Moosehead. The Kennebec. And An Endless Steps Workout

OH MY! Wildlife delivers $1.4 billion to Maine’s economy; $1.9 billion w multipliers. Begs the question, is the Moosehead Region ready to secure this and other nature-based economic assets against inappropriate development or over-use? Do all of Maine’s ‘gateway’ communities have the support they need to harness conservation for long-term economic health?

On August 16th, I will be a guest of a Natural Resources of Maine webinar to discuss recreation tourism in the Moosehead Lake region. The panel will share our ideas on the issue as well as tips of how to explore the region. (Info and registration here.)

Explore Moosehead Tips:

Suggest you access land sites around 6 AM (or on September weekdays) as hiking and fishing sites have gotten very popular. (Pandemic discovery has not waned.)

Paddling: Moosehead Lake often has big water, pushed by its forty-mile length. My favorite paddle is the north end of Indian Pond (fed by the Kennebec River’s two headwaters leaving the lake). It has protected shores, campsites, hidden coves and . . . Read more >

Rejection. Rejections. And Blizzard Therapy

I want to talk about rejections.

On Facebook and Instagram, and Twitter and these public places, we don’t usually hear about gut-wrenching stuff. These sites are perhaps how we market ourselves to the world. How we manage the front window of our lives and perhaps pull the curtain on the back room which might be darker and certainly messier.

I’m not saying what is shared out there isn’t genuine. These sharings simply seem selective as in . . . no one wants to hear someone whine.

I won’t go back too far, just to my last bout of job hunting (2008-2010) and then a bit of feedback as I shopped around my first novel. One led to the other. At the age of sixty-three (2009), when I seemed suddenly unemployable, my soon-to-be husband said, “Ok. Write the book. I’ll pay for vet bills and food.”

And I won’t try to say that rejection is a healthy thing that sets us on a better road or is a gift. That feels glib. Rejections hurt. Read more >

The Dogs of War. Are Family.

Every time I see a picture of Ukraine’s fleeing children, I think of my two young granddaughters and my own daughter, and everything aches. Just aches.

But every time I look at Raven (my rescued dog) I see the dogs of war. When I looked deeper for images of dogs and the war, I was overcome.

Read more >

A Different Light

This has been a very strange weather-winter. If I’d known it was going to offer up only a few special days when skiing or snowshoeing would work, I would have sought out each special day more carefully and treasured it.  Between the rain and the constant ice, ice, ice, and the crust layers that collapse unevenly under one’s skis pitching the body forward and the lake hiding layers of slush until one is knee-deep in it, it’s been a strange winter.

I’ve worn ice cleats on my boots just to make it to . . .

Read more (including an excerpt from my next book) >