ClimbingSky

Why Baseball, Books, and the Grateful Dead matter

  • Opening Days

    It is Sunday morning, and after a 70-degree day yesterday, today we are looking at highs in the high 30s. It is spring in the North Country. Spring, of course, means baseball. On Thursday, my local nine, the Minnesota Twins, will be opening the 2026 season at Camden Yards when they play the Baltimore Orioles.… Read more

  • FOOD FOR THOUGHT FRIDAY: Pablo Neruda on Spring

    “You can cut all the flowers but you cannot keep Spring from coming.” ~ Pablo Neruda Read more

  • The Long-Range Forecast

    It has been a long winter here in the North Country. On Sunday, a blizzard brought everything to a halt; it was so severe that officials even canceled the second day of the Fly Fishing Expo in St. Paul. Fortunately, I had gone on Saturday this year. When I was in elementary school in Eastern… Read more

  • Spring on the Big Two-Hearted River

    Every spring for more than 45 years now, I re-read The Big Two-Hearted River. It is, to my mind, the best story about fishing ever written. It is also one of the five best short stories I have ever read. In the early 1980s my friend Bob and I camped and fished the Escanaba River in… Read more

  • FOOD FOR THOUGHT FRIDAY: Camus on Hope

    “In the depth of winter, I finally learned that within me there lay an invincible summer.” — Albert Camus Read more

  • Back in the North Country

    II am back in Minnesota after spending a week with my daughter and son-in-law in Brooklyn. Just a few weeks from Opening Day and we have snow here. I have mentioned here before that I grew up in Montana. When I start complaining about snow this time of year, I try to remind myself that… Read more

  • Wandering in Brooklyn

    I am back in Brooklyn this week, hanging out with my daughter and son-in-law. I’m spending my time prepping a poetry manuscript and really just wandering. Ultimately, I think I’m trying to center myself after the death of my brother, Paul, last week. I am a wanderer by nature. The best part of traveling for… Read more

  • RE-READING: War of the Worlds

    During February, I re-read the H.G. Wells classic The War of the Worlds. In March, I will be re-reading Hemingway’s “Big Two-Hearted River.” The latter is a story I have re-read every spring now for more than 45 years. I have come to believe that one of the many reasons I re-read books is that returning to them… Read more

  • FOOD FOR THOUGHT FRIDAY: W.B. Yeats on Imagination

    “By logic and reason we die hourly; by imagination we live”.  ~ W.B. Yeats Read more

  • My Brother Paul (1962-2026)

    On Monday, I received the call I had been preparing myself to receive for almost two years now. It was from the Santa Cruz, California, Sheriff’s Department. My brother Paul had been found dead. I am the oldest of three boys. I was born in 1960, Paul in 1962, and Jon in 1970. Paul and… Read more