sports column
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Matthew Dickerson: A new national park and two trout-fishing firsts
The morning began with a rainy drive of a little less than an hour along the western edge of New River Gorge National Park in West Virginia.
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Matthew Dickerson: Of bluebonnets and butterflies
I confess that walking around a wildflower preserve does not jump to the forefront of my mind when I ponder outdoor activities.
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Karl Lindholm: Fenway meditations: Impressions of a Red Sox fan
I don’t actually remember my first game. I was too young. But I can imagine it, the incomparable thrill of it, because I have been similarly affected every…
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Karl Lindholm: Kelly, Noelle, and ‘the Bat!’
“The Bat” sits prominently on the windowsill in the office of Middlebury College softball coach Kelly Bevere. It’s a crummy old bat really, not much good for anything now,…
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Matthew Dickerson: Skiing at Rikert in March can excel
I’m standing on the snow at Rikert next to my wife Deborah, clicking my cross-country ski boots into my bindings.
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Karl Lindholm: ‘Value on the margins’: Phillies scout Erick Dalton
The image of a baseball scout in the popular mind is that of a wise and wizened veteran of the game, the way scouts are portrayed in “Money…
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Matthew Dickerson: Of long skating rinks and big snakes
The same climate change that is dramatically shortening the season for outdoor skating across the north — including places like the Rideau Canal Skateway — is also opening…
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Karl Lindholm: Winter Carnival, Panther Olympians: Becky Fraser
This weekend is the 100th Middlebury Winter Carnival and I find myself absorbed, perhaps ironically given the above, by Middlebury ski history and culture.
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Matthew Dickerson: Wendell Berry, the Bagginses, and more on walking
As soon as I hit “send” on last week’s column, I began pondering various works of literature that illustrated the virtues of walking and which have inspired me…
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Karl Lindholm: ‘Candlesticks always make a nice gift’
I love watching movies with my kids, now adults. These days, that usually means watching from home in a darkened living room on the big TV, without phones…
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Matthew Dickerson: A meditation on walking
My wife Deborah and I like to go walking. We are not interested in walking the Appalachian Trail. Nor even the Long Trail. Although we both find longer walks…
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Karl Lindholm: ‘Is this heaven?’ ‘No, it’s Pepin’
If I were the impresario of the Middlebury Men’s Alumni Basketball Weekend, I would have done it up right, with great hoopla.
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Matthew Dickerson: Fishing on thin ice
Even before stepping out onto the ice of Bryant Pond 30 minutes before dawn on New Year’s Day, I could tell it was going to be an unusual…
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Karl Lindholm: Warming up to the college’s sports hall of fame
About 10 years ago, I got wind of a plan to initiate a Middlebury College Athletics Hall of Fame to coincide with the construction of the new field…
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Matthew Dickerson: What fish taught me in 2022
It’s probably not accurate to say that fish taught me anything. Numerous fishing outings on which I failed to interact with any actual fish is evidence that I…
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Matthew Dickerson: Brutality, gentleness, nature and Advent
The natural world can be brutal.