me, an epiphany, “Use a tray for our Young Writers’ club”. Yes – I would serve them their snacks, water, and napkins on a tray. In this way, they would be honored and taught at the same time. I was so excited to try it.

The other two teachers thought the tray was a good idea too so that Wednesday, I brought the usual Oreos, Chips Ahoy, pretzels, and water along with the unusual, my tray. As the teachers and I unloaded the snacks, I explained to the children that I would be serving them their snacks on this tray. They watched as I opened the cookie containers and the pretzel bag and placed them in the middle of the tray. Next, I stacked the napkins in one corner and lined up the water bottles in the other.  It all fit, perfectly!

With the two slotted handles, it was easy to carry the tray around the room stopping at each child’s desk and asking, “Would you care for a snack?” That first time, they looked questioningly at me as they stretched out their hand to the cookie container, asking out loud or silently with their eyes, “how many?”   In response, I said, “Let’s take two cookies now, and I’ll be around again a little later.”  The effect was instant. These grabbing, gobbling children became 19th century drawing room aristocrats, ever so slowly and carefully taking one or two cookies, a napkin, a pretzel, and water. As if we’d always had our snacks in this way, they spontaneously said, “yes, please” when offered the tray and “thank you” as I moved on to the next student.  It was magic to see and hear their transformation from ruffians to refined gentlefolk. 

Now eight months later, the tray has worked even better than I’d imagined. It brings out the best parts in our young writers: the civil, caring part.  They love the tray and being waited on.  Now when the students want more, they ask if I’m coming around again soon.  And so, this tray won by my mother at a golf tournament at a fancy country club has traveled to a very different place, a place filled with children who love to write.  Each week as I set up the tray with snacks, I thank my mother for giving me this great idea. Because of an afternoon spent cleaning out her kitchen cabinets, I discovered a simple and elegant way to change our student’s weekly snack attack. Who’d have thought it?

How to Feed a Bald Eagle

adventure, Birds and Bird watching, Ecosystems, Enviroment, fishing, freedom, Lakes, mountains, Paddling, sense of place, wild places, women and nature, , , , , , , , , Leave a comment

We were on Round Pond in Camp Massawepie located in the Adirondack Park, New York.  Massawepie means place of big fishes in native nomenclature. And we were out for a wonderful day of brook trout fishing in this gem of a place. A 3700 acre Boy Scout camp amid an ancient maze of six kettle ponds and eskers the receding glacier left behind some 13,000 years ago. A trout angler’s dream! Anyone with a NY state fishing license can fish here when the Boy Scouts aren’t in residence.

We were just settling into trolling on the east side of Round Pond when Kevin had a fish on. As he reeled, I kept saying quietly, “don’t let him get away”. Kevin reeled in the 6 inch trout, and we were both disappointed. At Massawepie, trout must be at least 12 inches long to be keepers. Kevin took out his hemostat and carefully dislodged the hook from the trout’s mouth. Then Kevin gently placed the little fish back in the pond. We could see that the trout was struggling a bit, not diving straight back down from whence he came. 

Suddenly, a huge bald eagle coasted down in front of us, aiming right for the little trout. With one big swoosh the bald eagle swooped in, reached its long, curved talons just under the water and grabbed the floundering trout.

We couldn’t believe it! We have fished many ponds and lakes in the Adirondacks, and only once before have we had an eagle come within 1000 ft of us. Usually, they’re flying way overhead or perched on a tree a quarter mile away.

Since both male and female eagles look alike, I’ll call this one she.  After her amazing catch, we thought she’d fly far away.  Instead, she flew two thirds up a nearby white pine tree and began to tear and eat her feast in front of us.  At first, we were afraid to paddle our small solo canoes too close, but as we came closer the eagle didn’t seem to mind.

After she’d finished eating, she flew a circle around this 5 acre pond and then settled into the top branch of another white pine. There she perched and watched us. Soon Kevin caught another brookie – unfortunately, it wasn’t the required 12 inches, so he released it. This time we turned our phones’ videos on just in case we had a repeat performance. And we did!

Once again, the eagle flew towards where Kevin had released the trout, made a circle and came dead on tracking the fish, lowering her legs and turning her talons sideways so she could skim the water, and grab the struggling trout. Then as before, she returned to what we now called her ‘dining white pine tree branch’ and quickly ate every scale. Afterwards, she once again flew in a circle around us and alighted on the same look-out pine across the pond.

“Can you believe this”? Kevin asked me.

“Unbelievable”, I said.

“If we catch another small one, let’s hold onto it and release it between our two boats and see if she will come in for a grab between us. Then we could get an amazing video”, said Kevin.

“What a great idea. Yes, let’s do it. This is truly incredible”, I said.

I was so excited to try out this experiment. The eagle seemed completely unafraid of us, so I thought she would get close, and we would get an amazing close-up video.

Within minutes Kevin had a fish on. As he reeled it in, I silently wished for another small one. And it was – another 6 incher. Kevin carefully released the small trout into the water. We were about 20 feet apart. As the fish floundered on the surface between us, the eagle watched us and then flew in a half circle around us swooping just above the water between our canoes and then suddenly up and away without the trout.

‘I think she is afraid. Let’s back -paddle and see if she’ll come back”, said Kevin.

Quickly we paddled backwards so we were now about 35 feet apart.   The trout was still floundering just below the surface. Soon the eagle circled, flew down and this time gracefully, smoothly scooped up her trout. We each got the whole scene on our phones, yayee.

As we watched her fly back to her dining tree, we followed. This time we paddled right underneath her and videoed her tearing and eating. She wasn’t bothered by our presence one bit.

Since we still didn’t have our limits of three 12 inch fish a piece, we began to fish again. We’d each caught one 12 incher, and they were on stringers trailing beside and behind our boats. I was concerned that our eagle would go after them. She certainly wasn’t very afraid of us. Birds of prey and snapping turtles often go after fish on stringers. They are an easy meal especially for snapping turtles.

Last summer Kevin had a bald eagle try to do just that – swoop in and try for one. Fortunately, Kevin frightened him away with some yelling and flaying of arms. Happily, this eagle never tried to swoop in for the fish on our stringers. Why would she? We were practically handfeeding her.

“Do you think this eagle comes here regularly”? asked Kevin.

“It seems like it, doesn’t it? Maybe when she sees someone fishing here, she stops by to get a free meal”, I said.

“I bet she wonders why we let so many go”, said Kevin. “She probably thinks we’re pretty stupid.”

As we continued fishing and sometimes releasing, the eagle swept down and retrieved five of our ten released trout.  Happily, some got away, but five did not. When she swooped in for the fifth trout, she caught it and flew southwest away from her dining tree and away from Round Pond. We didn’t see her again that afternoon.

Ninety minutes later, we had caught our limit – three 12 to 16 inch brook trout a piece. So, we paddled to shore, hauled our boats up and over the esker, then down the trail to the parking lot.  As we stowed our gear in the back of our Subaru and put our boats on the roof rack, an older gentleman called from his nearby pick up, “Did you see the bald eagle”?

We both said, “Yes”! And we told him our story.

He said, “That eagle has a nest a quarter mile southwest of the pond.

Kevin said, “That’s where she flew away to. We thought she might have a nest in that direction.”

The old man laughed and said, “Yes, she does. She’s been around the past few summers. She’s a smart one all right, watches for someone fishing so she can snag a free meal for herself and her eaglets.”   

All the way home, we kept marveling to one another about what had happened. That morning, we had gone off to have a normal, fun-filled fishing day.  Incredibly, we’d had a mind-blowing adventure with a bald eagle.  

We had fed a bald eagle five trout over the course of a couple hours. Amazing. Every time she circled around our heads, we could hear and feel the whoosh, whoosh, whoosh of her wings. So beautiful and so powerful. We could see her turn her talons sideways so she could pick up the trout between them. She barely skimmed the water as she gracefully picked up the trout. Then up, up, up and away to her white pine branch 50 feet above us. Incredibly, we had been able to watch this five times. Astounding.

For many months, we’d return to and recount this wilderness adventure often rewatching our videos with each other and our friends. Now years later, our remarkable bald eagle adventure remains at the top of our wildlife experiences in these beloved Adirondacks.

Dipping Our Toes into the Bouquet River With a Juvenile Great Blue Heron

Death of a Sibling, Ecosystems, Enviroment, mountains, wild places, women and nature, , , , , , , Leave a comment

Last September (2024), we were hot and sticky after putting in a rather large perineal flower bed around two sides of our little 1889 farmhouse.  It was too late to go for a paddle on the lake, so Kevin suggested we drive up the road to Jersey Street and wade and sit in the Boquet river.  This stretch of the river is ideal for wading or sitting in chest high water as it flows and cascades over layer upon layer of granite slabs and shelves. You can be in 3 inches or 3 feet simply by choosing which slab or pool you wish to enjoy. The water is clean: the Boquet River Association says, it’s the cleanest river in New York state.

According to the Nature Conservancy, New York’s 47-mile Boquet River is a major tributary to Lake Champlain, which provides world-class recreational fishing and supports verdant land for farming. It’s also the state’s steepest river, with a vertical drop of over 2,700 feet from its source on Dix Mountain to where it empties into Lake Champlain in Willsboro. The river is thought to have been re-named Boquet by the 17th century French interpreter and explorer, Charles Boquet. Sadly, the native name has been lost to history.

We were the only ones there when suddenly and quietly; a young Great Blue Heron landed just 8 feet from where we are sitting. We froze. Herons are shy birds and do not get close to humans. She was about 2 feet high, very thin and thinly feathered as if she hadn’t quite grown into her adult splendor. Her feathers were light blueish grey, her legs also greyish. Her medieval/renaissance sword-like beak about 6 – 8 inches long.

The great blue heron is my totem/talisman. Whenever something important or especially meaningful has happened or is happening in my life, a great blue heron always seems to show up – flying overhead or standing nearby. I always think of these sightings as positive, a kind of supporting affirmation and connection for whatever experience I am facing. I call them my Great Blue Heron days.

We were sitting on a shelf with overflowing water, our legs and feet over the edge, enjoying the feel of cascading water flowing over them.  The heron stood there looking up and down stream and then she looked directly at each of us – one at a time. She did not blink or appear to be frightened in any way. It was as if she were our pet, along for a cool – down herself. A day by the river side, a lazy swim in the riffles.

She did not move about as if to hunt: Great Blue herons eat fish. But she did do something so marvelously unexpected, we had to hold our breath, so we didn’t gasp or laugh and frighten her away. She picked up her left foot, squeezed her toes together and dangled them over the edge of our little waterfall. She dipped in and out of the water, touching it lightly, then holding her foot in the water for seconds at a time. She seemed delighted with the feel of the flowing water cascading over her toes and foot. She turned her foot this way and that, testing which way the water felt best. Every so often, she would gaze at us (her eyes are on the side of her head). She did this for several minutes.

Then just as suddenly and quietly as she’d arrived, she flew up and left for better fishing in the deeper pools farther downstream. We could see her, but she completely ignored us as she busily concentrated on the flow in front of her. She stayed there until we left 10 minutes later. And she was still there as we drove our car over the bridge back towards our home.

It is 17 months since my sister, Evie’s death, and I am still very much in mourning. Sitting and wading in the Bouquet brought back memories of Evie and her family playing with us in the Bouquet river at Split Rock Falls and up on the Bouquet’s north branch at Shoe Box Falls. Both of our families whooped and jumped and splashed together on two perfect blue sky Adirondack summer days. The joy of water and laughter and sliding down rock slabs – so cooling after our trudge into Shoe Box. The exhilaratingly ice-cold water at the base of Split Rock made for squeals of delight and blue chattering lips. My sister so young and full of energy. I could not imagine that several years later she would become sick and then die of metastatic breast cancer. She was a super active positive woman who like the steep, fleeting Bouquet river covered a lot of ground in her brief time here. I deeply miss her and think about her every single day.

So, on this Great Blue heron day, I wanted to believe that this young heron’s visit was a sign from Evie, an unexpected visit in a place that I love – the watery Adirondacks. I think of Evie and me sitting side by side on other rivers and streams enjoying the tactile pleasure of water flowing over rocks and over us. We both loved that. Then I think about how this river water journeys on and on: different water but the same journey – just like my sense of my sister. She is here just not the same kind of here as before.

Evelyn Brendel Jennes 1964 – 2022

Uncategorized, Leave a comment

Evelyn Jennes Brendel – 1964 – 2023

Evelyn Jennes Brendel died on Wednesday night, March 22, 2023. She persevered for several years with great courage and great good humor through a diagnosis of metastatic breast cancer. No words can express what a gigantic hole her leaving has made in our hearts and lives. We miss her so very much.

Evie’s light shone like an image from the Webb telescope. She loved people. Her great curiosity and sense of adventure took her around the world to live, play, and to work. In the USA, she worked for Baxter and US Surgical where her marketng and people skills made her a top salesperson. Then off she went to Russia in the 1990’s, then on to Slovakia to work for Coca-Cola.

Finally, she settled down in the Netherlands with the love of her life and husband, Erik, and raised three lovely daughters, Everie, Elies, and Ella. There she made a wonderful life full of friends and learned how to speak excellent Dutch – with a very American accent, of course. She was involved in her new community and culture, celebrating Dutch holidays and customs with joy and eagerness.

Evie loved being a mother. She was affectionate and funny, and made sure her family gathered each evening for a proper sit-down dinner. The conversation was always lively and full of laughter – current school activities and dramas, politics, art, and local events. Evie shopped each week at the Haarlem market with Erik and/or some of their girls. She inherited her love of nutritious organic whole foods from her mother. Evie loved to try new foods and recipes, often passing them on to friends and family. She kept a list of each family members’ favorites, making them upon request or for special occasions.

Evie kept in regular touch with her friends and family in the USA for thirty years, visiting each summer for several weeks. In America, she visited her childhood friends in and around Bethlehem, Pennsylvania where she grew up. Evie also visited her Penn State University friends (she graduated with a BS in Business in 1986), and they all raised their children as one big brood. Their children are now adults, and they too keep in touch and visit with one another.

Evie, her husband, Erik and children always spent at least one week with her family in Avalon, New Jersey, a lifelong annual family vacation spot. There she visited and played beach paddle tennis with her parents (Mary and Bob – deceased), sister Katie, brother Robby, brother-in-law, Kevin and nieces Anna Lou and Campbell.

Evie was an international entrepreneur who worked on several start-ups in the US and Europe. Her ability to connect with people and organize marketing projects made her indispensable. Her colleagues around the world miss her.

The Jennes family loves to travel. And because Evie is a born organizer, the five E’s (as they call themselves) traveled far and wide. From France to Egypt to Southeast Asia. To Central America and the Alps. From Hollywood to Vermont to Maine and Utah, USA. Evie loved places with history and culture – even Hollywood culture. She planned trips that would teach them how others lived and worked. Trips that showed them the art and natural beauty of a particular place.

Evie’s positive perseverance and tenacity during the seven years she had breast cancer inspired everyone she encountered. Her study and knowledge of her disease, her approach to healing and her constant attitude of moving forward in joy and gratefulness was awesome to behold. She was a ‘never say die person’ who withstood much hardship and pain, yet never complained. If you asked her how she was – she always said ‘good’. She had so much life that she wanted to live and so much more time she wanted to spend with her family. When the end came, she was surrounded by her children, husband, and sister. Erik never left her side for the last three days she was alive. Evie died in her beloved husband’s arms.

Evie’s ability to connect with people and forge deep and lasting friendships was a lived example for her family. They, too, have her gift of caring and connectedness with others. Since Evie’s death, the now four E’s have been surrounded by their friends. Each day, friends come to their home with hugs, tears, food, cards, and flowers. Visiting for an hour or so, laughing and crying, sometimes walking on the beach together. Time to reminisce, reflect and mourn an amazing life that ended much too soon. Farewell sweet Evie.

My Sister, Evie

Death of a Sibling, Uncategorized, Leave a comment

Evie and I at Big Bass Lake, PA Summer 2008

My name is Katie Hearn, and I’m Evie’s older sister. We were born 11 years apart, so she was like my first real-life baby.

Erik has spoken about Evie as a grown woman, wife, mother, entrepreneur, and world traveler. I’m going to talk about Evie as a child and a young adult.

As I mentioned, I thought of Evie as my baby. I took care of her, played with her and sometimes took her to the grocery store. One day, our mother asked me to pick up some groceries and would I take Evie along. I was 16, and she was 5.

Evie sat in the grocery cart’s child seat, which was right up front. As we went up and down the aisles, Evie and I chatted. Evie loved to go to the grocery store.

When we got to the check-out lines which were very crowded, she noticed candy bars on the shelf nearby and immediately asked for one. I said, no.  I would have gotten in trouble with my mom for that purchase. My mother was a 1960’s health food fanatic.

As I began putting the lettuce, tomatoes, string beans and carrots on the counter, Evie, said distinctly and loudly, “Mommy, can we get some milk? We never have milk. Please.”

I turned and scowled at her, saying, I’m not your mother.” And she retorted again more loudly, “Yes, you are, Mommy. You always say that. You are my mother.”

The check-out woman looked at me with total disgust; the other women in lines all around us were giving me looks of great disapproval. I could feel them thinking – ‘Another teenage mother who doesn’t know how to take care of her child.

And – even denies being her mother.’

I hustled out of the grocery as quickly as I could, taking Evie by the hand and scolding her as we walked across the parking lot to our car. When we arrived home a few minutes later, I stormed into the house, a furious, embarrassed teenager, calling “Mom, Mom, Evie called me mommy in the grocery store check-out line, and everyone stared and gave me dirty looks. And then when I said, I’m not your mother, she called out louder that I always say I’m not her mother when I really am. I’m never taking her to the store again!! Never! But I did — a few weeks later. And she didn’t call me Mommy, and I bought her a chocolate bar. We didn’t tell our mother.

As you all know, Evie is/was a beautiful strong, joyful person who loved life and people. She was funny, she was kind, generous, brave, and an amazing problem solver. She was also charming and resolute when faced with challenges.

When we were on a sisters-only trip to Tuscany and Umbria in the 1990’s, we got lost everywhere we tried to go in our rental car. We often stopped to ask for directions in our few horrific words of Italian. The person always smiled and answered in fast paced Italian using their arms and pointing this way or that. And we looked back at them with faces of complete comprehension. We were great actors. As we drove off, we’d turned to one another and asked, “Did you understand what they said?’’ Then we’d burst out laughing, saying at the same time, “NO, not one word.”

One day, we ended up at the entrance to a toll road, a row of toll booths straight ahead. Oh no, we knew this was very wrong. I was driving.

Evie, said, “Make a U turn.” I said, “But there’s a police officer in the middle. I can’t do that.”  “Sure, you can,” Evie said, “Just go.”

 So, I did. And immediately the policeman stopped us. He walked over to the car and told us quite forcefully in Italian that we may NOT turn around.  Evie leaned over me. I was afraid. In the US, you don’t confront the police.

Evie looked straight into the policeman’s face and said very assertively, ‘We must turn around. We must.”

 The policeman kept saying ‘No”, and many other words besides. And Evie leaning across me kept saying over and over, “We must turn around!”

 After 4 or 5 back and forths, the policeman suddenly changed his tone, smiled and waved us on to make the U turn. I was shocked. This would never happen at home. Evie looked at me and said, “You can’t give up. If you keep saying it long enough, they give in.”

So here we are today, celebrating dear Evie’s glorious life. She was my baby, my friend, my confidante, my sister, my model of courage and perseverance, and my partner in laughter. She has flown, and we are here saying, we will miss you sorely.

How Do You Mourn Your Ex-Husband?

Uncategorized Leave a comment

My ex-husband, Skip, the father of our twin daughters died on October 5, 2022. He suffered a stroke on September 3, 2022. He was 87 years old. It was completely unexpected. He’d just retired 2 and a half months earlier from a 65 year real estate career. Our daughters and his three older children were at his bedside every day until he passed.  It was very hard to say goodbye.

No one plans to get divorced when they get married. I’m certain Skip and I both believed this was it – another chance at married happiness. We planned a life that included children, a farm, horses, and dogs. We both loved the outdoors and gardening. We were both in the commercial real estate business. He was 18 years older, and I believed wiser and smarter about life. I was full of youthful energy and the joy of possibility. We were happy, good friends and spouses until we weren’t. It was a hard, contentious three year break-up.

That was 24 years ago. Through our post marriage, we raised our twin daughters together, usually sitting side by side at every school activity and sporting event. It was hard and easy. Hard because we were no longer anything like friends and easy because we both adored our children. During those elementary through high school years, we sometimes saw each other 5 days a week. After they went off to college, not so much.

When one daughter became critically and chronically ill at 20, we were both there together or tag teaming one another at the many hospital stays, surgeries, and recouperations. Strangely, we rarely disagreed about children’s issues. It’s sad we couldn’t use those skills when we were still married and ran into disagreements.

So now, 25 days after Skip’s death, I am mourning. Mourning the full-stop end. The full-stop end of our knowing each other, of forgiving each other, of coming to a more caring communion. A “double loss”, that’s what the experts call losing your ex to death. Double because you lost each other when your marriage ended and now once again when one of you dies.

Any conscious or unconscious hope/wish for a different, happier outcome is now officially over. Any hope for a deeper more considered and welcoming relationship is gone forever. Strangely, all the happiness, good family times and laughter you shared are suddenly remembered as if it were yesterday. The scenes fresh and real and oh so sad. You muse: Why couldn’t we have done better?

And yet, my life moved on many years ago. Moved on to a wonderful, loving 20 year relationship and marriage. Moved onto a 23 year career in higher education. Moved on to the Adirondack mountains, hiking, paddling, fishing, writing, teaching, and cooking. So why was I mourning a person I rarely thought about unless he was mentioned by one of our daughters?

At first, I thought my heart sick feeling was only for the terrible loss my 31 year old daughters were suffering. They are bereft and will mourn for a long time as all children of good parents do.  But it wasn’t only for them I was heart sick. I realized I am heart sick for myself, too.

I mourn the happiness I knew with Skip. I mourn the end of our parent to parent relationship. I feel sad he isn’t here as my back-up, another parent to console and counsel our daughters. Another parent who is as excited as I am when Anna Lou or Campbell has a happy adventure or success.

My heart aches for my children. Losing a parent is hard. A deep sense of security is suddenly and irrevocably taken away. One of their two rocks is suddenly gone…forever. Our children will never be able to pick up the phone and call or stop by for a weekly visit. Go on a walk. Watch a game together. The finality.

And yet, our coming together at Skip’s funeral and family reception created a space for loving, caring and mourning together as a family. Anna Lou, Campbell and Susie, Campbell’s partner were supported and loved by their three older siblings and their spouses. My husband, Kevin, and I were welcomed to all the family gatherings. Love and care were everywhere.

I am so grateful for everyone in the Hearn family. Along with the sadness and finality of death, life and love go on and on and on.        

Back To The Forest?

Uncategorized, , , , , , , , , , Leave a comment

Back To The Forest?

I bet the inmate in upstate New York had no idea what was outside his prison walls when he decided to escape into the Adirondack wilderness last summer.  He probably thought the Adirondacks was like a really big Central Park.  He probably thought it was the perfect break.  Fleeing into the Adirondack Mountain wilderness near the Canadian border had to mean certain success and freedom.

I was in the Adirondacks on the day the inmate broke out of the Ray Brook Correctional Facility in Ray Brook, New York.  My car was stopped three times at one of the many roadblocks. My trunk was checked, and I was questioned.  The locals at the grocery store laughed about the break because when prisoners escape up there, they usually turn themselves in after a couple of nights in the woods.  It was no different with this guy. After only one day of being out, he was found walking down the street in Saranac Lake. The Adirondack woods was no place for him.

Other inmates have run away in the past and have turned themselves in after being lost, wet, hungry, and eaten alive by bugs. They said they had no idea it was so much better in prison than “out there.”  Instead of a tame Central Park type woods, they found a dense, sometimes impenetrable place filled with bears, bogs, and millions of mosquitoes, gnats and black flies — the wilderness.

In primeval times when we were hunters and gatherers, the concept of  “wilderness” didn’t exist. Nature was nothing to be afraid of ; it was where we lived.  It was home.  We were wholly connected to the natural world. That’s all there was and for us it was a “Garden of Eden.”  As agriculture evolved and we became homesteaders and farmers instead of hunters and gatherers, we thought of ourselves as separate from the natural world and the concept of wilderness was born.

Wilderness became the other, a place to be feared and conquered. Wilderness means in Old English, a place of wild deer.  Satan inhabited the forest. Druids practiced their “pagan” rites and witches lived there. By the Middle Ages wilderness meant a place where hermits, insane people, and savages lived.  It was a place uncivilized, and therefore to be avoided and feared.

Wilderness became something we needed to control and dominate, and we did this through cultivation, which we esteemed more highly than our old way of living.  Land became something to be owned by a group or an individual.   Cutting down forests, plowing, planting and taming the land became our vocation.

Dominating the natural world instead of being a part of it was promoted and valued as our human right by both politicians and priests. Priests quoted from the bible the passage stating that man shall have dominion over the entire world. God created the natural world for man’s use and pleasure.   Politicians supported that idea, seeing how it could work to their political advantage. Europeans believed it was Christianity’s duty to convert the “pagans” to Christ and thus we rationalized stealing the Native Americans’ land in North America, colonizing Africa, South America, and the Middle and Far East. We wanted to rule over men as well as nature.

This monumental change in our perception of our relationship with nature put us out of our “Garden of Eden” and into a power struggle for dominance over nature.  Ever since, we have struggled with the dichotomy of our need to be reconnected with nature and our need to dominate it.  Yet, we still yearn for nature and consequently protect and preserve it. And this is why we write about and concern ourselves with conservation, ecology, and pollution.  We have a strong desire to save wild places and preserve virgin forests, because we need to know there exists the real possibility of reconnection with nature. Wild places are an extension of ourselves.  We’ve not traveled as far as we think from our primeval days when we lived in nature and not merely beside it.

In the nineteenth century many people wanted to “get back to nature”.  They wanted to reconnect with wild places, calling them “sublime.”  The Romantic poets wrote about nature’s wonder, beauty, and ability to take one’s mind into the spiritual realm. Wordsworth wrote To a Butterfly, I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud, The Sparrows Nest, and To the Cuckoo — all poems about the love and the beauty inherent in nature– nature created by God and therefore inherently good. Nature became idealized as something transformative – being in nature became a new type of spiritual experience. Where previously man’s spiritual experiences had been limited to church and prayer, now they were outdoors in nature, God’s world.   The idea of living and sleeping close to nature never minding the bugs, dirt, and the inconveniences became a fad, particularly of the comfortable classes. Getting away from the modern, fast paced Victorian life style and its conveniences such as indoor plumbing, comfortable furniture, and insulated, warm houses became a way of seeing life and the world differently. Paulina Brandreth, a nineteenth and twentieth century writer and hunter writes, “One of the chief beauties about hunting or fishing rests in the fact that both create within the individual an enthusiasm that is tonic to mind and body alike.”

People who lived outdoors in shacks and makeshift tents because they had no other choice were called poor. But people who chose (the operative word) to spend their summers living in tents and lean-tos were called campers. Mildred P. Stokes Hooker (1881-1970) and her family were among those first campers.  Hooker’s book, Camp Chronicles about spending seventy summers at her family’s camp on the Upper St. Regis Lake, New York, gives an intimate look at what camping was like at the turn of the last century.

During the first several years her family, including infants and toddlers, lived in tents.  Balsam branches covered in quilts were their beds and the lake was their bathtub.   They had to take along all their food supplies for the summer or buy them from local farmers.  Hooker’s upper class mother took forty chickens to kill for their meals and Hooker’s father rented cows for milk from a farmer. Her father kept the cows on a nearby island so they couldn’t escape.

They were not the only ones camping 120 years ago.  Other families, primarily from New York and wealthy, spent their summers in similar accommodations until their Great Camps were built.   It was common for the men in these camping families to hire guides who would take them out hunting and fishing for game they would use to feed themselves and their families. Sometimes groups of men with guides would spend a week or two off in the woods and mountains killing as many deer, bear, and other game they could. Days were spent feasting on roasted venison haunches and scores of grilled and baked trout, partridge, pheasant and sadly the now extinct American Passenger Pigeon. Game and fish were so abundant that they were considered in unlimited supply and a guide’s reputation grew from the number of game he killed. According to Paul Schneider in his book The Adirondacks, one of the Adirondack’s greatest guides, Alvah Dunning, killed eight moose in five days and during one winter he and three others killed 100 moose. It was not uncommon to catch fifty to sixty trout on fly rods in a couple of hours. Another guide, named Elijah Simonds, was believed to have killed more than 2,000 deer, 3,000 foxes, 150 bears, 12 wolves and 7 panthers during his guiding career.

Slowly these nineteenth century campers built simple or elaborate cabins and icehouses. Some camps had servant’s quarters and stables. Some civilized their wilderness environment a lot and some not too much.  Either way the whole idea was to experience the “freedom” of living out of doors in the great north woods –to experience a different culture than the staid upper class Victorian culture they normally lived.

The idea of combining and relating culture with nature was not a new one.  Muir, Emerson, Thoreau and Hawthorne wrote about it.  Winslow Homer, Albert Bierstadt, and Frederick Church painted it — man’s effect upon wilderness, man’s perception of nature. Whenever a human being goes into nature, he brings culture along.   Even a stroll through the woods changes those woods, leaving footprints and human scent where before there were neither.  Thoreau believed that nature and humans had a sympathetic relationship–one where nature responds to us as we respond to nature.  He writes, “Shall I not have intelligence with the earth?  Am I not partly leaves and vegetable mould myself?”   Or Emerson who wrote, “ Nature is so pervaded with human life that there is something of humanity in all, and in every particular.”

That is what those early campers were after, a sympathetic relationship with nature.  While they wanted some creature comforts, i.e. ice and wooden dwellings instead of canvas ones, they didn’t want to destroy the very essence they were after in living in the wilderness for the summer.   They wanted to experience and understand nature and their undeniable connection to it.  They believed as Paul Gruchow, author of The Necessity of Empty Places, believes, “We will not come to any deep understanding of our place in nature except as we delve into its basic documents, and these documents are our wild places.”

We need to keep in touch with the wildness within us, the animal side of our nature.  That is one reason why we have preserved wild places all over the world.  Places where we know wildness exists, places we have not tamed and developed into skyscrapers, roadways, and farm fields.  Knowing wild places exist buoys us when we are in places uncomfortably manmade, like shopping malls and parking lots.  This need for connection and communion with the natural world fuels a camping, fishing, hunting, and boating industry worldwide. In the United States alone, millions of us spend millions of dollars a year on tents, boats, fishing equipment and guns. We have an innate need and desire to be in nature whether it is an ocean, lake, desert, wood or mountain.  The visit makes whatever is lacking or ailing in us whole and well.  We are restored, freed.

For those wealthy Victorian campers connecting with nature meant freedom from some of the social strictures of upper class society.  Hooker’s mother wrote in her diary,  “I do like the freedom of this place in the way of dress.  Even calls are made in flannel suits and gentlemen wear knickerbockers and coarse stockings.”   Dressing for dinner was banned at some camps while at others women “bedecked in diamonds and men in ‘boiled’shirts paddled their canoes to the Vanderbilt’s for dinner.”  For some, too much social freedom while in the wilderness was too much wildness.

For Martha Reben, wildness and wilderness were her salvation.  Reben was a tuberculosis patient at a sanatorium in Saranac Lake, New York. Her father had sent her there from their home in New York City when she was diagnosed at age sixteen.  Her mother had died of the disease ten years earlier.  Reben had endured three dangerous and painful operations over her three-year stay and still was no better.  She was dying.  One day as she was reading the local newspaper, she chanced upon an ad looking for a TB sufferer who would like to try an experimental “treatment” in the Adirondack woods.  This “treatment” was to spend a summer in the woods camping beside a pond and being taken care of by an Adirondack guide named Fred Rice.  She answered the ad and after some convincing of Mr. Rice and her father, she was accepted as Rice’s first experimental patient for the summer of 1931.  It worked.  By the end of that summer Reben was remarkably better.

For the next ten years, Reben spent spring, summer, and fall camping along the banks of Weller Pond.   Although she eventually was cured of TB, she never completely recovered her strength because of the lung damage she had incurred from the disease and the operations.  Still in her book, The Healing Woods, she writes that she wouldn’t have lived another year without her summers spent camping on Weller Pond.   There she learned how to live out of doors, to use a compass, to fish and to write on an old typewriter.  She wrote about what she saw at Weller Pond much as Thoreau wrote about Walden Pond.   She made pets of raccoons and birds.  She slept at the edge of the pond with the water literally lapping at the legs of her bed.  She learned the constellations and how to read the wind and sky for weather clues. When she had to leave in November before the pond froze, she cried.  While many people would find the realities of life beside a wilderness pond more reality than they would like to experience, Reben found there the reality of a new life.

Some of us try to get into a wilderness forest and some of us try to get out. It all depends on our perspective. As for me, the next time I hike along Heart Lake with the chipmunks scolding my passing and me preoccupied with my thoughts and suddenly an osprey swoops down six feet away to retrieve her prey, I’ll be as startled as the escaped Adirondack inmate, but I’ll also be amazed. And if a Great Blue Heron and I surprise each other along the banks of the Rocky Falls Brook, he’ll squawk and I’ll scream and after the shock wears off, we’ll both thrill at the meeting.

adirondack mountains adirondacks adventure Animals Appalachian Mountains backpacking birds Commentary death Environment Family forest hiking Home Humor hunting Inspiration Kids Life Lifestyle Love mothering mountains Musings nature Opinion outdoors Personal Philosophy Places Random Thoughts Reflections Relationships rural Spirituality Teaching writing Teens Thoughts Travel wildlife Women women and nature woods Writers Writing

Shingle Shanty Pond

Uncategorized Leave a comment

When I conceived of the idea of paddling the perimeter of Shingle Shanty Pond, my purpose was to search for and hopefully find Paullina Brandreth’s lean-tos. Brandreth used these lean-tos for many hunting trips in the early twentieth century on her family’s 24,000 acre property in the Adirondack mountains of New York.   They were constructed of logs felled on the spot and erected facing each other about ten feet apart. That way a fireplace could be erected between them, heating both lean-tos. She writes, “Over the fire a high roof of poles covered with heavy tar paper keeps out the rain, and makes cooking agreeable in all kinds of weather. On very sharp nights we stretched a sheet of canvas across the opening…and with this arrangement we were well protected from wind and cold.” The Brandreths used pack horses and camp employees including a manager and guide to get their equipment to camp.

I was camping on the Brandreth property in hopes of exploring, absorbing, and writing. I wanted to live (if only for a few days) in the same environment that had so influenced a woman hunter of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. I wanted to find an intersection of our experiences in the same place, and I wanted to write about them. A woman hunter of her era was a rarity, yet by writing under a pseudonym she was able to publish 31 articles in Field and Stream and Forest and Stream magazines, as well as three books on hunting, fishing, conservation, and camping in the wild. She was an anomaly because as Rob Wegner, the author of the new foreword to Brandreth’s book, Trails of Enchantment, writes, “Of the more than 2000 books written on the subject of deer and deer hunting…, only five are written by women.   It is one of the best books ever written on the subject…”

Many women camped and even hunted in Brandreth’s time, but none lived in camp as one of the men; most tried to maintain their ladylike manners and behaviors even in the middle of the wilderness. Brandreth was not pressured by these social mores’ because she kept her public identity a secret thereby preserving her anonymity to all but family, close friends, and acquaintances with whom she hunted.

Paullina Brandreth’s book, Trails of Enchantment, introduced me to a female writer writing about hunting. She got me excited about visiting Shingle Shanty Pond. I could retrace her steps, stand on the same ground, paddle the same water, and perhaps even sit inside the same lean-tos she and her friends and family had used. Our Nature Conservancy representative, Todd, who had brought us into the Brandreth’s, had stopped here on the way into our cabin. He had pointed down the length of the pond to a point and had said he thought a lean-to was there. He’d never seen it himself, but one of the Brandreth’s had indicated that it was down there tucked up back in the woods high above the water. I couldn’t wait to find it.

The day was sunny, a few tiny widely scattered clouds and about 72 degrees. I had a sandwich, an apple, and water. I was dressed to get wet since one usually does in a kayak. The wind barely whispered across the water, and so I paddled straight out into the middle of the pond. When you are paddling across a flat body of water, it’s hard to judge distance, and as I paddled I kept looking back to see how far I’d come from shore. The light wind was at my back, and I made good progress, paddling to the middle in about 20 minutes. Out in the middle of a lake or a pond, it’s a good idea not to think too much about exactly where you are – sitting level with deep water in a six foot plastic cigar shaped boat many pool lengths from land. The water is tannin black from the pines and spruces lining the banks. You can’t see the bottom. The bottom that is thick sucking mud. The bottom that swallows your foot and half of your calf when you stand on it. The bottom out in the middle of Shingle Shanty Pond that might be twenty, thirty, forty feet deep and is hundreds of yards from the shore. I was anxious.

I had a life vest in the boat, but I wasn’t wearing it. On shore the idea of stowing the hot cumbersome thing in the bow seemed a reasonable decision. Out in the middle of the pond, it seemed insane. What had I been thinking? Was I completely crazy? I could drown if the boat tipped. I breathed in then out. I looked around. I was sitting in perfectly calm water, the tiniest of wavelets lapping against the side of my boat. The boat couldn’t possibly tip unless I leaned way out and tipped the boat myself. The wind hadn’t changed its velocity. What was I worried about? I kept paddling and focused on my destination, the point about fifteen to twenty minutes away.

I turned around again to check on my progress and to see what my friend, Kevin was up to. I could see him getting into his kayak. I hoped he would head out towards me.   I paddled a few more strokes, then turned to see if Kevin was following me. He wasn’t. He was headed towards the opposite shore line. I yelled. He didn’t hear me. I waved. He didn’t see me. Now he was poking around the irregular shoreline looking, I supposed, for the lean-to. I thought, “Why is he over there? The lean-to is over here.” But then maybe he wasn’t looking for the lean-to. I was doing that. Maybe he was looking for something else, a different discovery.

I gave up trying to make contact and concentrated on my own adventure. As I neared the point, I found an opening between a hemlock and a large fallen tree trunk sticking out perpendicular to the bank. A dock. Now I would have something to hold onto and possibly climb onto. I tentatively put my leg over the side of the boat and on to the bottom. I sank but only to my ankle. Good. After hauling the boat up onto the steep bank, I looked for an opening or a trail that might lead to where a camp might be. I found a sort of trail up to where the ground leveled off onto a rolling rather open (by Adirondack standards) plateau. I could walk without climbing over or around lots of deadfall. The sun shone through the leaves and needles, dancing shadows on boulders, moss, and logs.

I listened. Was that rustling to my right the wind through the white pines or was it an animal? A squirrel, a chipmunk? Small animals sound very big when you’re alone in the woods on the other side of the pond from your friend. It was a chipmunk, thank goodness. The only thing I really didn’t want to see was a bear. Even a timid, scared bear would scare me. A fox, a lynx, a weasel, a marten, even a coyote would thrill me, but not a bear. I’d read and heard too many stories about bears and bear attacks.

Bears normally avoid people and run before you see them. But if you surprise a female with cubs or worse come between a female with cubs, she may attack or at least charge. Bears that are old, sick or starving may also view you as prey, especially if they have become familiar with humans. When bears attack they threaten first by standing on their hind legs and sniffing to see what you are. Then they may stomp one foot, growl, hiss, pant, make jaw-popping noises or charge within a few meters and stop. According to the Northwest Territories Wildlife and Fisheries web site, you should never run from a bear. If threatened you have three options: shoot to kill if you have a firearm, play dead only if it is a grizzly bear, or fight back if attacked by a black bear.

About 4600 black bears live in New York. If one is threatened according to the Northwest Territories web site you should “act aggressively. Defend yourself with whatever means are available. You want to appear dominant and frighten the bear. Jump up and down and shout. Wave your arms. It may help to raise your jacket or pack to make you look bigger.” I didn’t have a jacket or a pack.

According to Lynn L. Rogers, PhD of the Wildlife Research Institute, my chances of being attacked by a black bear were slim. She says that the biggest misconception about black bears is “that they are likely to attack people in defense of cubs”, which I had just read was true on three other web sites.  According to her, “they are highly unlikely to do this.” She goes on to say that she and other black bear researchers often capture screaming cubs in the presence of bluff-charging mothers with no attacks and that black bear mothers have not been known to kill anyone in defense of cubs. I find that hard to believe since she also states that almost three dozen people in North America have been killed by black bears in the past one hundred years. Rogers says that my chances of being killed by a domestic dog, bees, or lightning are vastly greater. Being murdered is 90,000 times more likely. I still don’t feel safe: a bluffing, charging bear is just as scary as a serious, attacking bear.

After searching around the area and trying to get up my courage to go more than one hundred yards into the tangle of brush and deadfall, I gave up. My bare legs were scratched and bruised. My adventurous spirit was lagging. I walked back to my boat, climbed in, and paddled out into bright sunshine. Kevin was waving to me from the opposite shore. Perhaps he had found something. Perhaps I had been looking in the wrong place.

I paddled across to Kevin and relayed my mini adventure without either a lean-to discovery or a bear sighting. We paddled side by side around the corner of a cove and decided to pull ashore and take a look. The bank was steep here too but then the forest opened up for a good acre and we could see that this peninsula would be an ideal spot for a hunting camp.   We walked up to the top where the ground leveled out all around us. We looked to the left and right and decided first to check out the left side nearest the point. It seemed the most likely. Deep lime green moss covered everything and was a carpet for every imaginable size of stick, stone, log, and boulder. The widely scattered pines cast a shadowy, dusky light. The moss sponged underfoot, as we walked over and around.

You can’t walk in any sort of straight line in the Adirondack woods because most of the Adirondacks has been lumbered at least a few times and this woods was no exception. The lumberjacks leave behind branches and parts of tree that aren’t worth hauling out. As the woods grows back, brush and saplings grow in between all of the lumberjack’s litter. Walking through this landscape is a lot like walking through a huge game of pick up sticks, climbing over, under, and around all of the overlapping tangle of downed trees and branches, brush and new growth.

By contrast, a virgin forest is wide open and its floor is free of debris. It’s easy to walk through, but you’re bound to slow down and look up. And when you do, you’ll feel as if you’re in holy place, a gothic cathedral, quiet and reverent. Old woods have a spirit new ones don’t have for ancient woods have been around for several hundred years. They’ve seen a lot. As you walk around their five foot diameter trunks, you notice these woods smell different than younger woods. Old pine needles and mossy dampness. You breathe in their serenity and immortality and feel you’re on hallowed ground.

Since we arrived here a few hundred years ago, we’ve cut down almost every tree from the Atlantic Ocean to the plains in the Midwest. Still virgin forests do exist, and they are mightily protected in all the states that possess them. They are what this land used to look like everywhere. It must have been quite a sight for those early settlers, awe inspiring and frightening at the same time. What an undertaking to cut those giants down to make way for houses and hayfields.

This young forest at Shingle Shanty Pond is like most of America’s woods, young and messy. When we reached the peninsula point, we didn’t find any sign of a manmade structure so we backtracked looking on the east and then the west shores . Each time we thought we saw a dark lean-to-like hump in the distance and climbed over, under and around to get to it, we were wrong. Only a lump of dead fall. There had to be something of the Brandreth’s here. Something left behind. We knew they had used this pond as a primary hunting and fishing camp. Where was it? Nothing to the east, west, north or south.

Maybe we could come back another time and search some other likely places along the shore. As we paddled back side by side, we breathed and smiled and looked up at the breezy puffs of cloud and saw a raven fly overhead. He cawed once and then disappeared over the ridge. Back at the picnic table, we took out towels and biodegradable soap and went for a bath, scrubbing and rinsing away the dirt and disappointment in the tea colored water. As we stood on the sandy bottom, we laughed about our overconfidence at finding the place on our first try. Setting out with one goal and finding something else is usually the way of it.

I wonder why we human beings cling to our heart’s and mind’s desire with such tenacity and then when it isn’t fulfilled, we’re so disappointed and dissatisfied with what we receive or experience instead? It’s a mystery because what we usually get instead is better than what we had imagined we wanted. Yes, it is different, perhaps not as exciting, but it’s good just the same. We didn’t discover Paulina Brandreth’s lean-to, but we could look again tomorrow or another year. Instead, we discovered the giddy excitement and anticipation of discovery, the adrenalin rush of a possible bear sighting, the echo of a single raven’s caw as he flew overhead, mossy, dark, sometimes scary forests, and sunshine sparkling off of tea colored wavelets.

 

 

 

 

adirondack mountains adirondacks adventure Animals Appalachian Mountains backpacking birds Commentary death Environment Family forest hiking Home Humor hunting Inspiration Kids Life Lifestyle Love mothering mountains Musings nature Opinion outdoors Personal Philosophy Places Random Thoughts Reflections Relationships rural Spirituality Teaching writing Teens Thoughts Travel wildlife Women women and nature woods Writers Writing

Sledding

Uncategorized, , Leave a comment

Drafted winter, 2002. Completed 2021.

“ Stop! Stop! Stop!”, I yelled and then screamed as I watched my two children careen away down the ice covered snow. If they heard me they couldn’t stop. I knew their sleds would roar against the ice as they flew away. Their sleds were those molded plastic flat-bottomed sort you get at the True Value hardware store for $10 a piece. These were turquoise with yellow pull ropes at the front end.

Ten minutes earlier, we’d walked to the top of McCleary Road and had looked out over the hundred acre hill covered with 2 and a half feet of snow and 2 inches of ice on top of that.   In the summer, the hillside is planted in corn and sometimes beans. It is steep about 45° to 55° and goes down about a quarter of a mile to a stream bordered by thick woods full of sticker bushes and brambles. It is a long hill, a good hill for walking or sledding or skiing on most days but not today.

On this late afternoon with the last bit of sun shimmering off the ice, we’d come to sled in the setting sun. But now I could see this was a bad idea. The top two inches of ice had melted and with every other step into the field, we’d plunged down to our thighs or worse. I looked at  my twin eleven year old daughters, “ I think we should come back tomorrow.”

“No. No. We want to go,” they both protested.

Finally I said, “All right, but only sled over here where it isn’t so steep. Then you’ll be able to stop by jamming your heels through the ice into the snow.”

They said okay. Then they looked at each other in silent communion, turned and threw down their sleds, flopped their rear ends down on them, and with a push of their hands jettisoned down the entire quarter mile hill. I was furious. Then I was frightened.

I continued to yell for a few more seconds, amazed with disbelief at their joint defiance. They became smaller and smaller; the red and blue and pink and white patterned ski jackets became a blur. My heart pounded. How will they ever get back up the hill? You could take one or two steps on top of the crust then ‘boom’ you broke through up to your hip.  I knew from backpacking in the snow that this was quickly exhausting especially uphill.

Campbell was bigger and fitter and an athlete who loved to play outside. Anna Lou, however, was small for her age and not an outdoor girl. I realized I couldn’t go after them  crashing through the crust every other step; I needed snowshoes and polls.

We’d walked two blocks from our home, so I turned and walked down the snow packed road as quickly as I could trying to calm myself. I found my snowshoes and polls in the mud room, threw them in the back of our black Explorer and drove around the corner to the field. I could see them trudging and then falling up the hill pulling their sleds sometimes behind them and sometimes pushing them ahead and flopping down on their stomachs to rest a bit.

Ann Lou was 50 yards from the top; Campbell was about 25 yards ahead of her pulling her legs free every other step, but looking strong as she moved steadily closer to me. Anna Lou looked exhausted. She was crawling on all fours her long blonde hair streaming out from her fleece hat covering most of her face. She had the rope of the sled in one hand and this was getting tangled up in her legs as she crawled. As she got a bit closer I could hear her crying and then yelling with frustration. She alternated her crying and yelling with some whines and whimpers.

My anger was beginning to melt as I moved across the snow in my snowshoes and polls sinking in a few inches but able to move fairly quickly. I reached Campbell first. She said she was okay. I went on  to Anna Lou who upon seeing me put her head down on the snow and began crying long hard sobs. I told her to get up on the sled which she lay on gratefully, and I picked up the yellow rope and began pulling.

Campbell and Anna Lou said very little as we put their sleds in the back of the truck, and they climbed in tired, wet and cold. We drove home in silence. When we walked into the mud room a few minutes later they each said, “I’m sorry, Mom.” I said I hoped they’d  learned something about snow and ice and hills and listening to mothers. They nodded solemnly.

We went back to that hill a few days later when the temperature was 10° and the ice crust was so hard we could walk on top and never crashed through.  We rode our sleds down the entire length a few times until finally settling on an icy stretch two thirds of the way down that was the fastest. This meant more rides and less trudging. We laughed and sleighed until it was almost dark.

Later after hot showers, we sipped hot chocolate with mini marshmallows at the dining room table recounting our wild rides in the cold. We’d made what had been a hair-raising experience a few days earlier into a joyful family adventure.

Years later, we’ve told his family story many times. A story of children being children, a story of calamity and adventure. A part of our family history that makes each of us feel together even when we’re apart.

Finding My Place

Uncategorized, , , , , , , Leave a comment

Written shortly after moving up north to the Adirondacks during Covid, 2020

Finding my place. That’s what I’ve been dong these past 4 months. Since moving to our home in the Adirondack Mountains because of Covid, I’ve been pinching myself most mornings when I look out our bedroom window at the 100 plus year old white pine. I like to think the farmers who built our small white clapboard house over 100 years ago planted it as a symbol of their good fortune. The Champlain Valley was prime farm and iron ore mining country at the turn of the last century.

Now it’s home to vacationers, second homeowners, and year round residents. Some of the year round residents have been here for generations or like us, they discovered this amazing landscape over the past 30 years, fell in love and stayed.

We’ve owned our little home since 2007 and have longed to move up here full-time. This year of the Covid has made that possible. This terrible pandemic forced most of us, who could, to work remotely. As college professors we were teaching online last spring and figured we’d be teaching remotely through the fall and possibly winter. We thought, why not move to our Adirondack home for the duration. We made arrangements for our months away, packed up a lot of stuff and were off. It was intense.

Now that the dust has settled, I’m figuring out how I want to live up here in the north woods. We’re far away from interstate commutes, crowded streets and cities. I haven’t worn ‘work’ clothes except for my zoom teaching stints. And then, it’s jeans below and silk blouse/jacket above. 

I walk in the woods most days and gaze at the high peaks from a hill behind our house.  Chickadees come up close – one almost hit me in the head the other day as I was walking on the trail behind our house. Then it perched within an arm’s length, unafraid and chirping. Amazing.

Now, we get our ‘groceries’ at our new CSA, Essex Farm. Each Saturday, I take my bags and put on my mask to ‘shop’ at the farm. We have separate time slots because of the Covid which means I don’t have to rush or worry about distancing. There is a large pavilion with tables full of produce and staples like pastry flour, bread flour, corn meal, rolled oats plus two refrigerator trucks/containers of more produce, eggs, chicken, milk, yogurt, cream. It’s a full diet CSA.

I’m picking up and then googling strange veggies like Kohlrabi, celeriac, Daikon radishes, Delicata and Kabocha squash. I’ve taken something called Schmaltz (chicken fat) from the freezer. Who would think six months ago, I’d be simmering lamb bones for hours to make a delicious stock for lamb stew and later chicken stew. Now I have time to cook! And I love it!

Cooking was not my favorite activity for the many years I worked fulltime and raised my twin daughters. It was a job, not a pleasure.  Now when I wake up at my 4:00 AM worry time, I think about what I’ll cook. Hmm. How about a pork shoulder roast with farm sauerkraut, apples and mashed tiny white and red potatoes. How about a combination of chopped leeks, red onion, garlic, shallots, and broccoli in white wine over pasta? How about mashed Delicata squash or roasted and halved squash filled with ground lamb and spices Indian style. The roasted chickens are to die for and with buttered and parsley new potatoes, steamed kale or carrots or brussel sprouts or cauliflower, ahhh. You get the idea. The possibilities are endless.

Because I have all this food in our frig and freezer, I don’t have to run to the store for missing ingredients. I use what I have and make actual grocery store runs to TJ’s in Vermont every two months. When I’m stuck, I use Google, and I use my imagination. It’s so much fun. I look forward to 4:00 or 4:30 each afternoon when I put on my butterfly apron and begin to chop and cook. For now my place is in the kitchen, practicing my culinary skills and listening to our white pine rustle in the evening wind.