THOREAU JOURNALS Backwoods Blog; in the woods and on the road… I catch myself philosophizing most abstractly when first returning to consciousness in the night or morning. I make the truest observations and distinctions then, when the will is yet wholly…
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STITHAM GENEALOGY Backwoods Blog; in the woods and on the road… Ralph and Laura Stitham were my grandparents on my mother’s side of the family, the fifth generation of Stithams in northern Maine. The Stitham family story begins during the Revolutionary…
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QUIZ SHOW SCANDAL Backwoods Blog; in the woods and on the road… To a nation since grown accustomed to public deception it may be difficult to understand the public outrage provoked by the television quiz show scandals. But we were…
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RANDOM SAMPLES Backwoods Blog; in the woods and on the road… When I head to the woods the arguments I have with myself tend to involve the technology that I take or decide not to take. These days my smart phone allows me…
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MONK & CAMERA Backwoods Blog; in the woods and on the road… The great temptation of modern man is not physical solitude but immersion in the mass of other men, not escape to the mountains or the desert, but escape into…
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SNOW LOAD Backwoods Blog; in the woods and on the road… Last week it was time for annual backwoods winter maintenance, which translates, “Get the damn snow off the roof…” If you want more specific details, check out backwoods blog entry #69 from last…
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SLIDE BANK Backwoods Blog; in the woods and on the road… Last week’s polar-freeze temperatures hit subzero for several consecutive days and the river finally froze (which is a little later than usual). This means the “river ski season” is now open,…
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SKI DOO Backwoods Blog; in the woods and on the road… This is a color slide of my twin sister and I sitting on our childhood snow machine in front of our house (I can barely see over the handlebars). It…
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EXCHANGE HOTEL Backwoods Blog; in the woods and on the road… Last winter I posted a story about the time my father took a load of grain to the grist mill in Houlton back in the 1920s. As you may…
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WINTER SWEAT LODGE Backwoods Blog; in the woods and on the road… In my six decade lifetime I have experienced thousands of campfires, hundreds of saunas but only a handful of traditional sweat lodges. In mid-January I attended my third sweat…