Today saw the first alpine ski racing events for the 114th Dartmouth Winter Carnival. I haven't been shooting action photos much lately, so I ventured up to the Dartmouth Skiway to shoot the women's and men's giant slalom runs on Worden's Schuss. I got some good images at some gates on the lower-mid part of the run. Also a few at the finish line. Results of the day: University of Vermont men and women both finished first overall in giant slalom with Dartmouth women and men both in second. Dartmouth‘s Oliver Morgan (bib 17) placed third and Max Martin (bib 11) placed 8th. For the women, Dartmo ..read more

Sometimes good fortune comes to find you. So it was in 2021 when Peter Kaminsky asked me to contribute a story for a book project he was working on, which turned into a remarkable collection of fly-fishing stories called The Catch of a Lifetime. If you are looking for a great holiday gift for a friend or family member, here is one you should consider. Or put it on your own list for Santa. I connected with Peter through my friends at the American Museum of Fly Fishing. He was looking for fly anglers "to share a particularly fond memory that they have of flyfishing. Doesn’t have to be the bigge ..read more

Have you ever encountered an old house that looks abandoned? You can't help but wonder who lived there, and what happened to them. Why is the house now standing empty, a legacy lost to time? What stories remain untold, about who built it? and who was born there, or died there? How many generations called it home before something led to an unraveling of the legacy... an illness, a bankruptcy, a struggle through poverty, a rift in the family? Perhaps an elderly person without heirs could not maintain it; the roof leaked, the furnace failed, the bills and taxes went unpaid. Or maybe the last own ..read more

Josephine Baker, Bricktop, Langston Hughes, Richard Wright, Claude McKay, W.E.B. Du Bois, Chester Himes, James Baldwin, Henry O. Tanner, Jake Lamar... and the list goes on and on. Although he wasn't African American, Alexandre Dumas (one of my all-time favorites) fits into the story as a French hero (buried in the Pantheon) whose father was born in Haiti to a white French nobleman and an African slave. Under the expert tutelage of Julia Browne, proprietor of Walking The Spirit Tours and guide extraordinaire since 1994, my wife Cheryl and I joined a dozen fine folks on a Dartmouth Travel trip ..read more

Last weekend was a celebration of the 70th anniversary of Dartmouth Rugby. Alumni of all generations gathered at the Corey Ford Rugby Clubhouse to cheer on the Dartmouth RFC in a decisive victory over Northeastern University. Yesterday was National Writing Day, according to the National Council of Teachers of English. So, in honor of Corey Ford's important part of collegiate rugby history, and to mark National Writing Day, I thought I would reprise this piece from a few years ago. I do so in memory of my high school English teacher, Frank Nash, known to all as FN. May I never dangle another pa ..read more

On Indigenous Peoples Day, I wish to honor the Mahìkanak (Mohican) and Kanien'kehá:ka (Mohawk) people whose homelands encompass what today we call the Hudson River (Mahicannituck) and Mohawk River (Teionontatátie) valleys respectively. I grew up in the Troy and Albany area, fishing in the streams and hunting in the woods where the Mahìkanak people lived for generations, from Skatekook (Schaghticoke) to the Taghkanik (Taconic) Mountains. I hiked and swam and fished in the Adirondacks, also the homelands of the Kanien'kehá:ka people. My Dutch ancestor, Hendrick Gerritse Van Wie, settled in the c ..read more

It seems that during a long winter amidst a global pandemic, folks have a little more time for reading. And some of those readers appreciate a grand vicarious adventure that involves fly fishing, travelling the back roads, and meeting new people. Go figure. Not by coincidence, Storied Waters provides exactly that kind of arm-chair fishing adventure that many people are dreaming about. As a result, I have been fortunate to get a few great reviews for Storied Waters recently that have helped spread the word to more new readers, some of whom have sent me nice notes telling me how much they have ..read more

Just a few days after her first birthday, Autumn earned her wings as an Official Bird Dog. She got her first birds under the gun. Two chukar partridge, which were soon a scrumptious dinner. It was a deliberate process to get her there. My thanks to Eric Bragg, owner of BBB Guide Service in Thetford, VT, for the opportunity to train her to live birds at his family farm. Early Training Recall from earlier posts that I had started training her as a pup with a real pheasant wing on the end of a fly rod and line to encourage her to learn the scent and point at a “bird.” She loves to “play bird win ..read more

Suddenly she had a mind of her own. After months of listening to my every word and following me everywhere, at about six months old, Autumn realized she could ignore me if she wished. She wandered over to the neighbors' house and wouldn't come when I called. She ran away when she didn't want to come indoors. She barked at the cat and barked and barked, no matter what we said. She stole shoes and wouldn't give them back, even when offered a TRADE. She had entered the Terrible Teens. Doggy adolescence. What to do? Well, first on our mind was safety. We needed to keep her home and not wandering ..read more

It has long been routine at public events to honor the members of our military. In doing so, we appreciate those who have served in harm’s way, who are one call away from deployment, or who support others who are on foreign soil to protect our national security. More recently, especially after 9/11, we publicly acknowledge the courage and commitment of first-responders who regularly run toward danger in our communities when others are running in the other direction. On airplanes and in airports, uniformed personnel often get a round of applause and regular comments of “thank you for serving ..read more