[QUOTE=Dean Romig;280291]Right Russell, and not just blueberries, mushrooms and fiddleheads.

Dean: Ok, you got me. I should have ended the sentence saying "...with a gun".

No, we are not talking a vegan tradition here.

Paul Kukonen had a little fly shop on Green Street in Worcester. The guy knew everything about fishing, building rods and fly tying. I think he (and his English setter) would sometimes sleep in the back room. The guy lived to fish and hunt. After he closed shop Jim Bender opened a fly shop on Madison St and carried on the tradition. Sadly they are both are closed now.

We always blamed Kukonen for ruining the West Branch of the Ponobscot River by informing everyone through his 8 mm films how great the fishing was there.

I love that river Ron, and fish it at least once, maybe twice or more, each year.
Trust me, the fishery is not ruined - there are just a lot more people coming each year, what with ww rafting and kayaking. But the fish are still there. But when “Culvert Pool” is lined with 6 fly-fishers and another one steps in, I step out. There are plenty of pools to fish.





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Speaking of Kukonen et al, I hope all you fly-fishers bought a copy of Austin Hogan’s book.





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Fall is finally approaching us here in the South. Last evening the Cicadas seemed to be crying loudly for Summer to hold on a little longer. The sky was a deep azure blue that can only be seen here when the humidity is taken aback by the approaching Autumn. The temperature this morning was hovering between 59 and 60 and a mist was coming off the waters. But the predicted highs for the next several days are in still in the 90s, but there is evidence of a coming freshness!

There is certainly a “mist coming off the water” here in Maine this morning. Only just now able to see “Blueberry Island” through it.

Oops... spoke too soon.


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Hmmm... I feel like I’m in the Stephen King horror story... “The Mist”

It’s baaaack ...


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Here's some Adirondack photos showing misty onset of Fall. These are from a couple of years ago late-September timeframe. The top photo has a pair of loons in it, but it's tough to see them. The middle photo has a single juvenile loon in it.

Craig, your wonderfully composed post reminded me of some of the words of an author, whose book I read continually, almost every day of the year. David Grayson is a pseudonym for the pulitzer prize winning author, Ray Stannard Baker (although born in Michigan, he's a New Englander at heart). His book, "A Countryman's Year" is a day-by-day account of life on a small farmstead in Mass. around the second decade of the 20th Century. I keep the book handy and read a passage for each of his date entries of the year. I've been reading this book for many years, completing it every year and then starting anew.

Here's the passage from a day at the end of August that reminds me of your post:

"In low spots along old country roads today I found the joe-pye weed in bloom; a rank grower, which in mass is often beautiful. There is a real touch of fall in the air: at twilight the crickets call. The goldfinch has a swooping flight; the aristocratic cedar birds are through with their late nesting; already the robins are beginning to gather, restless for their southern journey. And I found a fringed gentian by a woody roadside."

It's so nice to live where you can see the seasons unfold, and have the familiarity with your surroundings to know their subtleties and nuances.

Again, thanks to all of you who have contributed to this post. We are going through some tough times here with one of our dogs having cancer, and my own diagnosis with the same. It's nice to read these positive posts in a time when there is so much acrimony elsewhere.

Thank you!

Reading “A Countryman’s Year” is so much like reading Robert Frost’s New Hampshire poetry.

“Stopping by the Woods” is a beautiful little poem but he wrote so much more wonderful stuff - “West Running Brook” being one.

Maybe it’s because they were of the same New England generation...





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