Looking out my window, it’s the first day of autumn – a beautiful, sunlit view of gardens and lawn, open woods and the rippling surface of high tide on the river, one of my very favorite places in this world. I’ve been here for a pretty long time, since a young man, and now I’m seeing changes. I’ve found old age creeping up on me with some surprises I never quite expected (or at least never wanted to contemplate). The post A Bona Fide Geezer’s Kit for Every Day Life appeared first...| Coastal Rivers Conservation Trust
Sitting, as I do often these days, surveying this world around me, I am without fail moved with a full measure of awe by how much LIFE I can see when I look upon the tidal Maine river I live on. I can see nearly six miles of it, up and down, and what most strikes me is the trees – millions and millions of trees, leafy and needled, standing amid ferns and mosses, bark patched with lichens, holed by and home to birds and mammals and zillions of insects, all here within my view.| Coastal Rivers Conservation Trust
“Arrival,” in a word, is the much-anticipated moment of reaching one’s destination at the end of a long journey, when at last the journey itself is over... but before getting settled into established routine. Theoretically, it is only a point in time, say 6:23 in the evening, but in reality, it will last anywhere from several minutes to an hour or two. The post Summer Arrival in a Nutshell appeared first on Coastal Rivers Conservation Trust.| Coastal Rivers Conservation Trust
Every year there's something. This year it's foxes. I've never seen so many in my life. Generally, I see them at dawn or dusk - fleeting glimpses of golden-red flashing across the road. Sometimes it's just a pointy face with big ears, peering at me through the meadowsweet at the edge of the field. Or sometimes it's a long shadow trotting down the road in the moonlight, silent, almost a figment of the imagination. The post A Fox Hound She Ain’t appeared first on Coastal Rivers Conservation T...| Coastal Rivers Conservation Trust
Company was coming, and I was told to go out and pick some flowers to spruce up the house. "Get lupines," I heard as the screen door slammed behind me. So, I did. I filled a whole bucket with them, as many different colors as I could find.| Coastal Rivers Conservation Trust
In my determination to see spring in, “proper,” as they say, I need to get my mind, body and biorhythm in sync with the season. But that's no problem for me; if there's one thing I'm good at, it's riding out a full-blown case of spring fever.| Coastal Rivers Conservation Trust
Take a break from calling your reps. For just a few minutes, stop doomscrolling and gloomposting. As you watch me open a box of books, you are also witnessing the successful completion of a 15-year-project… the publication in full and for the first time of Crockett Johnson’s classic comic strip Barnaby!| Philip Nel
Waiting for spring to come is in many ways similar to watching a pot put on to boil. There's the long period of finger drumming, of looking and listening for sure signs that something's happening. But spring itself is more like the cat at the door; it'll come in when it's good and ready and not a minute sooner. You can stand there half your life holding the door open. Long waits can get pretty maddening though, and many's the cat who's had a door slammed in its face for taking too long.| Coastal Rivers Conservation Trust
About the full of the Moon, it is reported more babies are born than during the rest of the month. Dogs and werewolves have a glint in their eye and howl a lot. The tides swell to their maximum. Storms blow harder than ever, and cold weather streams down upon us with a vengeance. The full of the Moon is the time for extremes. At least on average that is what the records show. I have to agree it certainly seems so to me. But one can wonder if what we interpret as extremes of weather and strang...| Coastal Rivers Conservation Trust
