Category: The Moosilauke Letters

Cohutta WildernessGeorgiaSeptember  1992 Steve is my brother, ten years older and so much wiser than me, in his mind.  Even though he spent time in the trenches in Vietnam, he was still willing to go out into the wilds of north Georgia with me.  We planned a three-day backpack trip in the Cohutta Wilderness, just… Continue reading Brother Time

Boyce Mayview ParkUpper St ClairPennsylvaniaSeptember  2017 Lisa and I are on a training hike in Boyce Mayview Park, not too far from home.  At the highest point of a loop, where several trails converge, a cute little dog comes bounding from the brush, happy as dogs usually are.  Following behind is a hiker.  Or a… Continue reading Snake Butt

ClevelandOhioJanuary  2018 Section 5E, Lot 383-0, Lake View Cemetery, Cleveland. It’s quiet here.  Of course it’s quiet.  It’s a cemetery.  This quiet is in contrast to the way this particular plot’s occupant lived his life.  Who lives here in this burial place?  Alan Freed. Alan Freed was born in 1921 in Windber, Pennsylvania, 59 miles… Continue reading The Father of Rock ‘n’ Roll

my own gardenPittsburghSummer  1993 Carol said, “Put a dish of beer in the garden.  It will attract the slugs and keep them from eating our vegetables.”  She even gave me a couple of attractive ceramic bowls. After getting over the initial shock of feeding beer to anything non-human, and well aware that slugs have bad… Continue reading Slugs

ScarboroughMaineAugust  2012 Soon we make a stop at a standard looking confectionary store next to the Cornerstone Baptist Church and across the highway from the gas station.  Among the great assortment of chocolates and moose-themed tchotchkes — we’re in Maine, moose country — is Lenny, the featured attraction.  Lenny is a moose, a 1700-pound moose. … Continue reading Lenny

It’s unlikely that anyone will allow you the use of the word flink when you are playing Scrabble.  Lisa’s parents, both particularly adept at the game, grunted and bewailed at me when I tried.  Mom wears a T-shirt emblazoned with the words “SCRABBLE QUEEN” so I know that when I chose to create “flink” on… Continue reading Flink

on the highway to North CarolinaJune  2015 It’s a seven-hour drive.  I stop at what we used to call a comfort station.  Now they are service plazas.  Anyway, y’know, I have to pee.  In many places, when you pull off the interstate onto a two-lane back road, you have suddenly gone back in time.  I… Continue reading Rubbers

Frick ParkPittsburghJuly  2005 I’m wiggling my way through the now vertical branches of a downed tree.  Listen to that racket!  I look up and there’s a flock of crows, each one flying sideways in the wind, cawing their stories to anyone who will listen. I catch a glimpse just ahead, something jumping sideways from a… Continue reading Flying Squirrel?

Quebec Run Wild AreaPennsylvaniaMay  1996 Hiking through the lowlands of the Quebec Run Wild Area in southwestern Pennsylvania, I am transported to another time.  Or maybe it is the other guys. Hiking south on Mill Run Trail, I sense some goings-on off to my left.  What-ho?  A dozen or more people, dressed in standard garb… Continue reading Anachronism

Big Bend National ParkTexasNovember  2015 We’re in Big Bend National Park, getting away from it all, as they say. When they say, “getting away from it all,” they usually mean getting away from it some, the stuff we don’t like or don’t want.  That’s what we want to get away from.  For so many it… Continue reading Lion Touches