Chopping Fire Wood

The man is not an IRS tax collector or a faceless oil executive, but a fun squandering third grade teacher or an overbearing parent. As a little squirt, the pedantic teachers and volunteer parents at my local elementary school squandered my fun, telling me to wash my hands, wear safety goggles and not to wrestle with other boys during touch football. In their soulless eyes, scraped knees, bumped elbows and fat lips are gateways to barbarianism.

In order to provide wood for the perpetually burning fire on the shore Grand Pond, we walked to the nearby woods to participated in some "forest thinning" in the hopes protecting the great Maine woods against potential forest fires and under cooked marshmallows.

With Tucker's hatchet we attacked cherry saplings like Paul Bunyan, reclaiming our manhood one chip at a time.

Sometimes the hatchet got over zealous and bit off more than it could chew, latching onto a log like a burr into a wool sock. A jarring swing and a well placed hand liberated the hatchet, and Tucker was back in action.

By wearing a Barbour International motorcycle jacket, a Filson Mackinaw hunting jacket, a pair of Red Wings work boots, or other pieces of clothing associated with a potential dangerous, yet pure activity, you are sticking your nose up to the shoulder pad laden third-grade teacher that put you in time out for running down the hallways or jumping out of the swing at recess. Here's to you Mrs. Johnson, "We will use hand chopped wood to cook our wieners, not some safe burning, mongoloid hybrid of wood pulp and fossil fuels!"

Here are some more links,
Chopping wood (Picasa),
Paul Bunyan Disney,
Flamz Errol Morris (High Life).

A Few Days on Great Pond

After finishing my last test and turning in my final essay, I joined nine friends to make the twenty mile drive due west to Tucker's cabin on Great Pond in the Belgrade Lakes region of Central Maine. We brought nothing but the essentials: ten sleeping bags, four beer balls and two cases of beer, ten pounds of hamburger meat and two pounds of flank steak, three fishing poles, two dozen night crawlers, two avocados, five packs of Bubbilicious Bubble Gum and one pack of original Redman.

For three days we terrorized the cold waters of Great Pond in search of elusive brown trout and male bonding. We woke up early and fell asleep late.

Regardless of how often I organize my tackle box, it inevitably looks like this. I guess tackle box entropy is an essential part of fishing and a necessary hurdle standing between a fishing pole and a golden fried trout.

Four of these Beer Balls lubricated the cold the water of Great Pond and sleeping on the hard floor of Tucker's uninsulated cabin.

We relied on manpower to negotiate the glacial lake, not this fine piece of American outdoors equipment.

LL Bean Old Town Canoe like my Grandpa has. Old Milwaukee Beer like my dad drank at the University of Wisconsin. Night Crawlers like I used on the banks of the Columbia River as a little boy.

Tucker's Blackberry is back in action after five months in Copenhagen studying architecture. I look forward to bopping around Maine next fall with Tucker after my summer in the Big City.

We didn't catch a single fish, but we sure drank a lot of beer, ate a lot of meat, burned a lot of wood and told a lot of stories. I couldn't ask for a better start to my summer. Many thanks to Heather, Tucker's mom, for letting us use the cabin.

Here are some more links,
Fishing on a Monday (Picasa),
Fishing in a Canoe (Vimeo).

H(Y)R Collective Issue 12: Lunch over Ralph

Issue 12 of the H(Y)R Collective is now up. A couple weeks ago I met with Jon Patrick from the Selvedge Yard and chatted with John Fiske and Lee Norwood from Rugby about their personal sense of style and influences while we had lunch and some cookies. JP wrote up our discussion and I took photos for a Focus article in Issue 12 of H(Y)R Collective.

Please head over to the site and check it out. We are really happy with how it turned out. Make sure to look for Lee's comments about the style blogging space. He has some interesting conclusions.

We are already hard at work on our next Focus article about LL Bean bringing back the Norwegian Sweater. Look for it to come out in a month or so.

Here are some more links,
Issue 12 H(Y)R Collective,
Jon Patrick from the Selvedge Yard (ART).

A Family of Red Foxes Near Bath, Maine

"I will be down there in a couple of hours," I told my friend Tucker. "I am going to take back roads. It will probably take me two or three hours with stops," I said as I grabbed my two cameras and my Filson Jacket and headed towards the car. After fueling up Nick's 1994 BMW 525I with 87 octane unleaded, I headed south towards Cape Elizabeth with four unassigned hours to negotiate the old BMW for miles. I expected to see barns, Mainards, or perhaps the occasional abandoned boat but I never expected to see a family of red foxes near Bath, Maine.

Twenty five miles north of Bath, the Maine woods started closing in on the two-lane highway and cell phone reception dropped. Just as I started thinking about turning around and heading west towards 295, the woods opened up, exposing a small field with two bulls standing on a small knoll. I slowed down to look at the bulls and spotted three foxes, a mother and two kits, playing with flowers.
Seeing these foxes made me realize that I soon will live far from foxes and picturesque rural farms like this. After I graduate in almost exactly a year, I will most likely move to a large city and start working a lot. Lee Norwood recently told me a story about how the year he started working for Ralph Lauren, he bought a top of the line backpacking stove and has yet to use it. He has worked at RL for twenty years.

After chasing the kits into the woods for the third time, I hopped back in Nick's BMW and headed south grinning ear to ear. Within three minutes I saw a weasel and turkey. Maybe I will be able to balance my professional career with doing other things I love.

Here are some more links,
Red Fox (Wikipedia),
A Family of Foxes (Picasa).