Bloggle

Driving back from Boston yesterday I saw the telltale blooms of steam billowing from hilltop sugar houses… Vermont’s surest sign that we’re at the muddy intersection between a long, snowy winter and spring greening. I suspect I won’t have opportunity to head into the woods this year to revisit some of Vermont’s family-owned sugar shacks, so I’m reprising a visit I made to the Isham family farm and maple sugarhouse… just down the road aways here in Williston.

Maple sugaring is a tradition that has flourished at the Isham family farm for five generations. It’s on the verge of a sixth generation — Mike Isham’s daughter Jennifer may well prove to be the first iPod-wearing sugarer in Vermont — provided the weather holds out. Maple sugaring happens only in the subtle dance between winter and spring, where the cycle of warming days and freezing nights makes the sap run. In the face of global climate change, Vermont’s tradition of sugaring may be in danger.
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My apologies for doing such a poor job of keeping things up-to-date here. Between the busy holiday season — and some other projects — I’ve been lax in my blogging.

To make amends, let me kick off the new year by filtering through the year just past… at least as seen by the eye of my camera. Here are my favorite photos of 2007. (Click to start the show, then you can navigate forward and back by clicking on the slides.)

Here’s to 2008!

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Christmas?! Wasn’t it Thanksgiving just a few days ago?

Sigh.

Rather than let another year slip by without taking the opportunity, let me wish you and yours the very best for this joyful and sacred season — whichever season you may happen to call sacred — and more still in the coming year.

Merry Christmas, one and all.

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Best wishes to one and all for a warm and happy holiday season.

I had thought that — much like that ol’ tradition of Thanksgiving dinners past — I should make a list of all those things that I’m thankful for. And so I started that list. In the end it’s grown so long as to be unseemly… and posting it would seem altogether arrogant, and maybe a poke in the eye to anybody who’s not been so fortunate as me.

Suffice it to say, I am a profoundly lucky and grateful individual. And what I wish for you, really, is that the list of things for which *you* are grateful is so long as to startle you, too.

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