Category: Inspirational

Beneath forgotten trestle’s flow Rainfall bounty, melted snow Where heron, bass, and beaver go I can hear  The river calling Misted memory’s mountain home Rocky rapid’s rippled foam Long lost laughter skipping stones I can hear The river calling We swam, we fished Wind’s whispered wish Wild water’s kiss...

The story is fiction. The issues are real. Some moments call for a good man with stones. **********      It was a Thursday. Not unlike any Thursday in any small town. An unassuming grey-haired man in his late fifties quietly parked his forest green pickup truck in the downtown...

The original version of this story 1st appeared in the June 17, 2021 on-line edition of the Adirondack Almanack      I had an interesting conversation with my brother a while back in camp. It began innocently enough, with an observation he made about the difficulties the Saranac Lake Elks...

A Wood Duck Celebration in Haiku   Haiku is a traditional Japanese short verse form written to celebrate some aspect of nature or life. While it has numerous nuances and variations, in my rudimentary understanding, a Haiku basically consists of three lines of verse written in a non-rhyming pattern,...

An SLHS ’81 Classmate Collaboration By Jackie Ely & Dick Monroe (With a cameo assist by Karen Barrow Pittman) Winter’s Long March Behind Me Birch Trees Framing My Thoughts Sitting Alone in a Park Contemplating Ice-Covered Mountain Lake Waters Quietly Waiting for Spring (And waiting…and waiting) Soaking In April’s...

Author’s Note: I drafted this poem many years ago for my wife. My handwritten notes simply bear the date “1990”, so I must have written it shortly after Robin and I married. For reasons unbeknownst to me at this point in life, it sat all these years gathering dust...

The Day I nearly lost Khalisi. My true canine rescue story. A close call, a hard learned lesson, and a warning.      It happened several years ago, right about this time of year. It was late February or early March. The ground had just refrozen right behind an early...

Author’s Note: What a beautiful day today! Everything sparkles after last night’s fresh snow. The sky is so blue. The sun shine’s such bright warmth.  I took my canine companions out for a snowshoe “paw patrol” stroll. The poem below formed in my head while the dogs explored and...

Author’s Note: The snowshoes pictured here are my dad’s vintage pair. He made them in Ranger School during his time at Wanakena. He graduated from Ranger School in 1961, two years before I was born. They are still sturdy, solid and strong. I have taken great care to maintain...

    Author’s Note: This story appeared in the June 8, 2021, online edition of The Adirondack Almanack. ********** I remember our orientation day visit to Paul Smith’s College with our son RJ as he prepared to enter his freshman year as a Wildlife Sciences major there.      It was August...