Did you ever have a time when you knew the exact right thing to say to someone who was feeling down on themselves?

Today I had that experience while chatting with a colleague who is also more of a friend. We've known each other for several decades of our careers, crossing paths multiple times until we now work together.

We were chatting about a work issue, then I asked him some questions about tuition tax credits. A strange segue perhaps, but his kids are a little older than mine so he's been at this college financing stuff longer than I. That got us off into talking about our various kids and how they were doing and the choices they are making and the lives they are building and how the role as parent continues to change with as they grow and mature. He was saying how he marveled at his kids, especially his oldest and at the choices he was making and the person he was becoming.


Then, closing the door first, he said somewhat wistfully to me, , "I tend to be a little too cynical and negative at times and I am never sure if I am a good person or a bad person inside; and I think my son is becoming a better person than me."

Well he does tend to be a little too cynical at times and I've joked with him about that, but I also know him as someone who is a caring ethical person, husband, Dad and son.

What immediately came me, and what I said in response, was a phrase I had read this week; that it is the good person who is attuned and cares about whether he is doing good or bad and continually reassesses his actions and adapts. It is the bad person doesn't care.

I think most of us wonder at times if we are more bad than good, more harsh or critical than not. I guess that's why we are a work in process.

Spring is definitely here and as I think about it, that is unusual. Usually we bounce around in an out of winter and then right into early summer. Because we live at a higher elevation spring and summer comes later than the lower areas. But this past week has been glorious. Warm and sunny and the sun is up later, I've even been able to take some late afternoon runs, which always brighten the spirit.

Last week or so ago we went through several days of high winds. I've written about the wind here, as it is fairly constant and can be quite active.

I had just cleared the yard of all the branches brought down over the winter and gad enough to keep a fire going for hours and then wind came and blew down much much more and the yard looks like I never done anything.

Another thing that it blew down were pine cones. Hundreds and hundreds of them.



All around the yard and in the woods there is almost a layer. More so than I can recall.



From a distance they look like a mole or something similar until you realize they aren't moving.

Looking high in the trees there are still plenty up there and who knows when they will join the rest.

I recall when we lived in a house with oak trees that would go through cycles and would dump so many acorns that I used a snow shovel and barrel to clean them up.
I am sure there is a similar cycle for pine trees and cones.

A Hike up Monument Mountain

As the sun gets brighter and hangs around more each day winter is retreating and spring advancing. Though if you looked at the 6 inches of snow in my yard you might think it is advancing on the slow side. But as the day time temperatures are hitting the 50s snow and ice (in other places) is turning to water.

I have a couple days off and my plans on at least one of them was to spend some time with my son who is home on break. Our first idea was cross country skiing, but the conditions are mediocre with a strange combination of ice and slush and mud. So we decided on a hike up Monument Mountain, a local mount ridge that we have pass almost every day dropping someone off at school. He had been up it a few time but I never had. At an elevation of almost 1800 feet is has some great views and the trails up across and down offer several miles of good exercise, which I was in need of.




Deciding to start off the shorter route, which means more quicker up hills, there was a combination of snow and ice and frozen ground. Much more of a challenge the the soft yielding ground of summer. This meant climbing more rocks and occasionally getting off the trail to pull yourself up the side through the snow with the assist of friendly saplings and roots. A much more vigorous approach than a potentially average climb.




The sound of a stream could be heard but not seen until much further up as it had a thick covered in ice and snow and the sound we heard was echoing from below. When it was finally reveled, its racing waters cut though the hard rock.


Further up the stream made a waterfall that was completely caked in ice. The column at the base was easily a foot thick and created a cave behind the ice falls. Getting down to this required "climbing" down the sides of the wet icy rock and my only
sitz" of the day. Sometime gravity just helps you our when there is not better footing. Which made returning the same way not possible, so back into the woods and snow and around and over the falls to catch the trail further up.




The Mountain is made of Quartzite, extremely hard yet with veins running through the case it to break. The fallen rock makes dozens of caves along the base and the side, many big enough to climb in, though I was leaving that for more warmer weather and without the ice. The rocks are all sizes and are as big a a bus.



The face of the front side is sheer with sharp drops and the trails make there way around the edge and in and out of the woods



and around and up to the summit.



The views from not that far up are spectacular with this view off to the southwest and hills in Connecticut and the Catskills in New York


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and this view to the north and Mount Greylock, 40 miles away.




The back side is just as rocky though not as sharp a drop and a little easier on the return. Coming back through the snow on the backside there were several animal tracks, a reminder of this remoteness so close to "civilization". Unfortunately the camera couldn't focus on some rather large tracks, which looked like some sort of cat, bobcat perhaps. They followed the edge of the path to the bottom and were not that old. It had me occasionally looking behind just in case until we reaches the base.

An enjoyable hike, good exercise and good company. What could be a better way to spend and afternoon off.

Traveling between Winter and Sping

My daily commute brings me 45 miles direct west, out of the hills and into the flat lands of western Massachusetts and the Connecticut River valley.

At this time of year I leave the Berkshires with snow on the grown and frozen lakes and the only sign of spring is the change in the light.




Moving east on highway the snow gradually disappears, the hillsides are bare the woods have that empty flattened look with an occasional pile of dirty snow left behind by the plows.




I arrive where there is no snow, the temperature 10 degrees warmer and spring is definitely in the air. I can be sitting in my my sunny office and talking with folks at home and they describe the heavy snow that is covering the ground and making a mess of local travel. Yet just a short distance away it is a different world.



Then at the end of the day and into the weekend I return to the land of winter. Return to Narnia before the arrival of Aslan. Only there are no ice queens here and spring will eventually come.

The most descriptive word I have heard to describe the way it has looked the last few days is "Narnia"


Snow hangs heavy on the trees and while the snow falls took a rest for most of yesterday it is back at it as I write now. Like Narnia, spring is in the air but winter is not ready to let up its grip. Mid last week we got 6-8 inches then the next day another 5 then a day and a half of rain reduced the piles by half and then another 8 inches on Friday with some pretty serious wind. Had all that rain been snow, the piles would easily be at the 3 foot mark.

So how much snow do we have? With the pluses and the minuses and the double pluses that is too much of a math problem for so early in the morning. But I'd eyeball it at 8 inches that is left.

This seems like this is the most snow we've had this year but definitely not of all the dozen years we've been here. Reminiscing last night about the snow caves the kids would build in the drifts, there has been at least another foot or so a accumulation that would need to be there to match the high points.

But spring is in the air. The morning light is stronger, the afternoon light stays longer. February is over, the longest shortest darkest month is past. Soon it will be time to patch the multitude of potholes, but that is a post in itself.

Colds Suck

Something has happened the past several weeks. Blog posts and the time for writing seem sparse and my mind is on the foggy side, which only for the past few weeks can be attributed to a head cold. The rest of it probably is a combination of a major change in the place I usually can write and many things competing for time and mental energy.

I usually get one cold a year. It comes at a time that I am overloaded with things to do and can least afford it or have just passed such a time. [yes I see the cause and effect pattern]. Colds for me often run the same course. I am usually a very good patient with major things but very impatient with the minor such as with colds or back pains or aches. My attitude is enough! lets get on with it and over it. Probably hindered somewhat that I can't really take many of the "cold remedies" without reactions that are worse that the cold. I am in the most annoying of the stages which is the coughing stage. A few days ago you'd think I was ready for a respirator and I can only truly sleep the full night in a mildly sitting up position, which is not easy to do nor that comfortable. So as the sleep gets disrupted so does the healing processes.

It will probably be over or mostly gone in a few days and I expect that when I go to work tomorrow I will be given a wide berth or glares for having spread it, though I am compulsive with the hand sanitizer and coughing in the elbow, but sometimes that is not enough.

So that is my vent about colds.

This weekend we were traveling through upstate New York. Didn't you know that traveling and hotels are good for colds? When ever we venture out that way I am always struck by how much larger the mountains and hills are than in the Berkshires. The Berkshires are hills after all and New York has the Catskills. But the valleys are wider and the passes grander and stunning.

I am noticing more how from season to season, there are many views that look the same, year after year and that it is much more evident when I have my camera at hand.

If I look at pictures of scenes from year year to year that are from about the same time of year, they are almost interchangeable.


As I have mentioned many times here, I have about a 50 mile one way commute each day to work. I think of bygone times when such a trip would have required immense planning and packing for a the long journey. It makes me remember stories my grandmother told of wagon rides over the mountains for shopping in the bigger towns that were full day events.



Now I hop on the highway and easily cruise up and down the mountains and through the mountain passes and an amount of time that would have been unimaginable when my grandparents were young.




Yet in the eight years I have been doing this commute, the views of the mountains, especially in the winter are the same as perhaps they saw many years ago. The most significant different perhaps is that the highway I travel cuts through land that is near the old main road but sometimes a hundred or so feet above as it traverses large ravines. I remember large ice waterfalls as a kid and expect that for generations and generations that was a seasonal marvel to observe.



February is sort of bleak in that much of the landscape is in hibernation. Pauses in the snowfall allow the dried out brown and dirt from the run offs to shown through. The cold wind is biting and even the dried grasses seem cold and frozen.



But the days are getting longer and the sunlight brighter. That too is something observed by many before me and hopefully many after as well.

At about 5-5:30 in the morning I am up and moving slowly looking for my first cup of coffee [I am a confirmed coffee-holic], then for a while I just sit in the dark by the window, the light of the flames from the stove make their way around the corners in the other room and create dancign shadows on the wall. Gazing in the sky I can still see stars and an occasional distant airplane. It is quiet.

The light begins to come up around the trees and the hills and it seems a peaceful hand off of night into day.



It is in these moments that I think, I meditate, I send out good thoughts to those I know and love and to folks I know only by name and sometimes just "be". It is my favorite time of the day.

I needed a peaceful picture to look at. In the ups and downs of roller coaster life this is an up hill period. So I remembered this photo from when I fed friends' chickens twice a day for a week last summer. In the morning I would bring my coffee, feed the chickens and clean things out and then sit and gaze at this view for a while before packing off to get ready for work. It was warm, the air was hazy and the winds quiet.

I can somewhat track the seasons by the sunrise over the ridge line close to our house. It runs very much north to south on the map and in winter the sunrise is clearly in the southern end and mid summer it moves slightly north of the middle. But today it was very much in the south, which puzzled me. It should be farther north by now. Perhaps it was that there was a break in the clouds several miles south and the clouds to the east were too thick.

As with most places in the east it has rained alot of late. Though when I look out to the backyard there is still a good amount of snow in the way back. We are in a January thaw, gearing up for the longest shortest month of the year and the beginning of mud season.

I no longer do my night commute in total dark, which means the days are getting longer. The days they go so quickly.

Its been over a week since I checked the blog. Much more time than usual and my mind gets that fried feeling that when I think of writing something and in the end I up just zoning out.

Its been a tough couple of weeks on several fronts. Its been cold and very busy in our piece of the Berkshires and I find I am not getting out except for chores and little time for checking in with cyber-folk. The challenges of work and home and in the country and world feel like ever growing masses and have me a little overwhelmed and discouraged. Not a place I haven't been in the past and slowly worked out of but definitely not a good place to be. Needless to say my prayers have been more emphatic and pleading of late.

Last weekend we worked on the computer room, which translates into converting a room that was primarily storage of old books and files and a large computer work station into a more den like room. While I am not a pack rat, I have accumulated old books, family pictures and the computer seems to have its own pile of documentation, disks, printer supplies that seem to just multiply even though its been weeded out many times. Sort of like the mail which seems to be replaced on the pile faster than it can be resolved. I also manage what seems like oceans of information at work, both paper and electronic, and the last thing I want to do on off hours is tackle paperwork. It can be a challenge and source of conflict within the household because it mounts up and then even tackling it piecemeal never seems enough.

But the room does look much better and though far from done, it is improved and more functional. I'll be keeping the trash people busy for weeks moving out the pieces of the workstation little by little.

That is the update from here. Definitely more personal than usual and not too colorful but I am a tenacious optimist.

Movement in the Dark

On my commute home from work the is about 15 seconds when the road dips and rounds a bend and a large wind turbine is right in front of me, gracefully and rhythmically turning in the breezes. At this time of year when I reach that point in my journey it is often dark and all that can be seen is the bright blinking red beacon alerting airplanes. Then quickly I pass and it is hidden again by the woods.

But if you look a little closer you can also see that the light does not always blink in a pattern and there the slightest blur. Both of these are cause by the blades of the turbine that can't be seen but that, when they pass in front of the light, interfere with the blinking pattern and give it that blur.

[no this is not a picture of the turbine as it is difficult to snap a shot so quickly at 70 mph.]



It was on one of these trips home in the dark, having passed the turbine, that I began to think of all that happens in the dark that we don't see and sometimes have to look closely even for a sign.

Living so close to the forest, I am often reminded of this. Noises of animals heard in the night; the road kill that is not longer there in the morning; the sense that something is out in the yard when I go out in the dark for the morning paper; the shadows that disappear when I run in the early hours. All of these are life in the dark hours.

I am someone who likes the dark and is fortunate to have good vision in being able to get around with minimal light. But sometimes even I am a bit unnerved by what I can sense and just barely hear out there, and quite honestly I'd rather not shine a light and be scared for sure.

We think of life as something we can see and something that we observe or we brightly light our paths or houses or public ways, but there is so much out there that can only be picked up by sound and by sense or, like turbine, the slightest change or that we never notice at all.

So what is this picture if it is not the turbine? It isn't anything specific, just a shot in the dark. I just aimed the camera at the moon and this is what came out.

So what do I have in common with this picture? Well I have a new shirt about the color of these tulips and on this first day back to work from vacation I am drooping almost as much as they are. But while they have found their way into the compost, I have retreated to blogland and Farmville. Yes, I dare admit that I have become moderately hooked at Farmville on Facebook. But while many load their farms with buildings and animals and decorations [this really doesn't make sense if you haven't seen it, I know], I have gone for planting just crops that look nice when ripe and have harvested so many that I can now start "buying" trees, so far well over a hundred.[Yes I know this really does sound strange] So in the virtual world of Facebook, I am doing my part in decreasing CO2. How is that for escape!



The past few days have been blistering cold caused primarily by the wind. While it has looked like blizzard conditions and snow is everywhere, there isn't that much of it, maybe a few inches. But it is everywhere.

Reentering work and evening commitments after a vacation, especially when I disconnect completely from emails and voice mail is always tough. But spending time with the family and getting to see a couple of movies and just do nothing but the bare necessary chores has been good for the soul.

A new years run into town

Its been a quiet New Years Day unique in that there is not prep like Thanksgiving and Christmas. There are things to do if you choose and I expect in the more urban part there is much more activity, but here it is pretty dull, which for a couple days a year is ok.

I am trying to start the year off well and went out for a 4 mile run this afternoon with camera in hand. I haven't been able to keep up a good running schedule with the weather and work schedules, so today was a run/walk/photo version. Better than nothing.

Today I decided to run into the center of town. We live a few miles out from the center of Lenox, which is a small town of about 5,000. The downtown is a combination of residential and several inns and shops and the library and town hall and most of the shops are really geared more to the tourists than us local.




On the way into town, the back way as I think of it, because it is mostly small houses and not the route through the historic district. But there is this neat house with a barn tucked away through the trees.



Though out of sequence of my run, this part of town is tree lined and in the historic district with older houses and the manses though upscale are tasteful. As with many roads like this, it doesn't take much distance before the houses thin out and you are deeper in the woods.



Around the town hall, as with most of down town there is not much going on. Traffic is very light and only a few people out walking around. Tourist season is definitely over and most of the folks visiting are in from the cities for respite with an occasional smattering of locals like me.



Circling around on Main Street, the shops and library (brick building with the cupola). The library use to be the county court house when the town was the county seat many years ago. That designation moved to the city of Pittsfield to the north.



As I have mentioned, there are several inns in town. Converted estates from the gilded age or large farmhouses converted and expanded. This one across from the Church on the Hill, is allegedly haunted by a ghost. I stayed there for the night many years back before we moved here and never met this resident. Given I was here for a job interview, that probably was okay.



The church sits high on a hill overlooking the town center and as most old white churches in New England was the center of much activity in earlier days. Though a couple of miles away, I can hear the sound of the clock chimes on a quiet night.



I have mentioned many times that there are hills upon hills. The circular route into town and back is about 4 miles and on a day like today is pleasant. A good stretch of flat mixed with multiple grades of hill. In warmer weather I have run into town to grab bagels for the company and been back home while they are still warm.




and just a short distance out of the town center, across the main highway and nearer to home, the icy stream bubbles away under the road on its way to the river.

It's early morning, on a relative scale, as by this time I have usually been up for 3 hours or so, but slept in til 7 today. Whoo!

The last day of the year, a few more days of vacation. Its been a windy cold week. Not to hospitable for being outdoors and the snow on the road makes running a challenge.

I am not much for doing end of the year recaps and Debbie warned me about doing too much thinking on vacation after my shadow disappearing post.

The sun is gently coming up, the air is calm. A couple of rabbits and squirrels have been about in the yard. The house is quiet, the stove busily pumping out heat. The calm before the storm as we are hosting a New Years party for a group of teens tonight, so in a bit it will be time to finish up the lists and start the prep and ready the caffeine for a long night. ;-)

I may post again as I seek shelter from the din, but if not, wishing all who pass this way a peaceful and bountiful New Years, in more ways than just the material.

Its a snowy day in the Berkshires and the first real day of a week vacation. I don't really count the days up to Christmas and the traveling days afterward as vacation as they seem a blur.




Walking out the driveway for the paper this morn, with camera in hand, I turned and saw my shadow. I clicked a quick picture, which I think shows up but am not really sure, as immediately afterward the shadow disappeared.

I will say that the feeling of being there one moment and then not the next was a bit unsettling and it took me a few moments to put it together that a cloud had passed over the sun. [I allow myself to be a little on the slow side on vacation.]

But the thought, and that feeling, has stayed with me all day. You are here one moment and then you aren't.

Merry Christmas

It’s a quiet day in the Berkshires. A mild snow covering makes it a white Christmas without the burdens of a blizzard, which have happened on many a Christmas. It’s a little warmer than it has been in days, actually close to 30.

The tree is all decorated and by now the presents are all unwrapped and we are doing not much more than relaxing and doing family things. I went out for a short run in a late afternoon as a little gift to myself, very little activity and just "warm" enough that it was comfortable after the blood is pumping.




Around the neighborhood the Christmas lights are on. It is peaceful and a time to slow down. Perhaps that is what I have felt missing and some of what Christmas is about.







Merry Christmas to all.

It is officially cold in the Berkshires when the thermometer hit the teens as it has been this week and is this evening. As the east coast was battered with snow last weekend, we have the remnants of a few inches received a few days before, and a dusting today but nothing more. The wind has been blowing the past few days and, as I have written many times before, I love the sounds of the wind. But it does make it colder and the slightest space seems to be an entry for a draft.

The stove has been busy and going fairly constantly except for a short shutdown to clean out the ashes and clean the glass.

Its a few days before Christmas and something just doesn't feel right, isn't there. I find myself thinking of Christmases past; some with fondness and melancholy: the last Christmas with my mom and dad, Christmases when the kids were small and the warmth of our tight family, Christmas when I was a kid. Time smooths and softens the rough edges of memories and if we knew then what we do now......

Some times what you are looking for is right in front of you....if you stop long enough to look

This weekend was our annual Christmas tree hunt. I could not find the camera (a hazard of too many pockets and too many coats) but the photos would have been almost identical to last year, less one in our hunting party :(.

We went to the same tree farm as last year in Great Barrington, with its several acres of green on white.

http://www.seekonktreefarm.com/

It was cold but the farm and its tiny parking lot were very busy. Our specifications are not that unusual other than the size, which needs to be big enough to not get lost in a room with a 10 ft ceiling. Sometimes the size is a problem and we end up looking and looking and looking; wandering up and down the hill, through the snow, trying to remember where we've already looked and keeping track of where everyone is.

But not this year. We stopped in the hut to say hello, confirm the choices and prices and pick up our saw and were heading out to the trails when my youngest, who is just a little up ahead, comes back and says, "I've found the tree". Yeah, sure...3 minutes out and the tree has been found? What is wrong with it?
But there it was about 20 feet from the hut; tall, and full.

We stop and looked.....and looked. Is this a tree you can cut? It seemed to obvious and too good. Why had no one else cut it. But it was.

How many people have walked right by this tree today and never noticed it? We walked by it last year and never noticed it. We never really started "seeing" the trees until we were on the main trail.

So in about 10 minutes the tree was cut, and we dragged it back the 20 feet to the shaker (to get those tenant mice out) and we were done. Start to finish with it attached to the car was about 30 minutes.

So this got me thinking, if my youngest hadn't been observant and in the moment, would we too have walked right past this beautiful tree and had to cover the acres and perhaps not found a good tree? What else might I be missing that is right in front of me because I am thinking of something else or not ready to find the answer?

So the tree is up in time to avoid the second half of a snow storm, waiting to be decorating over the next week or so.

The face of homelessness

This morning I volunteered to be a reader at an elementary school down the street from my office. I'd run and walked past this large concrete 70's building many times but never been inside and the windows are shaded so that you can't see inside. I also read to my kids hundreds of nights when they were small but surprisingly I was a little nervous.

The book I was given to read was about a family loading up in the car and going to visit their extended family for several weeks.

As the volunteers gathered in the library waiting to be called to classes I read over the book to become comfortable with the book and the language, not thinking much about the context of what I was going to be reading to my 6 year old audience.

I could spend several paragraphs writing about the layout of the school and the class set up as it was so different from the small town schools and classes in Lenox and also where I grew up. This is city and a big school. But that is not really the point of this post.

Led to the "pod", as they call their classes, the teacher announced that I was here to read and would be in the library corner and kids could come over if the wanted to. I was offered a chair, but since the kids were on the floor that seemed fine with me. As I looked around the half dozen or so kids that had gathered I was struck by how different they looked from the very white rural families in the book and as I read along I would ask them questions about their families and going to visit. Then we got to a page where there were a dozen people gathered in the house, easting and chatting and I asked if the kids had gatherings like this with there families. Very matter of fact one little girl answered "I live in a motel room". The discussion continued as did my reading but my mind stopped right there. This bright chattering child was homeless and living in a motel room with her family.

Homelessness is often faceless and very removed and while I have met several homeless folks when volunteering at a meal program, hearing this from a child took be aback.

For all my worries about what I don't have or wish I could provide my children, this was a dope-slap reality check.

First Snow

While we have had several bouts of snow furies and white coverings on the lawn in the morning this is really the first decent snow and the first snow of the season is often the loveliest, at least on the morning after. When it started yesterday and I was driving up back country roads in the higher elevations, my expressions were not so poetic.



On a morning after when the sun is bright, the fluffy clumps of snow are still sticking to the branches.



The sun has not yet warmed to knock of the snow and the breeze is mild. The moon is visible in the bright blue sky.



Winter is beginning and this is a way of easing us in. The heavier snows will come and with it the sloveling and clearing and driving in the mess. But for now I'll appreciate the beauty of the first big snow.