From April through October, mushrooms brightened my 2019. Within a few weeks of stowing the ice-fishing gear, I was cutting pheasant backs and hoping for morels. In retrospect, it’s striking that I’ve wandered around the woods of eastern North America for 35 years or so, hardly taking notice of the bracket fungi, cap-and-stems and puffballs […]
Read more "A Fertile Fungal Forest"At the close of the Eighteenth Century, the nation of France went through decades of violent upheaval that we generally remember as the French Revolution. The old guard was no more and altruistic fellows like Monsieur Robes Pierre grasped the reigns of power. Change was in the air and a distinctly French vein of liberty […]
Read more "Seasons in the Forest"Nessmuk, among the best known writers of the era preceding establishment of New York’s Adirondack Park, chronicled thousands of miles paddled in light-weight canoes across the waterways of that region. His writing, while not verbose or particularly elevated, conveys much about the reality of that region, at that time. Though much of it may have […]
Read more "The Organic and the Beautiful"WikiparX is, foremost, a reflection of me, Cedric Keith. I’ve thought throughout my life about starting an outdoor business and about just what kind of a business that should be. My first foray into this realm was the selling of my own flies (fly fishing lures) beginning at about the age of […]
Read more "Announcing WikiparX"Are forests in decline? Is the forest of the northeast in decline? These are two broad questions I’ve spent a lot of time building a response to over the last several years. It’s not my primary pre- occupation but I give some attention to it because of its relevance to my studies and writing involving […]
Read more "The Wild Northeast: a Rebuttal to Eco-planners"I woke this morning at first light laying on the moss and humus in my sleeping bag. I could hear the stream rolling past a hundred feet or so downhill and the first songbirds of the morning were getting a timid start. I ate breakfast with my back against a tree trunk watching the forest […]
Read more "How Every Day Should Start"We all dream of disappearing into the forest and living there away from noise and people, I think. At least among us men, I’m pretty sure we all do from time to time. I’m one of the few people who’s actually done it – then I wrote a book about it. But there was at […]
Read more "The Wild Life"