Notes From the North Country

This past summer I wrote an article that was published in American Whitewater Magazine called “Jamie McEwan: A Remembrance.” This article is about Jamie McEwan — the whitewater canoeing demi-god who won an Olympic bronze medal, once paddled the “Mt. Everest of Rivers” in Tibet, and even managed to teach me how to kayak.  His death from cancer was the occasion for this article.  I’ve uploaded it to this site under “Books and Articles,” but I also wanted to post a link to it here.

Enjoy:

Jamie McEwan: A Remembrance of New England’s Most Famous Boater (American Whitewater Magazine, 2015)

“Jamie McEwan was handsome.  That much I remember thinking.”

Skating for a Fall

If there’s one thing that’s fun to do in your spare time, it’s things that you’re already good at.  During the winter, that thing for me is skiing.  I have skied almost since I could stand, and if there is a hobby I could be said to be competent at, it’s downhill skiing.  Although I don’t hunt for small cliffs to ski off anymore, or throw backflips in the terrain park while trying to keep my sagging pants from falling down like my teenage students, I’m still pretty good at skiing.  It’s comfortable.  I can show up at a hill and know what to expect.  I can get myself down most any white-colored incline.  I can rest fairly assured that I won’t do anything that will cause lasting embarrassment, such as losing control of my skis and taking out a giant inflatable can of Red Bull near the base lodge, or forgetting to dismount the chairlift and needing to be coaxed down by the liftee, or crashing and losing my hat and mittens in front of an entire women’s ski team.

Of course, all of those scenarios are back in play now that I have taken up snowboarding.  Last season I fell more times in a single day than I did in decades of skiing.  Most of those falls happened within speaking distance of the base lodge (some in the lunch line).  But none were serious, and learning to snowboard made the mountain big again.  It wasn’t comfortable — but it was exciting.

 

Continue reading “Lake Morey Skating”

Citing evidence of low levels of employer satisfaction, a new study by the non-profit Lincoln Organization indicates that our nation’s public schools are failing to adequately prepare graduates for jobs that don’t exist yet.  “We are not equipping our students to compete in an increasingly changing global workplace,” says Steven Joyce, lead researcher on the study.  “The jobs of tomorrow are going to require skills we haven’t even thought of, and it’s the job of our schools to teach those skills.”

Experts cite the advance of technology as evidence of how quickly the job market is changing.  “When I was in high school, computers didn’t even exist,” says software CEO Jane Davis.  “Nothing could have prepared me for the new fields I would dominate using the problem solving skills I picked up in public school classes like math and English.”

Continue reading “Local Schools Doing Poor Job of Training Workers for Jobs that Don’t Exist Yet”

Continue reading “Conservative Voter Wants Things to go Back to the Way They Were When Donald Trump was a Reality TV Star”

Last Tuesday morning, as the sun rose over the Atlantic Ocean, a flurry of jets descended into Manchester International Airport.  The planes carried Bernie Sanders, Donald Trump, Hillary Clinton, and most of the other candidates for president of the United States.  Up front, where first class would be, the planes also carried the candidates’ entourages:  opinion makers, deal cutters, spin doctors, strategists, and confidants.  In the rear, in economy class, rode the journalists, bloggers, and television reporters who cover them.  The American political establishment has two halves: those who govern, and those who want to.  The former was in Washington, D.C., winding down the seventh year of Barack Obama’s presidency.  The latter, who roundly debate Mr. Obama’s legacy, had flown through the night from Cedar Rapids and Des Moines, where polls had just closed, to New Hampshire, where in seven days the state’s 1.3 million residents would pull voting levers.

Continue reading “A New Hampshire Independent”

It’s a feeling of panic.  Your heart races, your palms moisten, your eyes race down the page.  Everything, all of it, looks like hieroglyphics.  Frantically you search for something — anything — that you recognize.  Something you can start with.  You frantically flip to the second page, then the third, your eyes racing down the page, heart pounding in your ears.  By the time you scan helplessly to bottom of the last page, there is nothing you know how to do.  Suddenly hits you — you have absolutely no idea what you’re doing.

Surely others are panicking too?  But a quick glance around you reveals that even those dullards are weaving their way crisply through the opening problems.  Suddenly you feel completely, utterly stupid, and totally alone.  Your eyes dart to the door.  You want to leap up and run — but you can’t.  They’d stare.  They’d talk.  Are they staring right now?  Can they tell that you have no idea?  Your heart races faster . . .  You’ve got to find something you know how to do . . .  You can’t pass in a blank test . . .  Control your fear . . .  But it’s too late . . .

Suddenly you’re wide awake.  You’re sitting straight up in bed, heart racing, forehead dripping sweat.  It’s 3 am and you’re a fully grown adult and you’ve just had a nightmare that has, strangely enough, become more frequent since you left school.  As you try to catch your breath, two words come to your lips in a whisper.

“Math class . . .”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jvfoqJdJpKM&t=5m25s

I’m 34 years old and haven’t opened a math book since before “Google” was a verb and I still get nightmares about being back in math class.

Continue reading “Math Anxiety”

Back when I taught in Washington, D.C., my high school students were spectacularly bad at geography.  Not only did they struggle with finding other countries on a map, they struggled with U.S. states.  

They were especially bad at New England.  

“Come on!” they’d moan.  “Connecticut, Massachusetts — what’s the difference?”

“That’s not Massachusetts,” I’d say, glancing at their maps.  “That’s Canada.”

Continue reading “The Difference Between Vermont and New Hampshire”

Not long after we began dating, my girlfriend found a photo of me with my ex.

“Who’s that?” she asked.  

I’m sure that for normal, mature folks — you know, people who’ve actually had at least a couple of serious relationships by the time they’re 31 — this is still a tough question, but one you get used to answering.  You learn how to be honest about your past without dwelling on it.  You learn how to talk about someone you once cared a lot about, without sounding like you still care too much.  You learn how to avoid saying things like, “Oh, her?  Well, you were asking me why I bought this gun . . . ” In other words, you get used to answering this.

Continue reading “Getting Over the Ex”

“These guys are good, T.J.”

“Yeah, but they’re not from Detroit.”

–Aspen Extreme, 1993

It’s a great moment at the start of a very bad movie: two buddies are at the top of a steep mogul trail in Aspen, Colorado, waiting for their turn to show what they can do.  If they make it to the bottom in one piece, they have a chance to become ski instructors at Aspen and make lots of money.  Everything about this is absurd, of course.  Like I said, it’s not a great movie.  But then one of the buddies, Dexter, looks over at the other, T.J.  Dexter is clearly intimidated by the great skiers around them: “These guys are good, T.J.” After all, these two guys have probably never skied a trail this steep before.  They’re wearing jeans.  Their home ski area?  Mt. Brighton, Michigan — “200 feet of landfill.” Here at Aspen, they’re out of their league in just about every possible way.

But they do have one ace up their sleeve.  Just as it’s their turn to go, the other buddy, T.J. — the more confident of the two — lowers his goggles.  “Yeah,” he says, “but they’re not from Detroit.” Game on.  They jump over the edge.  Guess who’s ripping down the moguls, passing everyone, and throwing double helicopters like an early 90s Johnny Moseley?  Guess who makes the Aspen Ski School?  The guys from Detroit.

Continue reading “On Being a Connecticut Skier”

“It’s an Asheville winter.”

That’s what my fiancee and I have been telling each other this December.  Usually during the week after Christmas we retreat to the warm temperatures of Asheville, North Carolina to hike the Great Smoky Mountains.  This year we don’t need to: Christmas temperatures in the 50s here in the North Country of New Hampshire felt more like the Smokies than the White Mountains.  So far, the winter of 2015-2016 has been the warmest and the least snowy I can remember.  Normally I ski a lot during my birth month, but this December I’ve skied just once.  Although most of the resorts are managing to stay open, the trails at Wildcat, Waterville Valley, and Cannon are mostly grass.

In lieu of skiing, I’ve taken advantage of the warmer temperatures and lack of snow to continue hiking the White Mountains.  What follows is a list of the best off-season hikes I’ve been doing in the northern White Mountains.

Continue reading “Northern New Hampshire’s Best (Off-Season) Hikes”