The Long View Archive
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The Long View
Let’s go back to the good old days. Let’s go back to the days when all was well, when life was pure, when music filled the air. Chances are good that every one of us is drawn to an image of a golden age. The golden age of rock and roll, for instance, could be (depending on your age and… (more)
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The Long View
Every few years, I’m treated to a recurring dream, an archetypal dream that I’ve heard others describe as well. In it, I have just moved into a new house, and as I settle into my new place, I walk into a room and see a door I don’t remember. When I go through the door, I see a whole new… (more)
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The Long View
I’ve cut a lot of trees since I first picked up a chainsaw 30 years ago. Besides cutting firewood every year, I cleared the site for our road and house when we first moved here. I enjoy the work and have gotten safer and more effective at it over time, but I am more than happy to leave the real… (more)
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The Long View
Who knows whether or not an apple a day does what it’s supposed to, or whether Dr. D.C. Jarvis was right about the healthful properties of apple cider vinegar. I do know that I feel better when I find myself in the presence of apples in all their forms – whether it’s a wild tree and I have a pruning… (more)
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The Long View
Beechwood fires are bright and clear If the logs are kept a year. Chestnut’s only good, they say, If for long ’tis laid away. Wood as fuel has been so important for so long that it’s understandable that some long-gone poet would have fashioned these lines extolling the virtues or warning of the deficiencies of our various species. There are… (more)
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The Long View
The dog and I have a fairly regular loop we walk. From the dooryard, we head uphill – in winter, that means we first scramble over the hard-packed snowbank at the edge of the driveway – into a five-acre stand of pines. Continuing up, the pine gives way to a mix of white birch and hophornbeam, and then we reach… (more)
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The Long View
It’s cheap, it’s plastic, but for half a century, the little 21-drawer storage chest has been serving its purpose. It and everything in it could very well have been tossed long ago, but I keep it on a shelf in my shop above the workbench. Good thing I do, too, because more than once, it has saved me a 26-mile… (more)
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The Long View
Unlike spring, summer, fall, and winter, mud season has no official start and end dates. Still, it is a predictable part of the logger’s year, signaling the temporary close to a season of work in the woods. When the snowpack starts thawing and the roads soften up, skidders get pulled out of the woods and log trucks get parked. Dooryards… (more)
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The Long View
One sunny day last spring, I was prowling around the land in central New York where my ancestors had farmed. A few years earlier, my brother and my uncle had found the barn’s foundation, or what was left of it. I was hoping to find the cellar hole for the house. The walls of the barn’s foundation, rising up six… (more)
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Whiskey Brook
We left camp just before daylight. The air was thick with mist as we made our plans to hunt the ridge where Chuck had jumped a nice buck at the end of the day before. Our topo maps showed that the ridge ran generally north to south, and Carl, Chuck, and I were going to hunt the length of it,… (more)