History, Natural History & the Arts
Whiteface Mountain in Wilmington has turned on the snow guns today, Tuesday, November 17th.
Crews have begun snowmaking at Mid-Station on Upper Valley, Lower Valley and Fox Trails. Plans are to continue snowmaking efforts through Wednesday evening as temperatures allow. [Read more…] about Snowmaking Has Begun At Whiteface Mountain
New York State Department of Environmental Conservation Forest Rangers respond to search and rescue incidents in the around New York State. Working with other state agencies, local emergency response organizations and volunteer search and rescue groups, Forest Rangers locate and extract lost, injured or distressed people.
What follows is a report, prepared by DEC, of recent missions carried out by Forest Rangers. [Read more…] about Wildlands Fire, Wilderness Rescues: Rangers Respond
The Cornell Lab of Ornithology has announced Winter Bird Feeding 101, a free webinar set for this Thursday, November 19th. [Read more…] about Winter Bird Feeding 101: A Free Webinar
One day as my wife and I and our dogs walked along River Road at Riparius on the Hudson River, my wife said to me in a folksy manner “just think all this water here, is on its way to New York City.”
It’s true the Hudson River has flowed out of the Adirondack Mountains for millennia, southward towards the Atlantic Ocean. And over the last two centuries or so there have been plans to dam the Upper Hudson for one reason or another. Most of those plans have dealt with using the water resources for some down state endeavor. [Read more…] about Hudson River Dam History: The Big Hadley And Glen Dams
In fiction, poetry or song, houses are treated as living organisms. They are noble, respectable, or infamous. There are houses of high rank and those of low repute – houses have human characteristics and their individual biographies.
The Isokon Building in Hampstead tells a striking tale of recent historical events. At the time of completion, it was one of the few modernist dwellings in London’s cityscape; the block of flats housed a number of notable refugees from Nazi Germany; almost simultaneously it served as a recruitment office for Soviet spies. Crucial aspects of post-war American cultural and political developments originated in a few flats in this leafy corner of North West London. [Read more…] about Concrete, Plywood and Soviet Spies
A large V of Canada geese flying noisily over my head – and traveling north, rather than south – got me wondering about the ins and outs of fall migration. Shouldn’t these big birds be flying to warmer climes this time of year?
Why do they travel in that V-formation, anyway? [Read more…] about Migrants and Residents: Canada Geese
For thousands of years, the American elm (Ulmus americana) was the go-to tree for building supplies and home furnishings, kind of a Home Depot of the forest.
For the Haudenosaunee (Iroquois) and other First Nations peoples, it provided roofing and walls for longhouses measuring over a hundred feet long, as well as for smaller dwellings and outbuildings.
Elm also furnished top-notch material to make items as diverse as ladles, canoes, trays, snow shovels, grain scoops, baskets, and containers of all sizes. [Read more…] about Elms: The Giving Tree
Bent down in an apple field searching for a lost earring, I found a different treasure: a stout mouse-like animal, with a short tail and stubby ears.
It gave me one quick look, then disappeared through a maze of tunnels in the thick autumn grass. I would have loved to follow this meadow vole, like Alice and her white rabbit, to find out where it was planning to spend its winter. [Read more…] about The Life of Voles
Champlain Area Trails (CATS) has extended its 2020 Grand Challenge to December 31st, 2020.
The Grand Challenge is a 14-mile long community hike and fundraising event that goes from hamlet to hamlet, combining CATS trails and scenic back roads.
Hikers can choose one of three routes based on what they are comfortable with. [Read more…] about Champlain Area Trails Extends 2020 Grand Challenge Hike
Explication
Adelaide Crapsey, poet near to death
and tubercular, wrote: “I’ll not
be patient. I will not lie still.”
Strained — her tight, short blasts of breath.
Outside her window headstones dot
her imaged landscape all must fill
one day, abruptly and forever, patient,
lying as still as microbiology
will allow. Mission means “sent.”
Do we have one? Are we? Ask the sill
of Adelaide’s thin window on eternity.
It glosses by transparency
the point between a breath
and no breath, where redundancy
ends, yet we become it — Death
as she bore Sweet Christ, all our beds are made.