an infrequent repository of mostly new stuff
Lake Atitlan from Casa del Mundo, after a storm
We’re back.
A couple of times a decade we manage to take a nice trip somewhere. A few years ago it was the northern California coast. This time it was Guatemala, and what an amazing trip it was. A truly stunning landscape that left us literally speechless more than once. Continue reading “Home Port”
Mirror Pond
Our house is surrounded by over 300 acres of woods and overgrown hay fields. The land was bought by a big-time developer just days before we moved in, but has laid fallow for almost 30 years. We’ve savored the quiet it provides, a buffer between us and the rest of the world, and it’s a haven for all sorts of wildlife. We frequently take walks there in the evening. Continue reading “Room With A View”
”Marianne,” one of the Museum’s Log Canoes
How do you get a hundred or so independent-minded skippers to sail their boats in a tight formation in the same general direction for a few miles?
Tell them it’s a race. Continue reading “MASCF Part 3 ~ A Parade of Sail”
Tom supervises the deck operation.
Spent the weekend on more prep work. Though there’s not much to see, a lot got done. Used a round-over bit to take the sharp corners off all the exposed edges on the framing. It’s a small detail, but keeps the wood from splitting and splintering when stuffing gear inside. It also keeps you from getting bit when reaching in to retrieve things. An especially nice touch on grab surfaces, where hands naturally go for carrying or moving a boat. Continue reading “Decked Out and a Swim”
Listening to Peepers, outside in the yard.
I hope you can hear this. The vagaries of computers and the web makes some things uncertain. But if you can, this is what it sounds like here, right now, tonight. Driving home from work late, just after dark, I rolled down the windows just to listen when passing a wet place in the woods, or a farm pond overgrown.
Nothing sounds more like Spring to me than peepers on the first warm night of the year, the same way calls of geese coursing southward overhead on moonlit nights, plaintive and cacophonous, sound like fall. Minstrels announcing the entrance and exit of a very hard season, with a harmonic flourish.
Brickyard Point Landing, photo by T
The week following New Year’s was cold – record breaking cold – so it wasn’t the best time to visit the seashore; but that made it a good time to visit family. My folks now live on an island outside Beaufort, South Carolina, which is about halfway between Savannah and Charleston. When I was growing up we took vacations here every summer, back when the place was still a little wild, so we have a lot of memories scattered around the island. When the last of my siblings left home, my parents sold everything in the suburbs and bought a house there before real estate got crazy. Now my own kids have grown up spending summers there, too, and on lucky occasions like this one our visits overlap with my sister or brother and the girls get to see their cousins. Continue reading “The Road Ends in Water”
Detail, Canoe Jewelry
The first weekend of October is the Mid-Atlantic Small Craft Festival in St. Micheals, Maryland, at the Chesapeake Bay Maritime Museum. I’ve been to four now. On my first visit in 2003 I saw a Melonseed for the first time and knew I wanted one (the same one is still tied up there, owned by one of the Museum volunteers). A year ago I came away so inspired it pushed me to take the plunge. Deciding I couldn’t put it off any longer, I began building these boats and started this blog. Terri and I went again this year, and it was an amazing weekend. I’ve come away newly inspired to finish the boats and get them on the water. Continue reading “Mid-Atlantic Small Craft Festival”