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    • First Light

      First Light

      Dawn comes more slowly in the valley.  I’m in one now in Mahwah, New Jersey.  I’ve watched the sun brighten the sky around us, and the dark shapes of the surrounding hills.  As the sun rises the high points are hit with that first morning light.  I watch a distant house on a hill brighten into a laser reflecting sunlight to my hotel window.  Closer to where I am the hills grow pink as the suns rays cast what warmth it can muster on this frigid day.  The pink glow on the cliffs and trees slowly inch downward until finally, the sun light shines on me, huddled in my car as it warms up and eventually warms me too.  Dawn has come in Mahwah.

    • Time and Stoicism

      My dog Bodhi is reaching the end.  His back legs, so powerful in driving him in sprints around the yard or on those mad dashes out the open door and down to the beach for a swim, are betraying him now.  In the morning when it’s time for him to go out I need to lift up his back end so he can walk slowly to the back door to go out to relieve himself.  Time is catching up to him at the end of his thirteenth year.

      “Forget everything else.  Keep hold of this alone and remember it: Each of us lives only now, this brief instant.  The rest has been lived already, or impossible to see.” – Marcus Aurelius

      Time knocks us all down eventually.  We all sort of know it as we go through life, but most people push thoughts of death aside and distract themselves with television or politics or celebrity gossip or who knows what.  I’ve come to embrace stoicism as a philosophy precisely because it cuts through the bullshit and lays out what we should all remember.  Memento Mori.  Carpe Diem.
      Today I’m driving to New Jersey for a sales meeting.  I’m debating going early to watch the Patriots game there.  The alternative is to stay here and leave a bit later, spending time with family a bit longer.  Under the right lens, the decision is obvious.

    • Up the River

      Up the River

      Reading the history of Henry Hudson, James Cook and other explorers who were looking for the Northwest Passage across North America, I marvel at the logistics of sailing square-rigged ships up rivers like the Hudson River or the St. Lawrence Seaway.  Sailing in narrow corridors with strong currents, questionable winds with the trees and cliffs lining the shores, and no charts to help navigate with, it’s an incredible display of sailing acumen.  I’m in awe that they could do it.

      I’ve sailed up a couple of rivers, most notably the Merrimack River and the Essex River.  In each case I was in a sloop-rigged boat of about 36 feet.  We knew where the channel was, and we had a diesel engine to fall back on should we need it.  That’s a far cry from the Halve Maen (Half Moon in English), Henry Hudson’s ship, which was a square-rigged and 85 feet long.  Hudson sailed up the river that bears his name in September of 1609 with a crew of about 20 men.  They sailed as far as present day Albany before turning around.  Albany would become a hub of trade with the interior over the next 100 years and the river would become well known, but Hudson was essentially sailing with one hand tied behind his back.

      The Basque were exploring North America before Hudson made his voyage into the interior.  I’ve documented previously the adventures of one soul who made it all the way to Rochester, New York before he perished.  The French were also actively exploring the interior, and of course the Spanish were focused on areas farther south on the continent.  All of them exhibited exceptional courage and skill in navigating these waters.  As a casual and occasional weekend sailor I’m deeply impressed with what they were able to accomplish.  Lost to history of course are the many who failed to make it home from these voyages.

    • Tea and Taxes

      Tea and Taxes

      The Boston Tea Party occurred on December 16, 1773 as a way to protest the tax on tea imposed by Parliament.  The colonies were loyal British subjects until a series of intolerable acts drove them away.  Taxation without representation.  No place was more ornery than Boston.  The Boston Massacre took place almost three years earlier as Bostonians protested Parliamentary legislation that imposed hardship on the colonies.

      Much of the taxation was a result of the debts incurred during the French and Indian War.  The Author Walter Borneman floated an interesting what if scenario about the aftermath of the war, when Great Britain gave Guadeloupe, Martinique and Dominica back to the French.  The money from sugar and rum that Great Britain could have realized from those islands could easily have paid for the war and given Parliament less reason to look to the colonies for tax revenue.

      The power of tea in colonial times was significant.  First, it offered a safe way to drink water at a time when cholera and other waterborne diseases were a possibility with every sip.  Boiling water for tea effectively killed the bad stuff before it went into your mouth.  Secondly, tea is made from a mix of leaves from plants that offered medicinal benefits as well.  Tea is full of antioxidants and catechins that help fight diseases and cancers.  And tea has caffeine, which I’m quite familiar with as a net benefit addition to my diet.  The alternative to drinking tea was to drink coffee, which was harder to get in colonial times, or rum, which also killed much of the bad stuff, but wasn’t exactly optimizing the workforce.

      So tea was the magical drink of the time, and it really pissed off the American colonies when some bureaucrat in London imposed taxes on it without giving them a voice in the political process.  Taxation without representation was the gasoline poured on the fire that turned loyalists into rebels.  Colonists were less frequently in mortal peril from the frontier at their backs.  The French had been defeated, the frontier was pushing further and further away from the coastal cities and the threat to day-to-day life evolved more and more to be the Mother Country.

    • Control

      Control

      Some things are in our control, while others are not.  We control our opinion, choice, desire, aversion, and, in a word, everything of our own doing.  We don’t control our body, property, reputation, position, and, in a word, everything not of our own doing.  Even more, the things in our control are by nature free, unhindered, and unobstructed, while those not in our control are weak, slavish, can be hindered, and are not our own.” – Epictetus

      Know what’s not in my control tonight?  The Internet connection is down.  My reaction?  Type this abbreviated blog post on my phone and save the big stuff for another day.

    • Empty Houses

      Cape Cod and other places that are chock full of tourists in summer are incredibly empty in the dead of winter.  Last night I drove to the Cape for a quick night in Pocasset before driving to Providence, Rhode Island for an early meeting this morning.  I noticed a few things in my drive last night.  First, there were very few cars keeping me company on the highway.  Second, almost every business was closed by 10 PM, when I was driving through.  And finally, I noticed the empty houses.

      Cape Cod in winter has thousands of empty houses.  All of them dormant and patiently waiting for the return of their tenants.  Empty houses are dark, cold and lonely soldiers all lined up along the side of the road.  Coming across the few houses that are lit up with life adds a little cheer to an otherwise drab January commute.  Entire neighborhoods are empty, giving a lifeless, end of days appearance to what I’ve usually acquainted with on these streets.
      For one night, I had the family house lit up as a beacon to those who would look for life on a dormant street.  Tonight the house returns to stillness, like the rows of houses around it.  I’ll be back again soon to bring life back to the street, and hope that next time I won’t be carrying the torch alone.

    • The Price of Time

      The Price of Time

      Foggy mist is socking in Bristol, Rhode Island tonight.  I’m here to watch a basketball game, or more accurately see Ian for a couple of hours and talk to him for a couple of minutes.  The time investment is always significant when you have active kids, but I don’t mind the price.

      I remember my mother commenting on the hours she invested to watch me row by for a couple of minutes.  I didn’t really factor in the time they were allocating to watch me row by and grunt at them afterwards, but I’ve learned in the years since.

      Hopefully the temperature drops or the precipitation dries up and the drive to the Cape isn’t 50 miles of white knuckle.  But I’m here and committed either way.  People don’treally understand what you’d do for your kids until you have them.

    • Warmer Winters

      We happen to be having a relatively mild winter this year.  Last year was a different story.  Next year may be the coldest ever recorded for all I know.  But on the whole the trend seems to be towards warmer winters.  I read once about the early settlers in the New England region ice skating on the Merrimack River from Newburyport up to Haverhill.  The river in the stretch is tidal and brackish water.  It’s hard for me to comprehend a winter, or a series of winters, when this stretch of river would freeze enough to safely skate.  But then, our winters are different now than they once were.

      I’ve contemplated the impact of obliquity on the winters over the last 300 years.  If settlers were skating on a frozen Merrimack River in 1719, what is the impact of axial tilt on our ability to do the same in 2019?  Don’t get me wrong, I’m a believer in the impact of mankind on climate change, but how much is that impact exacerbated by obliquity?  I ran into this quote on NASA’s Earth Observatory site that describes the impact over time:

      “As the axial tilt increases, the seasonal contrast increases so that winters are colder and summers are warmer in both hemispheres. Today, the Earth’s axis is tilted 23.5 degrees from the plane of its orbit around the sun. But this tilt changes. During a cycle that averages about 40,000 years, the tilt of the axis varies between 22.1 and 24.5 degrees. Because this tilt changes, the seasons as we know them can become exaggerated. More tilt means more severe seasons—warmer summers and colder winters; less tilt means less severe seasons—cooler summers and milder winters. It’s the cool summers that are thought to allow snow and ice to last from year-to-year in high latitudes, eventually building up into massive ice sheets. There are positive feedbacks in the climate system as well, because an Earth covered with more snow reflects more of the sun’s energy into space, causing additional cooling.” – NASA, referencing Milutin Milankovitch 

      The question I have is whether 300 years is enough time to have the dramatic impact, or whether we’ve sunk our own boat through carbon emissions?  The impact of obliquity takes thousands of years.  And yet there’s a significant difference in the types of winters we have today versus what we had roughly 15 generations ago.  These are the questions that stir the inner scientist in me.  Far more than whatever my teachers were dumping on me in school ever stirred me.  It’s all about the questions you ask yourself when it comes to learning…  or life.

       

    • Rail Trails

      Rail Trails

      Today I took an eight mile walk on the Windham Rail Trail with my wife.  The trail segment is four miles long and cuts through ledge and over low areas that were built up to level the rail bed.  This section of railroad was originally opened in 1849 and stopped running in the 1970’s.  At the time the technology was by far the most efficient mode of travel, and in some cases it still is.  That efficiency made it worthwhile to undertake the massive manpower project that was the laying of this rail bed.  Just the blasting and moving of ledge must have been a massive project.  Add in miles of building up low areas to that and it must have been backbreaking work.

      Today the trains are gone, replaced by power walkers, joggers, families on bicycles and dog walkers. The occasional house peaks through the trees, but for the most part you’re out in the woods, and it feels like a world away from the strip malls of Route 28.  The highlights of this trail are the long cuts through granite ledge, the water views of Flatrock Brook and Mitchell Pond, and the ghosts of the working railroad that still exist in the quiet forest.  Railroad ties stacked on the side of the trail are slowly returning to the earth as moss and wood rot eat away at the timber.  Walls made from the ledge kept a hill from creeping onto the railroad bed for decades, and now serve that purpose for the trail.

      The segment of rail trail that we walked on was once part of the Manchester and Lawrence Branch.  Eventually Boston & Maine picked up this segment in 1887, but eventually the entire branch was abandoned.  Nonprofit corporations were formed to raise funds for paving and maintaining the segments.  Today there’s a great stretch of paved rail bed from Methuen, Massachusetts all the way up into Derry, New Hampshire.

      Rail trails are popping up everywhere.  Candidly I rarely think to use them, and wish I’d done so years before.  I remember walking along old railroad beds long abandoned in other parts of New Hampshire and Massachusetts.  Re-purposing those beds into rail trails is a great way to make open space accessible for everyone.  The stretch in Windham is a beautiful example of that and that’s opened my eyes to the opportunity to explore more of these trails.

    • Late Bloomers

      I was doing some yard work this week and stopped to consider the roses.  I have these tea roses that bloom constantly throughout the summer and well into the fall.  It’s got these masses of light pink, fragrant blooms at its peak in June.  With a relatively mild autumn, we had blooms much later into the season than usual.  But some of the rosebuds waited too long to bloom, and were frozen in place.

      We hear a lot in culture about late bloomers.  Colonel Sanders comes to mind.  And there’s a place for late bloomers in culture and in nature alike.  But there’s a lesson in the roses too.  Don’t wait too long to bloom, or you may die with unfinished potential.