While not quite “fake news,” the headline tells less than the full story. A couple weekends ago, my wife and I attended the 18th Annual Virginia Fly Fishing & Wine Festival. It was held at one of the buildings at the Virginia State Fairground’s site in Doswell, Virginia. It had, as they say, something for everyone. My wife, Karen, while not a fly-fishing person herself, does like a glass of wine every once and a while. She is also interested…
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…
When we sold the Vermont house in September we decided that we would downsize when we bought a house in Virginia. The girls were grown and it was just Karen and me…. We ended up buying a nice log home just outside of Culpeper, Virginia in November. Our attempt to “downsize” was, generally, an epic failure. We did reduce the total number of bedrooms and give up a basement. What little we lost in downsizing, we definitely gained in a view….
Where have I been? Where to begin? It has been a very busy year. As I summarized in my Christmas letter, “Maddie returned from a year abroad working at Lego’s headquarters in Denmark in February; she took her dog Cabot (that we had dog-sat for 8 ½ years) in March; we lost old Cal in March; Maddie and her boyfriend Pat got engaged in August; we sold a house in Vermont in September; Karen and I were reunited and we…
Back when we were young and didn’t know better, my wife and I thought it would be nice to have a little camp somewhere in the Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia. The girls were still little and they went where we went. There was no weekend soccer and no sleep-overs. We couldn’t yet imagine the time when Karen and I would adjust our schedules to accommodate theirs. It was during this blissfully ignorant time in our lives that I decided to take…
It all started when a coworker asked my advice on what type of fishing outfit she should buy. Oceana had fished in China when she was much younger and thought she’d like to try catching some good old ‘merican fish. She had purchased a rod-reel combo online an wasn’t happy that it was a one-piece rod. She heard that I liked to fish, which is how she ended up in the doorway to my office. I suggested she return her online…
With the painful loss of a dog comes a fuller and more complete appreciation of the gift of companionship that you had. A couple weeks ago I made the difficult decision to put down our Brittany, Cal. Cal had just turned 16 and was failing. Despite his age and health problems, I still felt the part of Judas. Mostly blind and deaf, Cal came obediently over to the car door so I could lift him up to drive him to…
[The following post is brought to you by my good friend and first guest blogger, Tom Kenefick – winner of our first big year contest.] Who would have thought that a challenge from my favorite blogger would have sent me on an odyssey throughout Connecticut’s bird sanctuaries? When Kristopher contacted me in December of 2014 and asked if I wanted to join him in a mini Big Year, I – of course – said yes. What better way to see…