Outdoors in Maine: A Winter Paradise with All the Trappings

Summary

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Today I cannot be with you on the ice. I am with my wife in a small mobile home somewhere in the Florida Keys. It is 78 degrees, sunny and a light easterly breeze stirs the palm fronds. Fishermen are headed out to the reef with coolers full of cold drinks and chum. Their boats churn up large white wakes that break up the endless expanse of turquoise water. There will be fish for supper here. Mangrove Snapper or Dolphin. But while out on the reef line, I will think of you. In my mind's eye, I will see you on your snow- sleds heading up the lake, your tote sled laden with the ice auger, the bait buckets, the food and the packbasket of tipups.

Your first ice fishing day of the New Year will break cold, clear and windless. Snow-capped Mt. Katahdin will still be there, reflecting purple light from the ascending new day. A raven may circle lazily over the frozen lake. Along the shoreline, tracks of a small critter will follow the shoreline up the lake and then veer off into the stark grayness of the beech ridge above the lake.

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Extract

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Outdoors in Maine: A Winter Paradise with All the Trappings

Wilderness silence. Precious solitude. How wonderful it will be to be there yet again, and to recognize with thankfulness the inevitable continuity of the natural world. ...

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