Solstice at the LighthouseMucho moons ago, I was inside the lantern room of a lighthouse during the summer solstice. Crazy stuff amigo. And to make matters stranger, outside was a Nor’easter lashing high winds and rain against the glass, as the revolving light flooded the room. First red and then white. Phantasmagoric. Wrote a story for Martha’s Vineyard Magazine about that evening. If you want to read it, its on my magazine article page. Scroll down, its there.
Cameras are everywhere these days. Like it or not, the whole world has one.
It may be resting on your bureau back home, in your tackle bag, or on your cell phone, but admit it, you got a lens. Still not everyone is happy about that. Some folks are afraid of you.
We all love having a full quiver of trout rods. You know everything from a 2-weight on up to an 8-weight. Man, we’re proud on our collection. Damn right we are. Now do we really need all of them? Well that’s a different story.
Fact is for the vast majority of our time on small to medium size streams, two trout rods do it all. Yup, and the rest of the rods idle back home. At least that is how I see it. What two rods you ask? A 6-weight and a 4-weight. They handle everything from a fair size streamer to a 22 dry.
I’m known for hauling around a Nikon DLSR. Yeah, its a chunk, a D700, big, heavy, and mighty long in the tooth. How long? It was released in 2008! Now don’t turn up your nose. Damn thing does a stellar job. Really.
For a long time, friends have laughingly suggested I get something smaller, something you could stick in my pocket. Well I did. After drawn out research, I got a Olympus Tough. Fine camera, durable, versatile, shockproof, waterproof, built-in flash, GPS, Wi-Fi, RAW files, does tele and wide, video, yes closeups too, just loaded with features. And small. So small the thing disappeared! I couldn’t find it for the life of me. Eventually I threw my hands up and wrote it off as totally lost to the ages. Then two days back, bang, it popped up under a pile of junk in the bottom of my closet. Will I use it? Maybe.
Back in 2022 I penned a post with the same title. Well frankly I’m still scratching my noggin about weather. Yeah, yeah, yeah, I know New England weather is notoriously unpredictable. Still it does seems things are getting extremely odd. Yup, the weather worries me.
Enough Whining – Blue Skies Ahead
Last year, La Nina had us by the short hairs. The mercury was a roller coaster ride, up and down, with a red hot, dry summer. Yet the coming winter proved a complete surprise? It was the coldest in over 15 years, with over 52 inches of snow and average temperatures running five degrees below normal. Ummm. Where is my damn shovel?
Right now the spring is yucky, mucky – grey, cool, damp, and wet. Primo conditions if you’re a salamander. Yet the long-term forecast is the exact opposite! By May into summer, we could be 3 or more degrees above norm. Enough whining – blue skies ahead!
