Posts Tagged With: quill gordon

What’s Wrong With This Picture?

Osprey

Pandion haliaetus

Maybe the resolution ain’t so great, due to cropping and zooming, and maybe the white balance is off a bit, but I don’t think there’s a whole lot really wrong with that picture. It’s an osprey against a clear blue sky on a lovely late summer day and most people wouldn’t find anything wrong with that.

Most people.

“Now, wait just a darn minute, Quill,” some people are shouting right about now. “That’s an osprey! It’s going to eat all the fish! Someone should do something!”

Perhaps those people would find this picture more to their liking:

"Jack and the osprey" 1948

“Jack and the osprey” 1948 (Found Photo)

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Categories: nature, Vermont | Tags: , , , , , , | 3 Comments

Don We Now Archaic Barrel

We’re usually pretty well conditioned to winter by the time the solstice rolls around, but not this year. The lake iced over in November, as expected, and up went the signs admonishing those who read to stay off, but the ice went away. The signs stayed up though, for surely the ice would return, which it did for a few days before melting again.

The signs are still there and I know where the long-johns are, just in case, but the unusually mild weather we’ve been experiencing has made both about as useful as white fur on a bunny so far. There’s no snow in the woods or on the hills but at least the roads are nice and muddy.

If winter ever does decide to show up, we’re ready.

Stay Off The Ice -- if you see any.

Stay Off The Ice — if you see any.

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Categories: Humor, Stories About My Good Friend, Eugene, Vermont, Winter | Tags: , , , , , , | 3 Comments

Flashback Friday: Tannenbaum Edition

According to the National Christmas Tree Association, 13.9 million artificial Christmas trees were purchased in the United States last year. Of course, on their Statistics page, the NCTA is very diplomatic, tactfully referring to those trees as “fake.”

More than 26 million “real” trees were harvested for festive purposes in 2014, with 15% of consumers surveyed opting to cut their own. Choosing and cutting a tree is a tradition the whole family can enjoy, as shown in this ad for rifle scopes from the December, 1962, issue of Field & Stream.

So close!

Those two know the only thing worse than having the wrong scope when a buck like that appears is having no gun at all. We’ll hope they also know how hard it is to chase a deer through deep snow, trying to get close enough to whack it with your hatchet.

At least they appear to be properly dressed.

Dressed for Success

Dressed for Success

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Categories: Flashback Fridays, Humor | Tags: , , , , , , , | 6 Comments

Fall Color and a Few Things That Fell

The foliage this fall was lovely enough that some of the locals commented on it and a few of my photos even came out. Impatient people may scroll down to the slide show of pretty pictures any time they wish, but there is some important documentation to get out of the way first.

With a long, rich angling history, the shallows of Fish in a Barrel Pond were certain to reveal treasures as the level was drawn down this summer and I made sure to document them as they appeared. I’m afraid there was no bonanza of dropped reels or rods that had been thrown in frustration like 9-irons; nothing of much worth turned up in the muck, but that doesn’t mean it’s without value.

When someone hands me a drink and asks what the heck has to be done in order to catch a fish around here, I raise my glass and tell them I’m pretty sure that this ain’t it. As I have mentioned before, the situation is a little more complicated when that person is in their underwear, but my answer remains the same. Unless, of course, that person is fishing at the time. Continue reading

Categories: +The Neverwas Nonesuch Angling Society, Humor, nature, Vermont | Tags: , , , , , , , , , | 2 Comments

A Draining Season

Last seen on an early spring night, spinning down a muddy road, swigging from a jar of warm syrup, Quill Gordon did not bounce into a ditch, spill the syrup and contract a nasty case of distemper after being licked clean by raccoons. 

He did not pop an angler in the nose and wind up in rehab, nor did he find true enlightenment in a small cove on a June afternoon, skating caddis patterns one minute, disappearing in a sparkly poof the next.

If you think leading a normal, productive life makes it hard to keep up a blog, try it as the figment of someone’s imagination, always forced to crash trucks or achieve bliss against your will! Of course, none of those things actually happened so Quill Gordon is still here at Fish in a Barrel Pond, running around naked and peeing on stuff carefully putting the place to bed as one more season comes to an end — a season that was more unusual than seasons usually are around here, right from the start.

The universe did not get the memo asking that natural processes be synchronized with human calendars and the lake was still frozen when the members of the Neverwas Nonesuch Angling Society arrived for Opening Weekend. There wasn’t even a sliver of open water at the spillway where they could pose for pictures, pretending to fish while wearing snowshoes.

ice

Fish in a Barrel Pond, Opening Day, 2015

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Categories: +The Neverwas Nonesuch Angling Society, Vermont | Tags: , , , , , , , | 10 Comments

A Good Day to Make Syrup

(This video is hand-held and rudimentary, just like me. It includes free cheesy ambient music, also just like me.)

April 11 was the kind of day we deserve around here after the winter we just went through. Waiting for the ice to go off Fish in a Barrel Pond, I spent it stoking the fire at Bobo’s and attempting some video. The result:

Categories: Maple Syrup, Rural Life, Vermont | Tags: , , , , | 6 Comments

No Fooling, These are the Good Old Days

It may sound cruel to stand by and watch something die, but this is winter we’re talking about and there’s nothing you can do to help it along. The thing is — and this also applies to things other than winter — you don’t want to go poking at it or looking too close too soon. Under the influence of syrup, my last post did just that and winter delivered a reflexive kick to the cranium, knocking spring right out of my mind and causing me to put down the shears, deciding the beard can stay for while — at least until I get tired of it or burn it off feeding the arch at Bobo’s. One or the other; I can’t decide.

Winter and spring duke it out as they do every year and, as ugly as things get, they both end up just looking silly. Meanwhile, the rest of us wallow out through the mid-day slop and bounce home over frozen ruts at night, feeling like the punchline in some kind of big cosmic joke. Continue reading

Categories: +The Neverwas Nonesuch Angling Society, Fly Fishing, Humor, Vermont | Tags: , , , , , , , , , | 3 Comments

Emerges, Snarling

The curmudgeonly demeanor so essential to my charm nearly veered into the ditch of sociopathic behavior a few times this winter as the Shack Nasties made their annual bid for control. The Shack Nasties are terrible things, related to Cabin Fever but having nothing to do with the need to get outside. Cabin Fever is easily treated but the Shack Nasties are insidious and, once contracted, their cure consists mostly of endurance. Hundreds of blog posts and internet articles appeared this winter, with headlines like “Ten Quick Hacks to Beat the Winter Blahs” and I could almost relate, but my hacking was from working in the cold air and, on a good day, if I tried real hard, I could almost get myself worked up to “blah.”

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When folks who are used to a lot of snow say, “That’s a lot of snow,” you know it’s a lot of snow.

Ya think?

Ya think?

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Categories: Maple Syrup, Rural Life, Vermont | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , | 4 Comments

Repeat as Necessary

Fish in a Barrel Pond, in Winter

Winter Scene (In Color), Fish in a Barrel Pond

This ain’t my first trip around the sun and we’re passing through a very familiar stretch of orbit right now. Shrouded in snow, littered with  snapped utility poles and downed trees, it is winter and we cope with the cold, brace against the wind and prepare for the occasional shredding of the network of power and communication lines that serve this neck of the woods. No one needs to be told to go home and hunker down until the storm is over, allowing plows, emergency workers and utility crews to do their jobs, and no one emerges from their shelter pissed off that they took cover from something short of Doomsday itself.

It is winter. Embrace it, endure it, or leave. Continue reading

Categories: +The Neverwas Nonesuch Angling Society, Humor, nature, Rural Life, Vermont, Winter | Tags: , , , , , , , , , | 7 Comments

Closing Up

Everyone is anxious in spring, wondering when the ice will be gone, but I don’t field many inquires as to the time of its first appearance. The ones I do are often followed by, “But isn’t that early? or, “But isn’t that late?” or some such other nonsense.

nov 18

Fish in a Barrel Pond, November 18

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Categories: nature, Vermont, Winter | Tags: , , , , , , | 1 Comment

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