Month: January 2017

JUST HANG ON

While those of us in the North Country are slipping on icy paths, my friend Bob, who lives in Virginia, is still blowing leaves off his lawn. Specifically, oak leaves. Every week Bob straps on his bright orange backpack leaf blower, mixes the correct amount of oil and gas and, with black hose in…

THE MOUNTAIN ASH

Set back from the shoreline and dwarfed by a row of giant hemlocks, a solitary mountain ash, still in its infancy, stands in the snowy field. The tree is not yet of an age to give shade in the summer but I am sheltered by branches of memory. It was the fall of 1957…