Dryden Is Home

A weekend of Driving and Flying

When you are 5 and you go on a trip to New Hampshire the world seems huge. You remember just enough to be able to say you remember. Maybe a sign or a tree or a person, but probably not a conversation in detail.

When you are 9 and you return to the place you remember it for the week away from home. A week at camp in a tent. A hike in a lightning storm and singing songs with your best friend.

When you are 14 and you show up to work at camp a crazy man with a condiment name glares and listens and teaches. You meet some people that will be the bridge to friends that you will keep for the rest of you life. You make mistakes, you learn, you have fun.

When you are 18 and you are in charge of a small camp department you answer a lot of questions. You teach a little and learn more about yourself than the subjects you are teaching. You find your strengths and your weaknesses. You hide and search. You get up early and swim. You get to know a few people better.

When you are 22 and return as a staff member of another camp you battle on the ballfield and you find that the home team is the one you are on. The people that have replaced you are different. The people who have stayed behind are stronger and have learned to delegate.

When you are 30 and return as a guest you find that the people that were campers are now in charge. The people that taught you almost everything are long gone. The few in between, John and Dan, bridge a gap between generations. You wonder if there is a way to do it all - and then you drive home realizing that the world is still a huge place and there are a lot of things to do.

A couple days ago I showed up on the doorstep of Camp Wanocksett and relived a few moments of my camp days - tonight I will be attending the Dryden Democratic Caucus where I will be nominated for a four year term on the Dryden Town Board. Everything I've learned so far prepares me for what I will do next.

(The guy floating above is now in charge)

Blurred Birds in Flight

Yesterday afternoon I hiked (or walked) a portion of Dryden's "Freeville Trail" from Springhouse Road, past George Road and into land about halfway to the Village of Freeville. I was joined by Dryden Town Environmental planner Dan Kwasnowski - he has walked and planned most of the trail and knew a lot of the history that I wanted to learn.

Along the way we saw a number of animals and signs of animals. I've posted a set of pictures to flickr. The first animal we spotted was a large beaver swimming in a beaver pond that was diverting Virgil Creek. We spotted a large group of blue birds swooping down along the inlet of "Lake George" and the circle around and swoop again. My bird photography skills are lacking, but you can see a few pictures of the large group and a few blue blurs. I also spotted two deer.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/dmakar/sets/72157600051608866/

Other items to note in the photos:

• A large group (gaggle) of Canadian Geese circling over Lake George
• The brambles that are growing between the trail and the inlet
• The snow falling (it was 30 degrees and windy when we started, probably 25 and snowy when we finished)
• The large tree gnawed by a beaver
• A traditional beaver hut
• A junkyard beaver hut (where we saw the beaver swimming)
• The beautiful (and foggy) land that has giant pines on the south (left side) and a tractor road down the middle of the trail

When the Freeville Trail is completed people will be able to walk from Dryden Lake to Freeville with limited street crossings. This portion of the trail goes through mostly undeveloped land and was mostly quiet.

Checking In

Blog readers from Freeville to Florida to Folsom (Hi Tamie, Hi Mom, Hi Roger) have checked in with me for more updates than the blog is providing. I'm going to try to blog each morning before getting into the work day. If there's something going on that you'd like to hear more about, let me know.

I'll start with a picture from March 23rd - 10 days ago. The snow was melting like crazy on Thursday and I made a pair of snowmen. On Friday I took another yard picture that goes along with the set of house pictures I've been taking for the last two and a half years.

Finally, on a gardening note, Matt Cooper from the Dryden Courier interviewed me on March 23rd for an article that appeared in the March 28th issue about Gardening and Blogging. I submitted the following picture that ran with the article.

Simon blogged about it here:

In the Home Garden section, Cooper talks with Dryden Town Board Member David Makar about his gardening and his blogging about his garden. He got started cheaply, paid attention to the plants but didn't devote his life to them, and got a sizable return for his efforts. He also notes fellow Board Member Mary Ann Sumner's blogging and my own efforts.

I tried to steer Matt in the direction of my neighbor Melissa's blog, as well as Mary Ann's blog - they both blog about gardening. Melissa: http://littlewoolgatherings.blogspot.com/, Mary Ann: http://fivewells.blogspot.com/

The article did encourage me to start planning for the 2007 season and over breakfast on Monday Arjan and I discussed fruits, vegetables and flowers for the yard and garden for this summer. I spent about an hour Saturday cultivating wild blackberries (can you cultivate something that is wild?) and cleaning up part of the yard that had a lot of uncontrolled brambles.

More Pictures

For those of you who love pictures, I was just emailed a link to a set of photographs from election night at the union hall in Ithaca. For this night the hall was the Democratic HQ.

Pictures here:

http://www.photonewsservice.com/gallery/main.php?g2_view=core.ShowItem&g2_itemId=577

See all of Marty's pictures here:

http://www.photonewsservice.com/

Yellow Thursday

IMG_6928
Originally uploaded by dmakar.

I have the camera and I drive a lot and do a lot of walking and looking around on Thursdays. So, yesterday I picked a theme - - the color yellow. Here are 50 pictures of yellow Ithaca.

Cheers! It's Friday night!
http://www.flickr.com/photos/dmakar/sets/72157594262817729/