The jagged peaks of the mountains surrounding the valley stretched the clear sky between them like the skin of deep blue drum. The sun, pausing at the zenith, cast a shadowless bright light on the dark ice of the frozen lake in the valley’s center. A dozen or more kids and a handful of adults swarmed over the dark ice like atoms, racing from end to end of the oversized rink chasing the darting of a jet black puck. Aside…
In the fine tradition of big-ass North Atlantic storms around Halloween (see: the so-called “perfect storm” of 1991; hurricane Sandy, 2012), New England got hit by a doozy of a tempest this past Sunday night, Oct. 29. Spawned by the atmospheric marriage of the remains of tropical storm Phillipe and a cold front moving off the mid-Atlantic coast of the U.S., Sunday’s night storm brought ferocious winds and heavy rains to the northeastern part of the country — including my…
Is it the hockey itself, the playing, that made my Friday evenings the highlight of my winter? Was it the camaraderie in the locker room and on the bench, a bunch of men (and a couple of women) ranging in age from teenager to 60-something all gathered for the common love of a game? Maybe it was simply the winding drive through the rolling forests and swirling creek bottoms of southeastern New Hampshire, the New England farmhouses with their white…