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Category Archives: Exploring

Winter, Winter…Spring?

By | Exploring | No Comments

Living on a smallish boat as I do, getting out for a day in the open really means a lot.  Beautiful sunny days are great, but snow days can be good too.  I’m not to eager to go for a hike when it’s cold and wet…raining and drizzling.   So this was one day.  You can see the Rhode River in the background and the small island called Flat Island.  In spring, summer and fall, I can often be found exploring the nooks and crannies of the river in my ten foot, two and a half horsepower skiff…just enjoying being out on the water and observing the world around me.  The following week the snow had melted and the sun came out just a bit so I took a walk in the woods looking for some signs of spring.  You can see a better view of the river below, with Flat Island. The grass is beginning

Java In Snow

to grow a little.  Bits of green showing up here and there. It is really too early to call it spring, but I guess some of the plants are just a bit optimistic.    Especially the moss on this tree trunk….

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Fungus Moss

It’s great to get off into the woods from time to time and remember that this is really more or less the way the planet has been for many more thousands of years than the recent civilization has been making the urban landscape seem normal and ubiquitous.  I’m pretty sure I couldn’t survive very well in the wilderness, and I don’t care to try; but our day to day life which depends so much on cars, airplanes, highways, air conditioning, mass production and so forth really does oppress the soul a bit.  Take a look at a tiny little colony of moss growing on a fallen log and see the essence of life.

Natchez Trace

By | Exploring, Travel | No Comments

Looking back at our trip to Natchez last year (Last month/week)  We took a short trip out on the Natchez trace to visit, among other things, Mount Olive; which was an inn for travelers who for the most part were walking back north after having gone downstream on the Mississippi and Ohio rivers to sell wares in Natchez and New Orleans.  It was a nice foggy day, when we were there this trip and  felt a bit like a journey into the past.  There is no commerce or advertizing or development of any kind on the Natchez Trace, so it is a very pleasant and sometimes educational way to travel north and south.

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Natchez Malt Shop

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CAMERA

Zahn and I had a burger each at the Malt Shop in Natchez. While we waited we occupied ourselves taking a few selfies.  In this case I was shooting with my little action camera while Zahn was focusing on her cell phone camera.  Meanwhile back at the ranch:  I’m making great progress with the new website and it looks like I’ll actually have a whole new web site based on the WordPress template I’m using:  Salient.  It’s about all I do in the dark winter evenings except read murder mysteries and other such trash.  Zahn is doing research into the genealogy of a lady she met at one of the many Natchez parties we’ve been to, so we had to drive out into the Mississippi country side in search of a small graveyard.  Here is one of several stones we found…from March 1830.

TombStoneWife2

New Website

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I’m in the early challenging stages of converting my web presence to a WordPress based structure.  So I’m just feeling my way along. I’m in the middle of figuring out how to import some old posts from a WordPress.org site I had.  In the meanwhile, it’s time for a fresh start. and I’m using one of my favorite images from 2014:  A picture of my dingy pulled up on the shore of a small island in the Rhode River in Maryland.

FlatIslandWithSkiff