Original anecdotes, commentary, rumination, and occasional pontification.
NOVEMBER 22, 2020 – With our world in turmoil (besides this being the anniversary of JFK’s assassination), there’s no dearth of topics for today’s post. For respite, therefore, I turn to something out of this world. I spent the past several days (and nights) at the Red Cabin. Whenever I’m there I see one wonder …
NOVEMBER 20, 2020 – (Cont.) Dad liked shattering clay pigeons, but neither that experience nor the shooting of the woodchuck turned him into a gun person; certainly not a hunter. Dad was counter-culture. I didn’t know a single boy (I didn’t ask the girls) in my class who didn’t hunt with his dad. During duck- …
NOVEMBER 19, 2020 – Dad wasn’t a hunter or a gun owner, but a day arrived when he needed to borrow a gun. A short while later arrived the day when he fired the gun. I wasn’t directly on hand when he pulled the trigger. I was nine years old and riding my oversized bike …
NOVEMBER 16, 2020 – Jeff Oppenheim, my close friend and college roommate, and I share many common interests—history, politics, travel, worldview, lawyering, community service, the great outdoors, and . . . Appalachia. I don’t mean to offend readers who possess prideful attachment to the aforesaid region of our great land. Appalachia is replete with natural …
NOVEMBER 7, 2020 – I woke just before the sun, slipped outside, and walked along the shoreline of Björnholm. Weather was splendid—perfect for posting trail signs in the “tree garden.” Biden’s ahead by the thinnest of margins. Will he prevail? That won’t end the drama. Consider Trump’s tirade Wednesday night—one so departed from truth, several …
NOVEMBER 5, 2020 – I was angry all day yesterday, despite Biden’s chance of winning by a hair, or more precisely, because of his chance of winning only by a hair. With effort I assumed a happy face for our five-year old granddaughter, who was happily oblivious to the impact that the election will have …
OCTOBER 20, 2020 – Yesterday I launched my annual “bud-cap” operation in the tree garden. The work protects pine sapling leaders from foraging deer once the snow flies. The bud-caps are 4 x 6 paper folded over the leader and stapled in place. Conditions were perfect, and I bud-capped 292 trees. The operation continues today—before …
OCTOBER 15 2020 – A few days ago I wrote about the art of the stencil. Yesterday, I moved on to the science of the stencil; that is, I took paint to stencil and boards on which I’d intended to make two dozen trail and landmark signs for my tree garden. The “art” part was …
OCTOBER 11, 2020 – For some weeks I’ve been planning signage for my tree garden—trail signs and markers designating regions where I’ve planted white pine seedlings. The project is a wonderful diversion from the discouraging plight of our country. The signage has multiple facets: size, design, colors, materials, and most important, names and directional arrows. …
OCTOBER 7, 2020 – Last Sunday I explored the land beyond my “tree garden” up at the lake. I was charting a route from the ravine I call Djurgården—“the deer garden,” in Swedish—up a steep, wooded slope to a glade of oaks and beyond that, a trail I call “Nor – Way”—a play on words …
OCTOBER 4, 2020 – Yesterday I spent all day in my “tree garden” in the back woods of our family’s lakeside retreat in northwestern Wisconsin. With the advance of fall, countless pine seedlings are now visible across the acreage that was logged several years ago. For months I’ve been trimming brush and poplar shoots around …
SEPTEMBER 20, 2020 – Recently, a good friend of mine, whose sails had been below my horizons for all too long, emailed me an essay by E. B. White: The Sea and the Wind that Blows. White is the writer’s writer (Sea—I mean see—The Elements of Style). I didn’t know that the Man of Style …
SEPTEMBER 19, 2020 – Even though I got lost in the woods yesterday, the main point of this post is not about that—since I’m no longer lost—in the woods, anyway. Nor is this about anything broad- or big-minded; just something . . . down to earth. Know, however, that being lost in the great outdoors …
SEPTEMBER 18, 2020 – If you spend enough time “in nature,” you make realistic judgments. Sure, nature is grand and beautiful. But it’s also cruel, unforgiving, even obnoxious. Over the summer I’ve devoted many hours to trimming around each of my 300 planted seedlings and at least that number of volunteers over roughly 15 acres …
SEPTEMBER 7, 2020 – The time of Covid has brought some silver linings. One is more old-fashioned, unstructured play by kids in the neighborhood. Instead of being carted off to dance class, soccer practice, and Taekwondo, kids are playing hopscotch on the sidewalks and riding their bikes up and down the street. Their shouts and …
SEPTEMBER 6, 2020 – At Björnholm, Dad was always engaged in a project relating to the operation, maintenance, or improvement of the cabin. Mother saw it as “work”—the burden of owning property, but she was wrong. For Dad, whose day job back in the cities involved wearing a suit and managing an array of people …
SEPTEMBER 4, 2020 – We create much wind with our words, and far from curtailing the gush of hot air, face masks are cranking up the volume and velocity of our windstorms. But up here at the Red Cabin, it’s the old-fashioned wind that’s prevailed of late. The other night the south wind blew so …
SEPTEMBER 2, 2020 – Amidst the pandemic I’ve moved the world headquarters of my law office to the Red Cabin. My wife joins me now and again until boredom and her online book business lead back to “the cities.” Although I’m plenty sociable, I’ve also always enjoyed solitude, especially when surrounded by “nature.” “Nature” is …
AUGUST 31, 2020 – As I prepared to return to the Red Cabin Saturday, my wife instructed me to get in touch with John, our reclusive next-door neighbor up here for 30 years. The top end of our drive cuts across his land, and he’d once said that with his “dirt toys,” he could regrade …
AUGUST 22, 2020 – Yesterday afternoon while deep in my “tree garden,” I heard the rumble of distant thunder. When I emerged for a look at the end of our dock, an enormous thunderhead was closing in. I felt like a sailor in one-person dinghy in line with the prow of an aircraft carrier steaming …
AUGUST 14, 2020 – In these fraught times, I find peace in things that will survive our troubles. Things like . . . trees, for example. Here at the Red Cabin, we’re surrounded by thousands of trees, but I’m determined to add thousands more pine—the species that dominated the landscape here for centuries before “progress” …
AUGUST 11, 2020 – If you’ve had elevated eye pressure or family history of glaucoma, perhaps you’ve experienced a periodic “visual field test.” It’s conducted by a machine consisting of a white, two-foot high, vertical half-dome (which I call, “Yosemite”) equipped with a chinrest on the open side, allowing you to stare motionless at the …
JULY 30, 2020 – Two years ago on a flight from Minneapolis/St. Paul to LaGuardia, I sat next to a guy from the extreme northwest corner of Minnesota. In the course of trip, I learned that he loved to hunt, hated wolves, loved dogs, hated the city, loved the country. The recent death of his …
JULY 29, 2020 – He died long before our time, but my sisters and I knew very well, people who knew him very well. He was “George B. Holman,” our maternal great-grandfather. His entrepreneurial sweat and equity were in Rutherford, New Jersey, but his rest and recreation were in Lyme, Connecticut. Among his hobbies: gardening …
July 13, 2020 – The other night I stepped out onto our dock to behold the heavens. I do so often and each time become ever more awestruck. High-powered binoculars multiply the starry display into mind-blowing proportions. I think about ordinary physics—time, light, distance; about astrophysics—the make-up of those burning lights. I think about how …