I was in a nice little bookstore in Charlottesville, Virginia called the Blue Whale the other day. They specialize in used books. I came across a book on fishing the Blue Ridge mountains that caught my interest. I opened it to the copyright page and saw it was a bit dated to use as a fishing reference. What also caught my eye was the handwritten note in the front of the book. From Christmas 2002, a daughter named Virginia wrote…
In the summer of 2016, just before the movers came and we left Vermont, I donated my old Parker compound bow, arrows, and accoutrements to our parish garage sale. It speaks volumes of the state that you can donate a lethal weapon to a church for them to sell to the general public as part of an annual fundraiser. Not to worry, a local 4-H archery club purchased the equipment. The Parker was a good 15 years old, but still…
In his book All Fishermen are Liars, John Gierach writes that he “came to know about Michigan’s Upper Peninsula through the writing of Ernest Hemingway, John Voelker (a.k.a. Robert Traver) and later Jim Harrison…. Whatever the reason, the UP is enshrined alongside the Serengeti, the Yukon and Paris as a place made romantic by virtue of appearing in books. Which is to say, I am the innocent victim of literature.” I have read Hemingway’s stories of Nick Adams and Robert…