A travel haikuurged by good friend James Draper:You can, just do you Near Memphis in rainDodging dead deer and truck tiresClutt’ring up my lane

BIll and Barb are regulars here, driving up from Blairsville, PA for a 3-day weekend as often as possible. Knowing this is the last weekend of my season, they piled…

By the end of every summer at Allegheny Reservoir, the insatiable demands of a power plant downstream have outpaced the Pennsylvania rain. Happily, the barren bottom of Willow Bay becomes…

Wet and windy weather this week threatens the tenuous hold of colorful elm, aspen, maple, and birch leaves. The grass remains green, the asters still bloom but the trees know…

In the panoply of fall foliage, the aspen in the west and the maple in the east collect all the plaudits. The aspen blankets whole mountainsides in golden cascades. The…

A-la Johnny Appleseed, Frank comes from town in September and collects hickory nuts from beneath the hickory trees that populate Willow Bay Recreation Area and the Allegheny National Forest. He…

Some of you may have been National Geographic magazine devotees decades ago as I was. I’m proud to say I once owned at least one copy of every issue from…

Cool (40 degrees) air. Warm (69 degrees) water. Fishing for walleye in the wispy fog.

Storm coming in over the ridge. (P.S.: If you’ve a goldenrod allergy, this is not the time or place for you.) Arriving. My friend from long ago Wesley Griffin, would…

Music on a pleasant summer night is a treat. Don McLean, in his early 70s mega-hit asked “can music save your mortal soul?” I’m gonna say “no.” But music on…