On my way to watch the eclipse of the century, I didn’t fuss about a reservation or add miles to the odometer of my old truck. Instead, for four mornings in a row, I worked on my whole-body tan and read a book. I did consider joining the crowd wearing the funny glasses on Mars Hill. (Don’t those glasses make people look like they are in a scene from a...
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When I told an old friend that the sale of my Maine house was closing 100 years and two days after the July moment when my grandfather signed a deed in 1917, he said, “How Finns flip houses.” I laughed and felt a fluttering of scenes from family history parade across my inner eye, like a small flip book making a jerky movie of the Finns landing in...
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The Boss, Chuck, Jeff, Chris and I sat in the shade of pine trees with lunches at our knees. A couple of the fellows enjoyed wife-wrapped leftover chicken and Tupperware squares of salad from home gardens. Jeff the Vegetarian smelled like garlic but not because of his lunch. He wore cloves around his neck to prevent something, I forget what; perhaps he...
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In the first mile I saw what I needed so I went no further that day. That is to say, though the topo map and my memory presented me with a 4.7-mile trail to the highest point in Arizona, within the first mile flower color slowed me down again and again. Purple and yellow caused me to bend over and finally stop altogether, take my hat and pack off, and...
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I looked through three closets, two trunks and assorted boxes; I found love letters I’d forgotten and folders to support taxes filed in the ’70s. I found my first bolo tie and the softball glove that caught stinging line drives in 7th grade. I came back to the search the next day and thought of a plastic bin stored in a crawl space and after a tricky reach...
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