HARVEY SIDING The Isolation Blues; reflections during covid-19 My father built a woods camp at Harvey Siding back in the early 1950s on the north branch of the Meduxnekeag River in Monticello. The camp was located next to the iron…
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OUTRUNNING HEADLIGHTS The Isolation Blues; reflections during covid-19 Were it possible for us to see further than our knowledge reaches, and yet a little way beyond the outworks of our intuition, perhaps we would endure our sadnesses with greater confidence than our…
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AUTUMNAL EQUINOX The Isolation Blues; reflections during covid-19 Knee-deep in the cosmic overwhelm, I’m stricken by the ricochet wonder of it all: the plain everythingness of everything, in cahoots with the everythingness of everything else. – Diane Ackerman Pluto Diane…
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SEPTEMBER 11 The Isolation blues; reflections during covid-19 This week-end national news organizations, media outlets and remembrance events commemorate the 20th anniversary of 911. The attack on the World Trade Center was one of those events where you remember where you were…
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BLACK BEAR REVISITED The Isolation Blues; reflections during covid-19 So here’s another bear story…interestingly enough, this story occurred only a couple of weeks after the first so it could very well be the same bear. (As I remember it) I was…
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BLACK BEAR The Isolation Blues; reflections during covid-19 photo of artwork at The Black Bear Brewery in Bangor, Maine When people visit the State of Maine on summer vacation they are often on the lookout for lobster, lighthouses, moose or…
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VACATIONLAND The Isolation blues; reflections during covid-19 Vacationland two deer crossing the river in summer no concern for the matters of man One summer day my Dad and I were in his machine shop and I remember asking him this…
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FATHER’S DAY The Isolation Blues; reflections during covid-19 This is a Father’s Day installment of Backwoods Blog and you’ll have to excuse me as I reminisce about years gone past. I think it’s always a difficult (if impossible) task to reconstruct what our childhood…
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BOB DYLAN TURNS 80 The Isolation Blues; reflections during covid-19 “Some people feel the rain. Others just get wet.”– Bob Dylan Excerpt from an interview with Douglas Brinkley that appeared in The New York Times June 12th, 2020 coinciding with the release of…
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SPRING PLANTING The Isolation Blues; reflections during covid-19 As long as I can remember I have heard about population migration away from northern Maine due to lack of economic opportunities. It became readily apparent during the 1970s as many of…