an infrequent repository of mostly new stuff
Lovely T
Her website and occassional blog is here:
I know a lot of guys who have wooden boats or Melonseeds, or both, and have artists for wives. Must have something to do with placing such a high value on aesthetics, even above more practical things. I can think of seven off the top of my head without even trying hard, guys that I know personally. Definitely a pattern to it.
Emily in her kayak
One nice thing about a big loop in a river… It doesn’t take much driving to set up the shuttle to float it. Saves a lot of time.
On Sunday, we left Emily’s car at the ramp at Four Locks, then loaded up the boats and headed over to McCoy’s Ferry. It’s a short trip, but we passed through tunnels under two canal aqueducts and a really high train trestle to get there. The ramp at McCoy’s Ferry isn’t in great shape, but we got loaded and launched without too much trouble.
The Weber House ~ Four Locks, Maryland
Here are a couple of odd facts:
The Chesapeake & Ohio Canal National Park is 185 miles long, but averages only 175 yards wide. Strange combination.
Wolftown Mercantile ~ Wolftown, Virginia
I live and work in a rural area. The views are awesome.
Lunch can be an adventure all its own.
Bill watching the clouds build
I alluded to this story back in the summer, but was so busy then I couldn’t take time to tell it. Roger Rodibaugh recently reminded me that he and a few other folks have been waiting quite patiently to hear it. Actually, several adventures from last summer slipped by unaccounted for that I should revisit. Now, with it cold and snowy outside, seems a good time to get back to them.
We wake, if we ever wake at all, to mystery, rumors of death, beauty, violence . . .
— Annie Dillard, Pilgrim at Tinker Creek
This is the hard time. Days grow longer, true, but the light is frail.
Puddles, skinned in ice, press last year’s leaves under glass, and mud.
In the field, I mistake a deer hide, jumbled in the grass, for a dirty wet flannel shirt. It still looks fresh, the blood still red, from a November kill.
Shadows of things are white with frost, instead of black, inverted. They shy from the sun, scooting around shrubs and cedars, like Winter’s children behind their mother’s skirt.
Steam burns off the fence rails when the sun comes up. Everything is on fire. By afternoon, though, the flame sputters and goes out. Months yet to go before spring.
Snowfall on Cedars
Thursday, they predicted up to 7 inches of snow for the whole region. Instead, we got three solid days of cold rain, then finally about an inch of snow here, and nowhere else. Enough to make things look nice.
A south wind warmed things up again, and everything’s been dripping all day. Shirtsleeves and snow.