Leila Hawken
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Humans welcome too at ‘Dogs Only Hike’
Sep 25, 2024
Alec Linden
Rusty maple leaves shook overhead in a light morning breeze as hikers both human and dog mingled at the edge of a large field. Residents and their canine companions congregated the morning of Saturday, Sept. 21, at the Hart Farm Preserve for the Cornwall Conservation Trust’s (CCT) “Dogs Only Hike,” and pleasant chit-chat filled the air, interrupted by the occasional bark or whine.
Previously, the CCT’s guided walks did not allow dogs to join due to logistical and safety concerns such as trip hazards from leashes and excitable pets, CCT board member Katherine Freygang explained. She organized this outing so that residents could finally enjoy a guided walk on CCT managed land without leaving their furry friends at home.
Before the group embarked on the short walk, Phil Hart, whose family owned the land before it was purchased by the CCT in 2003, gave a brief overview of the layout of the property and various hiking opportunities either directly within the preserve or immediately adjacent. “There’s so much the Trust can do with this,” he said, alluding the many possible uses for the property, which is composed of fields and woodland.
The group set off down the field’s edge and descended into a meadow brimming with milkweed for monarch butterfly habitat. The trail then passed into a woodland, where people happily ambled along as dogs flitted back and forth among the group. At one point, Freygang stopped to clear a spiky branch of invasive multiflora rose from the path, then shortly after identified a growth of bittersweet, which she explained is also invasive.
Freygang noted that while she usually organizes guided walks around a theme or focus, she felt this specific outing called for a more relaxed format. “I just decided to let this one be open and social and fun,” she said, adding that she plans to use this structure more in future hikes.
After a brief but steep uphill climb over rugged terrain, the group emerged in a spacious oak grove at the top of Cherry Hill. Humans and dogs regathered themselves into their respective family units before heading to the main viewpoint of the excursion, a picnic clearing looking south over a field toward West Cornwall’s rolling green hills, now lightly speckled with orange and red.
Here, people relaxed and chatted while dogs, some recently freed of their leashes, chased each other and rolled in the grass. The canine personalities in the group were as diverse as their owners’: golden retrievers Chester and Rufus burst with excitement and social energy, while wirehaired pointing griffon Dottie was more reserved and stayed close to her owner Todd’s side.
Not all participants brought dogs. Leslie Middlebrook of Cornwall was simply there to enjoy the morning and watch the dogs play. “I have cats,” she said. Another hiker recently had a dog pass away, and had joined for a “puppy hit,” as Freygang termed it.
The group eventually descended the hillside back to the cars, where the walkers said their goodbyes. While the group parted ways, Freygang assured that future “Dogs Only” hikes are coming – we just have to hope that humans are invited to the next one as well.
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Charlie Brown comes to town
Sep 25, 2024
Matthew Kreta
The Sharon Playhouse opened the final production of their main season, “You’re a Good Man Charlie Brown” on Friday, Sept 20. The show will be open until Sept 29 and has a run time of one hour and forty minutes.
The popular “Peanuts” comic strip upon which the show is based lends an inspiration far beyond the characters and their likenesses. The vast majority of the play flows quickly from scene to scene. Most scenes are structured like a four panel comic strip and no central plot point in the show stays for more than a few minutes. These quick changes are intermingled with delightful musical numbers that cover a number of different styles in nearly every song, from opera, slow ballads, dream ballets and high energy showstoppers. Ultimately, this heavily works in the musical adventure’s favor. This snappy, ever shifting approach to the show gives the audience plenty of different vignettes to see these iconic characters interact in. There are plenty of laughs and a full range of antics to enjoy.
Every minute of the show is absolutely packed with charm, thanks in no small part to the Sharon Playhouse’s efforts by its cast and crew. The set is stylized with bright colors and sharp shadowing like a cartoon, and the iconic costumes of the “Peanuts” gang keep each cast member distinct and really make them show against the backdrop. Charlie Brown’s striped shirt finds its way into several layers of the set design as well, contributing to the angles of the set as well as some clever lighting.
The members of the six person show each have a few moments where they really get to shine, and the simple charm of the show has clearly rubbed off on them as much as it had the audience. Daniel Plimpton (Charlie Brown), Nicolas Alan Fernandez (Snoopy), Courtney Balan (Lucy), Sammy Pignalosa (Linus), Jason Williams (Schroeder) and Hayley Podschun (Sally) each bring their all to the performance and won the hearts of the opening night crowd thoroughly. Some musical standouts include “Suppertime”, “My Blanket and Me”, “T-E-A-M” and the absolutely incredible end of Act I, “The Book Report”. Despite the hall being only about half full, the laughter and applause bouncing off the walls felt like a full house.
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Tangled: August wrap-up
Sep 25, 2024
Patrick L. Sullivan
I spent August at the old farmhouse on Mt. Riga. Most of the time it was just me. The cousins came and went weekends, and Mom pretty much stayed down at base.
Because I tend to drop things in the morning until I ship some coffee aboard, I took to making it the night before and putting it in one of those big Thermos jugs with a dispenser thingy. If you prime the jug ahead of time with boiling water it really works well. Coffee that goes in the jug at 9 p.m. is piping hot at 6 a.m. This is much better than stumbling around waiting for the ancient percolator to do its thing.
I was somewhat handicapped in the fishing department by two nagging injuries. My right bicep/tricep seems to be permanently sore, as if I decided to bench press 300 pounds all of a sudden, and my right knee hurts when I go up or down stairs, or the equivalent of stairs.
So I did not go out for extended sessions. I confined myself to about half of the lake, simply because I didn’t want to get way the hell out there and have an arm or knee problem.
The Housatonic River is chock full of brown trout, and soon it will be cool enough to target them.Patrick L. Sullivan
I caught numerous fat largemouth bass, and not quite as many and quite as fat smallmouth. Also some surprisingly large perch and two pickerel. No panfish at all, although they were certainly there. And no crappies for the third year in a row.
There was very little surface action. I generally brought two rods, Western and/or Tenkara, one rigged for surface and one for sinking. After I got bored heaving the heavy Bass Vampire around underwater, I’d switch and try a popper or gurgler and some such. Very occasionally it brought something to the surface, such as the time I chucked a big dragonfly pattern and a smallie boiled up from under a lily pad and caught it before it landed.
But for the most part the action was subsurface.
I did not keep anything this year. There is a lady on the mountain who loves any sort of fish and eats them right down to the eyeballs, and I like to indulge her if possible. But her schedule and mine never coincided to the point where a bass could go from net to cooler to kitchen in a matter of hours, and I am not going to try to refrigerate a lunker in our small propane fridge. It wouldn’t work very well and there would be no room for important dietary staples, such as the half dozen bottles of different kinds of mustard, all with less than an ounce remaining, that always accumulate in this setting, by federal law.
I began the month throwing pike flies with a 10 weight, experimenting with wire leaders and different types of short sinking heads, and so on.
But the arm got so sore I dialed down to a six weight Western rod and the lighter side of the fixed-line arsenal, and cheesed the heavy pike flies in favor of standard items such as size 6 conehead Woolies with rubber legs. (Always get the rubber legs.)
Various infirmities meant that the author only made one trip in August into "Snodgrass Gulch," a code name for a favorite brook trout stream.Patrick L. Sullivan
Lake angling was leavened a few times by brook trout hunting in the Riga brook and, more significantly, one trip into Snodgrass Gulch (not its real name).
The latter requires a pretty hefty hike and involves a lot of the motion that hurts the knee, so I was antsy about it.
But the knee didn’t trouble me much, which I attribute to pressing down on dirt instead of something hard like a wooden stair.
So all in all it was a decent month, a little subpar but by no means terrible or disappointing. I’d say the highlight was the improvement in the smallmouth population and the low point was the evening a storm blew up out of nowhere. I went from bobbing around peacefully in the gloaming to getting drenched as the air temperature dropped 15 degrees in as many minutes and fighting a nasty chop in a pontoon boat singularly ill-suited for the purpose.
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