Campers need bonfires, and bonfires require firewood. Every summer roadside stands appear along edges of roads near campgrounds up and down the coast, and, optimistically, quite a few miles away. This is a seasonal business. I doubt anyone makes a career from selling firewood—it is just one of many jobs that is another piece of […]
It was a rough winter for many, but mailboxes in the way of a plow had it tougher than most. Each year a few boxes are lost in the line of duty, but winter of ’15 left scores of broken and dented corpses tossed into heaps of snow. Storm after storm buried them deeper in […]
Weekends at camp have long been a winter habit. We unplug, cook on a woodstove, wake to sunrise on the shore across the pond, and watch the foggy clouds of our breath. I lived for these weekends, but this year camp was not available. We were missing ice time, and had a brilliant idea–we’d drag […]
The tiny houses dotted along a frozen surface are irresistible to any one with a camera in hand. Their simple shapes in the middle of a field of ice, surrounded by forest and mountain, have inspired coffee table books and appeared on the covers of magazines. They represent a culture, a world, and, for those […]
Plans go awry, and give way to the unplanned. That is how I met Waldo Peirce, and found the village of Frankfort. We were geared up and eager for a four–hour tree ID walk in Holden when we got the cancellation notice. Too cold, we were told. But we were in motion, and so, following […]
“Do you know what that is?” Ernie Haskell Brooks asks, stroking his hand over a thick butcher-block counter top. “Cutting board” I respond, wondering if it is a trick question. He is pleased as he shakes his head. “A queen-size head board,” he answers. The massive slab of wood, now mellowed with oil and cut […]
When a wild cranberry, accinium vitis-idaea, escapes being eaten by birds or picked by people and freezes on the bush, a tart, tender, syrupy bite is born. The freeze seems to break down the fibrous center of the cranberry, much as cooking does, but the berry keeps its intense sweet-sharp flavor and none of the […]
