I'm now relaxing in my room at the Sheraton Hotel at Bradley Airport listening to planes take off.
Just finished with being home in Massachusetts helping out. Cold, cold, cold. Tried to get walking in on a regular schedule, but did not have much luck. The weather (snow, freezing rain, temps in the low teens and twenties) and an unpredictable schedule kept me from my appointed rounds except for some rare times when I could squeeze one in.
On one of those occasions, though, after a light snow, I carried my new camera and caught these raccoon tracks, fairly fresh, in the long driveway that meanders through the forest. There are some more pix, too, of my sister's house on the pond in the forest, and some roads and fields.
More than just taking pictures with a camera, I've been taking more interesting mental pix and integrating them into the general idea for a novel. I'm excited about it. Another New England story with all the salient New England stuff-- family, gray skies, dirty snow, then blue skies and fresh pure air and frigid air, the grinding sameness of every day as the winter wears on, interminable and forbidding.
Now its back to Guam for the last four months of work before I retire. Can't wrap my brain around that idea. Reading: The Road by Cormack McCarthy. It is a fitting book for a New England winter, all ash and bitterness. This past few weeks, while living on a pond in a forest, I also dipped into Thoreau's Walden. His scolding, finger wagging wisdom, while sound enough advice, can get a bit tiresome.
