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…
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…
(as published in the Mountain Gazette, April 18, 2013) Once again I’m writing from the road – an all too often occurrence. It’s a bit more of a challenge writing about the outdoors when you are in the city and you don’t have the great outdoors staring you in the face like you do back in Vermont. So here I sit, surrounded by my outdoor reading material, lugged all the way from Vermont for writing inspiration – a Ruffed Grouse Society…