It all started when we came home after a trip out of town. The tranquil homestead we’d left two weeks ago was not the one we came back to. It had been transmogrified into a Hitchcock movie set. We stood by the Expedition, suitcases in hand, and watched as a squadron of swallows circled overhead,…
The glass of water on my bedside table hasn’t frozen. Yet. But the evening mist now leaves frosty geometric patterns across the windows; the deck sparkles in the moonlight; Smokey and Bosworth have come close to snuggling; and we store food in the refrigerator if we don’t want it to freeze. Yes, it’s fall in the…
A Note from Chris: As the season ends, and Monica is too busy with the final harvest to write a blog post, I'll share an essay with you.We hiked (a lot), dug a sand point well, tended a garden, defended ourselves against grasshopper swarms, stared at aspen groves, did some yurt-improvement projects, befriended (and then…
Never hate your enemies. It affects your judgment. —Don Corleone, The Godfather: Part III Here at the yurt there’s always a bane of the day. Mosquitoes, heat, rain, cold, weeds, leaky water pumps, ground squirrels, freaky sounds in the night, car-eating potholes, you name it. The scourge du jour? Grasshoppers. Big and small, neon-green to coffee-bean,…
Look for the bare necessities, the simple bare necessities, Forget about your worries and your strife; I mean the bare necessities are Mother Nature’s recipes that bring the bare necessities of life. — The Jungle Book June is typically one of the rainiest months here in the North Fork. Our driveway is a slip-’n-slide; the veggies…
After four months in Italy, we've finally returned to the yurt. If our first trip out to the property is any indicator, reentry into the North Fork atmosphere is going to be bumpy. The first part of the driveway, which we share with two other landowners, has welcomed the tidy sweep of a plow all winter.…
I think that I shall never see A poem lovely as a tree. Poems are made by fools like me, But only God can make a tree. —Alfred Joyce Kilmer A Note from Chris: Monica thinks I'm obsessed with trees, aspens in particular. Perhaps she's right. I can think of worse things to obsess over.…
I’m glad I live in a world where there are Octobers. —Chris G. Fall is here. The tourists are gone, the saloon is closed, and most of the locals have left for the season. All is quiet on the North Fork—or so it would seem for now. Old Man Winter is on his way. Here at…
“Oh no, don’t do that,” my mom said when I called to tell her that I’d be staying at the yurt alone for five days. “I’ll be OK,” I reassured her. “I have plenty of bear spray. But I can’t leave the cats alone. It’s freezing up there at night already.” “But I’ll be so…
Like much of the U.S. right now, we are suffering from a brutal heat wave. The highs are twenty degrees above average and we haven’t seen a significant rainfall for over a week (though we did hike in a sleet storm near Logan Pass on July 3). Combine this with the fact that we are…
Postcards from Polebridge 