Matthew Dickerson: Adventures in Alaska’s Gruening Park

It’s 5 a.m. on Aug. 2 — my second morning at Eaglerock Cabin in Alaska’s Ernest Gruening State Historic Park.

Karl Lindholm: Not Cooper Flagg maybe, but these Vermonters were special

If you are a basketball fan, you probably know the name “Cooper Flagg.” This past basketball season, he was the best high school player in the country.

Matthew Dickerson: Baby loons, raging wind and more

If we had noticed a weather alert with wind gust warnings of 70 mph — as had the folks in the RV two sites away from us who decided to vacate the campground for a few hours — we wouldn’t have stayed in the tent.

Karl Lindholm: Bill Walton never died before

Bill Walton died at 71 on May 27, not an age where you can say he was cheated in life, but it does seem he died too young. He was making such a joyful noise in the world.

Matthew Dickerson: Beware the marmots

When the day began, we had no idea that our greatest danger would come from marmots. Bears perhaps, or winding mountain roads. But marmots?

Karl Lindholm: Recognition is finally here for Negro Leagues

I didn’t think it would ever happen. Practically speaking, I didn’t think it was possible: that is, that the brilliance of Black baseball players during the 60 years of baseball’s segregation at the highest level could ever be officially acknowledged in t … (read more)

Matthew Dickerson: Two days enjoying nature of the Everglades

My cousin-in-law Ken likes to go for swamp walks in the Florida Everglades, making his way from one hardwood hammock to the next through the knee-to-waist-deep waters of the famed River of Grass.

Karl Lindholm: Cooperstown is a great place to be!

Have you been to Cooperstown? Recently? It’s about three and a half hours from here, the last 45 minutes of which are off the thruway and run through the beautiful hilly terrain of central New York.

Matthew Dickerson: Floridians have good reasons to restore the Ocklawaha

The first alligator I saw in the wild was somewhat anticlimactic.

Matthew Dickerson: Wild birds part of wastewater solution

One of numerous sad stories of environmental devastation in Florida has been its many efforts spanning well over a century to drain its wonderful wetlands, including even the famed Everglades. So it’s encouraging to hear stories of creative problem-solvin … (read more)

Matthew Dickerson: A fisher sees the wonder of native fish

It was only my second cast of the day: a little weighted nymph imitating a mayfly larva that I drifted along the bottom of a thigh-deep hole.

Karl Lindholm: Middlebury’s Freddy Mosier has played baseball everywhere!

“I think my passion for baseball started when I was four or five and my dad gave me a baseball card — a card of Albert Belle (a star for the Cleveland Indians),” Freddy Mosier told me over a beer at Fire and Ice last Sunday evening. 

Matthew Dickerson: Boosting native plants to promote nature’s lifecycle

A year and a half ago, my wife, Deborah, bought an Extractigator. What on earth is an Extractigator? The short answer is that it’s a device for yanking plants (think shrubs or small trees) out of the ground, roots and all.

Karl Lindholm: Women’s hoop has a record breaker: Alexa Mustafaj

In the quarterfinals of the NESCAC women’s basketball tournament on Feb. 17, Middlebury was down by four in the third quarter to the dreaded Amherst Mammoths. 

Matthew Dickerson: Let’s consider spawning salmon and hydropower without a dam

The phrase “wicked problems” has been around since at least the early 1970s. It refers to challenges that typically have no correct solution, but only different options of tradeoffs and costs: problems for which any proposed solution will have likely nega … (read more)

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