Lazy evening after a good day outside.   I have some pictures left over from yesterday. I didn’t want to post newsy stuff about my day at the same time I posted about Brandon Kilburn’s death. I realized this morning when I read his obituary that Brandon was our friend’s Wes’s brother in  law. Wes’s dad, Marvin, is a good friend of most folks in Richmond. He runs Bridge Street Cafe.. My heart goes out to all those guys.

I was thinking about Sam all day… yesterday I had to go to Advanced Music to pick up one of Sam’s guitars… His Les Paul SG.. his first good electric. . It had been broken accidentally at one of our parties. Matt from Maple Street Guitar Repair had done an amazing job at restoring the broken neck. no matter how close you look., you cannot tell that it had been broken.   Matt told me that his 18 year old nephew was killed in a car accident a few years back. We sat and tlaked about life for awhile.. He’s a great guy.

On my way home I popped into Talent to buy Gabe some shoelaces.. No sign of Hannah, Dave, Adah or Senyah.. but  found the laces. I always appreciate the signs of Sam they keep there.

Last night was pretty quiet here. Gabe was up at the mountain. Kevin came down.. He’d passed his driving test yesterday !! (as did Hannah B and Alex B)
Unbeleiveable.. (not that he passed.. that he’s old enough to drive !)

Kevin doing his ‘drivers licence face’

Kevin took Sam’s newly fixed guitar and went out to the barn to play for awhile. That made me feel good.

This morning I managed to sleep until 9.. I think that was 11 hours ! (not counting 2-3 AM when Chai woke us up by having a really good/loud tail wagging dream)  I hadn’t gotten more than 5.5 hours any of the nights I was in NY last week. I guess I was tired..

Diane and I were eager to get outside today before the really cold air showed up this evening. We called Kathy and Lou and invited them to snowshoe from their side to our side of Robbin’s Mountain .

It’s an easy climb up from the Wes White Hill side.. and a not so easy descent down to our back yard. It’s only 2047 feet.. but the descent down to our house at 300 feet made it the steepest ascent/descent on the old long trail route.. The trail has been moved down Duxbury Road to the Banforth Ridge trail..

I’d inadvertently worn socks that were too small for me.. Wonderful Diane offered to swap with me.

It was a beautiful climb up.. not too steep.. not too cold..

I asked my favorite glacial boulder to pose for me…

There used to be a really rickety fire tower at the top of Robbin mountain. You could climb up it and see for miles in all directions.. if you held on tightly enough. One time Diane and I slept underneath it.. then hiked down in time for work. Now it’s been replaced with a huge (and ugly) radio, TV and Cell tower,,

But at least the cell reception is pretty good up there…

There’s a look-out right behind the tower with a great view of Camel’s Hump and Honey Hollow

… and a great view of Diane !

We ran into tow women hiker up there.. One of them, Krista, works at the Montior Barn where we had Sam’s concert in November.

We started getting cold so we headed down the western side of Robbins. There are soem great views looking North West and East  from there.. Here’s a pview of Bolton.. Hey.. I think I can see Gabe up there 🙂

Here’s looking over at Bolton Notch road.

It’s always a little dicey finding the old trail down that side of Robbin’s. The old Long Trail blazes have been painted over.. and many of the trees that were marked have since fallen down. We were happy to find these gray blazes. Even though it’s literally our back yard, it’s easy to get off the trail and have to bushwhack.. not always easy given the steep terrain.

Sam was very  much in my mind as I slid down the hills.. I took a sec to write his name in the snow as I always do..

We loved seeing all the  signs of life out there in the woods. We saw bear scratching, critter tracks and wood pecker holes.. Here’s someone’s home neatly chewed above one of the old trail blazes.

Home looked pretty inviting as we came down the last bit over the sledding hill. As I said.. it’s not far.. but it’s steep. We went in and had a hot bowl of chili

…then took Lou and Kathy back up to their house and picked up our car. .. Now.. I’m so sleepy I can hardly keep my eyes open.. and it’s not even 7PM..
I’m getting pretty lazy in my old age I guess..

Oh… one cool thing..While I was taking a bath to warm up my stiff and tired bones,  I was reading Dava Sobel’s excellent book ‘The Planets’ that came out in 2005. The book has some interesting stories, histories and poettry about each of the planets. Tonight I was reading about Mercury. She mentioioned the MESSENGER spacecraft whhich was headed towards Mercury. MESSENGER,which stands for Mercury Surface Space Environment GEochemestr and Ranging. was launched in 2004.   The book mentioned that it was scheduled to approach Mercury in Jan of 2008. Well. .. I checked.. it had it’s first good look at the planet 4 days ago.. and the first good pictures came back today…. Pretty cool coincidence.. no ?  Here are a picture that MESSENGER took of Mercury earlier this afternoon

Well.. that’s all for now.. have a good night folks.. Good night Sam..
-me