To celebrate our five-year wedding anniversary, both our birthdays, and Cinco de Mayo, Husband and I spent a 4-day weekend in and around Fruita, Colorado, doing stuff like this, this and this:
And in between, we did this:
Ahhh. Lovely. 🙂
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Over the weekend, and today, Husband and I may be riding some of the trails mentioned in this magazine article… maybe in a place that looks something like this…
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I don’t have a book to tell you about today, friends. I know! I’m sorry! But rather than go silent, I thought I’d give you a little photo tour of what I’ve been up to lately that explains why I haven’t been reading at the usual pace… well, it’s more complicated than that, but look at these pretty pictures first and then I’ll tell you about the books at the end.
When not reading, I have been:
But seriously, I have been reading as furiously as ever; we’re just caught in a strange lull right now, for a few reasons. For one, I’ve been doing a lot of reading for the book reviews I write for Shelf Awareness, which means that I read a book, write a review, submit it for editing & publication, and then am able to post said review after it publishes – which is easily 6-8 weeks after I read the book. So I’ve got a backlog of great reading to tell you about, but none of it is ready to post yet. In between, I’ve been listening to The Hunchback of Notre Dame on audiobook, which is great but long and means I won’t have an audiobook to tell you about for another week and a half at least.
All of which are just excuses, and I’m sorry that I don’t have a great book to tell you about right now! But speaking of excuses – I have now justified showing you pictures of my fun times & the beautiful people in my life, so we’re all winners on that count. 🙂
Happy Friday, and thanks for your patience, friends. Maybe I’ll read another de Maupassant short story over the weekend and have that to write up for you on Monday! In the meantime, more bikes in this lovely spring weather, please!
Filed under: a walk about town, musings | Tagged: personal, travel | 4 Comments »
One man’s reminiscences of flora, fauna and miscellanea encountered while paddling the globe.
For decades, Nigel Foster has been kayaking the world’s oceans, lakes and canals–as well as teaching the skill, designing the equipment and writing about his experiences. Encounters from a Kayak collects more than three dozen of his articles in a single volume, many of them never previously published. Each examines a moment in time in which Foster–sometimes alone, sometimes with fellow enthusiasts–interacts with the natural world and its inhabitants from his small craft. It is one of the strengths of the collection that not even the oldest pieces (extending as far back as the early 1980s) feel dated.
The stories are organized thematically around creatures, people, places, and flotsam and jetsam; the diversity and scope of Foster’s contacts in all these categories are impressive. In his encounters with historic artifacts in Scotland, local police in Shanghai and monkeys in the Florida Keys, Foster brings a sense of humble wonder to his environment. Naturally, he considers issues of ecology and conservation in his travels, but he never lectures. Rather, in unadorned prose, he delivers the experiences themselves: the glow of bioluminescence, the ordeal of a Dutchman’s flight from Nazi occupation by kayak, the history of a sleepy Minnesota town and the real-life Scylla and Charybdis of Scarba and Corryvreckan, just off the Scottish coast. Foster’s unassuming consideration of his surroundings is charming, simple and occasionally poetic. Natural history, human history, birds, jellyfish, thunderstorms and more come together to entertain and educate in Encounters from a Kayak.
This review originally ran as a *starred review* in the December 14, 2012 issue of Shelf Awareness for Readers. To subscribe, click here, and you’ll receive two issues per week of book reviews and other bookish fun!
Filed under: book reviews | Tagged: nature, nonfiction, Shelf Awareness, starred, travel | 1 Comment »
I shall try to keep this brief for you; but I want to at least list the things I saw and did on my trip up north in late October. With pictures.
I flew to Boston on a Friday night after work to join my parents where they were house-sitting for a month in a lovely home belonging to family in Concord. We spent Saturday in Boston, walking the Freedom Trail there, which exhibits historical landmarks like cemeteries, churches, and monuments (and starts and finishes in Boston Common – lovely). We had lobster for lunch (out) and swordfish for dinner (in) and it was an exhausting, but exciting, first day.
greenhouse in our Concord home
Granary Burying Ground in Boston
Thoreau’s cabin site at Walden Pond
statue of Nathaniel Hawthorne in Salem
I was scheduled to head to Vermont on Tuesday – Pops driving me up there, isn’t he a peach – but we took the morning first to revisit the Battleground Road between Lexington and Concord, again at a faster-than-ideal pace. We had stopped off at the Old North Bridge, where the American Revolutionary War began, on Sunday evening. It made an impression. And we had glimpsed the Old Manse from without – I regret not finding time for a tour of the interior. Now we visited a few stops along the Battleground Road (think Paul Revere, “the British are coming”).
statue of a colonial soldier at the Old North Bridge: they put down their plows and they took up their muskets…
Wednesday I had a fairly lazy day on the farm in Vermont, which felt well-deserved after the busy days in Massachusetts. I was reuniting with my old friend Molly, who moved here with her husband and new baby this summer, and is now just 100 yards away from her parents.
Molly and I on the deck
green and mossy
look how he’s grown!
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Hello, friends! I’m home! It was a whirlwind week. I intend to write up the week’s activities in another post for you. In a nutshell, I visited lots of sites in Concord, Boston and Salem, Mass. of literary and historical interest; visited several pubs in Boston; kept a fast pace with my parents in Mass. generally; and then had a slower-paced few days in Vermont with a friend’s family on their farm.
As for the reading, I have less to report than I might have – this reflects the fast pace of the first part of the week, and the relaxation of the second part. I mostly gazed at the mountains rather than at the page. I did finish listening to The Shining (because listening is compatible with gazing), and I finished Walden on my long travel day homeward-bound. So those are two reviews that I owe you. Just give me a few days.
I also carried with me James Baldwin’s Notes of a Native Son, which I started but may have to return to the library unfinished… and Patricia Highsmith’s Strangers on a Train, and Edward Abbey’s The Brave Cowboy (wasn’t I ambitious?), neither of which I started but both of which I’m excited about when I find the time…
So I owe you two book reviews and one travel write-up. For now, I’ll leave you with a few choice photographs!
Salem, Mass. harbor
Walden Pond
unread books on the deck in Vermont
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I am nearing the end of my weeklong vacation and I am homeward bound this weekend. Hopefully I have seen lots of sights in Concord, Salem, and Boston, Mass.; visited some great pubs; had plenty of quality time with my parents, and with my girlfriend and her family in Vermont; tromped the woods, tickled the baby, and possibly even slept in some. And what about my reading material?? So glad you asked! I do owe you some book reviews upon my return. (We’ll have to see if I can get on top of it for Monday morning…)
The books I packed for the trip include:
Henry David Thoreau’s Walden
Stephen King’s The Shining (audio version, on my iPod)
James Baldwin’s Notes of a Native Son
Thanks for bearing with me during this week that I’ve been away. I’ll be back in the flesh (so to speak) on Monday, assuming the creek didn’t rise! And back home to my Husband and dogs, which will be sweet.
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While not necessarily a big gushing cooing fan of babies in general, I’m genuinely excited to see my high school BFF’s baby again. When I saw him last he was something like five weeks old…
me with the new baby. Bearded Husband in the background.
And now he’s 4 1/2 months! Will be so much bigger. Baby book recommendations??
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Mid-week sometime, so perhaps about now, I will be leaving Concord, Mass. behind and heading up to the mountains of Vermont. There, I have a dear friend from high school who has recently moved up to her parents’ farm, with her husband and new baby! The advantages to me are several and obvious, right? I hope to be hiking in the woods, tickling the new baby, and spending some quality time. While we may drive out into the world for a beer or some such (Rock Art Brewing is nearby!), I expect this will be the more relaxing, slower-paced part of the trip. Plus, check out the view from the deck:
And I get to visit with the dogs as well!
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Henry James called Concord, Massachusetts “the biggest little place in America.”* Concord was home to Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Bronson Alcott and his daughter Louisa May. Walden Pond is in the neighborhood. (More recently, according to Wikipedia, contemporary authors gather there as well, including Patricia Cornwell, Gregory Maguire, Doris Kearns Goodwin, and the late Robert B. Parker.) In other words, there is no shortage of literary sites to visit while I’m here. These may include…
the Concord Museum, filled with artifacts relating to the American Revolutionary War and the Transcendentalists
the Emerson House
the Orchard House, home to the Alcott family, and presumed setting of Little Women.
And without question, I will be visiting Walden Pond
and the cabin there.
(this is a replica.)
In truth, there are enough places to see in Concord that I may not fit them all in. It’s a delicate balance, while on vacation, to do all the things you want to do and still relax a bit – so as to not need a vacation when you get home!
*Henry James: Collected Travel Writings, “The American Scene: Concord and Salem,” 1907
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