You show me fading trails you miss
For Valentine's Day, ![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
spatch and I climbed around a part of the Fells we had not explored before. It was windburningly cold and full of jagged granite and late bronze sun and wonderful.
This slightly apprehensive study in lichen and pink granite greeted us from the stone wall between visitors and the sluice from Bellevue Pond.
.
There were multiple signs posted about the hazard of the snow-hummocked ice with patches of tea-colored water surfacing through it, which did not stop us from spotting, off near the reeds, a skater.
We took the steeper of the two trails to the summit of Pine Hill, which even before it tilted into step-stairs of rock had trampled into ruts and knobs of grey slick ice beyond which the woods looked elegantly undisturbed. We read signs that it was the natural habitat of fishers whom we hoped were denned safe and warm.
We asked no directions from the slumped little snow-figure by the side of the trail.
The ice as we neared the summit took on the look of a tide, which was perfectly true in the last glaciation.
I am indebted toashlyme for the description of this quality of light as a seventies sun.
Wright's Tower was built by the WPA in 1937. I have no idea when it was tagged by Manny, but I loved the chime of the paint with the falling blue of the sky.
Its observation deck is open to visitors in season, but we just looked up at it.
I got a clearer picture of the Boston skyline which foregrounded itself with I-93 and panned out to the harbor islands, but this one had the scrim of winter-stripped trees.
Rob got a selfie of us under Valentine conditions.
The descending trail involved much less wishing aloud for crampons and pitons.
I was especially taken with the saurian-backed wall over the brook.
Because we had then been hiking for an hour below freezing, we made immediately for dinner in the form of roast beef sandwiches from the Bill & Bob's in Woburn which we ate in the car with a surfeit of napkins. Rob got French fries on the side, I got fried mushrooms in a little red-and-white paper carton into which I should not have poured ranch dressing without first securing a fork. It was chaotic and satisfying. The car in the streetlight-spotted dusk was starring in a film by Michael Mann.
We collected dessert from Frozen Hoagies in Winchester which we shared with my mother, who observed that my lips were still blue, but ice cream is winter food in New England, especially if it's coconut-milk between two snickerdoodles.
Home again, I metrushthatspeaks on a Zoom call with an impeccable sense of comic timing. Rob showed me Captains Courageous (1937), so sea-soaked that between acts I split a can of mackerel with Hestia. My fingers eventually warmed.
spatch and I climbed around a part of the Fells we had not explored before. It was windburningly cold and full of jagged granite and late bronze sun and wonderful.
This slightly apprehensive study in lichen and pink granite greeted us from the stone wall between visitors and the sluice from Bellevue Pond.
.There were multiple signs posted about the hazard of the snow-hummocked ice with patches of tea-colored water surfacing through it, which did not stop us from spotting, off near the reeds, a skater.
We took the steeper of the two trails to the summit of Pine Hill, which even before it tilted into step-stairs of rock had trampled into ruts and knobs of grey slick ice beyond which the woods looked elegantly undisturbed. We read signs that it was the natural habitat of fishers whom we hoped were denned safe and warm.
We asked no directions from the slumped little snow-figure by the side of the trail.
The ice as we neared the summit took on the look of a tide, which was perfectly true in the last glaciation.
I am indebted to
ashlyme for the description of this quality of light as a seventies sun.
Wright's Tower was built by the WPA in 1937. I have no idea when it was tagged by Manny, but I loved the chime of the paint with the falling blue of the sky.
Its observation deck is open to visitors in season, but we just looked up at it.
I got a clearer picture of the Boston skyline which foregrounded itself with I-93 and panned out to the harbor islands, but this one had the scrim of winter-stripped trees.
Rob got a selfie of us under Valentine conditions.
The descending trail involved much less wishing aloud for crampons and pitons.
I was especially taken with the saurian-backed wall over the brook.
Because we had then been hiking for an hour below freezing, we made immediately for dinner in the form of roast beef sandwiches from the Bill & Bob's in Woburn which we ate in the car with a surfeit of napkins. Rob got French fries on the side, I got fried mushrooms in a little red-and-white paper carton into which I should not have poured ranch dressing without first securing a fork. It was chaotic and satisfying. The car in the streetlight-spotted dusk was starring in a film by Michael Mann.
We collected dessert from Frozen Hoagies in Winchester which we shared with my mother, who observed that my lips were still blue, but ice cream is winter food in New England, especially if it's coconut-milk between two snickerdoodles.
Home again, I met
rushthatspeaks on a Zoom call with an impeccable sense of comic timing. Rob showed me Captains Courageous (1937), so sea-soaked that between acts I split a can of mackerel with Hestia. My fingers eventually warmed.
no subject
I have not read the novel in ages beyond the chapter excerpted in Andrew Lyett's Kipling and the Sea (2014), but the plot changes are significant enough to me that if you watched the film, it would probably work best to consider it more in the category of "inspired by" than "adapted from." All of the quotidian details of fishing off the Grand Banks are wonderful and include some location shooting in Massachusetts and the Maritimes. Spencer Tracy admitted at the time that he couldn't do accents and completely faked his way through being Portuguese, for which he won a very surprised Oscar.
no subject