Celtics ☘️ Sentinel

  The house is strangely quiet now . My 12-year-0ld great grandson went home yesterday, and I miss him already. OBSCURITY (Definition): The state of being unknown, inconspicuous or unimportant Photo of Carson by Linda Lane Carson Thomas Lane will turn 13 years of age next month. His biological father abandoned him at birth, and his mom, Courtney, died - a victim of cystic fibrosis - at the age of 25 - when Carson was only seven years old. In the end, my granddaughter - being kept alive on a ventilator - chose the day her life would end . Two major hospitals had apparently determined that she was not "important' enough to receive a double-lung transplant. Please pardon me for my cynicism and lasting anger. Courtney chose my daughter, Lisa , (in turn supported by her husband, Jim ) as Carson's legal guardian and her then-boyfriend, Josh , as his surrogate dad. At the time of this writing, my great grandson still lives with Joshua Farrell and his mom, Heather. Prior...

 The 1,200-mile trip back to the Great North Woods after three months on the beach in South Carolina was uneventful except for the smoke-filled skies in Virginia's Shenandoah Valley - caused by raging forest fires. But our main worry involved the t wo feet of snow expected in the north country of New Hampshire the day before our arrival back home . We had no idea what to expect when we approached our house. Here's what we found! Photo by Gayle Lord Two of our friends, Brad Montague and Tammy Crawford , were there and had waded through the deep, heavy snow to shovel out our front entrance, and shortly thereafter, two other friends, Josh and Gayle Lord , had attempted to plow the driveway, but the thick snowpack was too much for the plow truck, and it became mired in the snowbank. Not to worry. Nothing gets in the way of the folks in the North Woods . Butch Lane (no relation) from JML Trucking came to the rescue with his huge front-end loader - pulled out the plow truck and q...

  My encounter with North Woods Law and the talking partridge -  September 12, 2018 When you watch North Woods Law filmed in New Hampshire, believe what you see. It is quite real, and these Game Wardens are called upon to do everything. Living in the North Country, my wife, Linda, and I encounter them quite often, and one meeting was quite bizarre. We were hunting for partridge on a logging road a few years ago and a guy in a pickup truck stopped and told us there was a partridge just off the road and quite close to us. We followed him, and he pointed it out, sitting in a clearing about 20 yards off the road. He wondered why I wasn't shooting it because they were in season - I was licensed - and we were in a legal shooting location. I hesitated because I knew a camp was a distance beyond the bird. That's when it happened. Partridge that flew through my porch screen. Released unharmed. The three of us heard a disembodied voice from the woods -  "Don't shoot the bird!...

  Living in the North Woods offers many opportunities for pleasant outdoor recreation, but sometimes things can get a bit testy. This was one such occurrence. Moose in our driveway, Northern NH My wife, Linda, and I were out for a walk along interstate highway route 26, and I should mention here that route 26 can not be compared with route 495 in Massachusetts, but it is a 2-lane highway. We were not far from our house when we heard the most God-awful bellowing and crashing in the trees beside the highway. We both knew what it was, and I immediately looked for a way out of the impending disaster. I was carrying my Colt .45 ACP pistol but that would be a last resort - and might not stop the animal right away anyway. Then she appeared, and she was pissed. It was a cow moose and the ears were back, and the hackles along the neck and back were up - and she was coming for us. I can only think after the fact that she had a calf nearby and felt we were a threat. I kept facing her as we ba...

  It is the morning of December 4, 2023 in The Great North Woods of New Hampshire – it is snowing hard – there is a foot-and-a-half of white stuff on the ground – and the power just went out. Time to get to work. The Jotul   wood stove in the basement had already been spewing heat before the power outage. The heat comes up the stairs to the first and second floors, but that won’t be enough. Out comes the small, portable propane heater that runs off one-pound bottles of gas. It is light – easy to use – and warms the kitchen perfectly. No word from Eversource as to when power will return, so the outdoor wood pile beckons. But first comes some shoveling of the front stairs, the snow-bound car, the bulkhead and a partial (more on the in a minute) path to the woodpile. At close-to-eighty years old and six weeks after major surgery, this isn’t easy. Thus a “partial” path to the cut-and-split wood has to suffice. Than it was wading through hip-deep snow and returning to the b...

 Most of us don't get to see the preparation and work that goes into a moose hunt in Northern New Hampshire, but yesterday my wife, Linda, and I ended our morning walk by spending four-and-one-half hours watching and talking to hunting guides and hunters after an 800-poiund moose had been shot and killed at a distance of 117 yards with a .338-caliber rifle.   This hunt was "done by the book", with the out-of-state hunters possessing the moose permit and hunting license . They were guided by a local New Hampshire guiding service that had scouted a vast wilderness close to our home in Errol, New Hampshire . The work getting the huge animal out of the woods was rigorous and required the labor of seven (7) men, tow straps and an all-terrain vehicle. The task required more than four hours clearing a trail, constantly shifting the moose carcass and gaining as little as six inches of progress at each attempt. After the moose was on the trailer, the recovery crew's first...

  I  had two camps, and I miss both of them! In northern New England  most of us call them camps, not cottages or cabins . I was  lucky  enough to have had two of them.  My first camp was not really mine, but as a kid I felt that it was.  My grandfather built it in the   mid 1950’s by the shores of   Merrymeeting Lake  in the Lakes Region of New Hampshire.  My  grandfather was an avid fisherman, and the area lakes, ponds and streams provided new   opportunities for him. However, he was not able to enjoy the camp for long. He died soon  after its completion. My mother named the camp  “Joe’s Haven”  in memory of her dad and  painted a sign with that inscription. The camp was a simple structure. It was small and had no insulation, running water or indoor  toilet facilities. We carried drinking water from a nearby spring, and we bathed in the lake.  For a 10-year-old boy i...