Since March of 2015

2016 is a strange development, despite the awareness we supposedly had of its impending arrival. I suppose we are all too lost in the concept of busyness to remember that years have expiration dates. It's funny, but the new year is like the arrival of a house guest we forgot we invited. My mind is left shocked at the doorway, wondering what on earth I have to serve this house guest. 

The last update to this blog was almost a year ago, and yet it could just as well have been last week. Despite that feeling, many things occurred between then and now, many things that could have easily been the stuff of blog posts, but will now be distilled into a handful of photographs I share below that are in some way meant to encapsulate the places I went. At least a few of the places, that is-including photos from two different trips to England and a lovely holiday to Prince Edward Island, a piece of floating land as charming as Lucy Maud Montgomery led us to believe in her Anne of Green Gables stories. I have more photographs to show for in 2015 than words, but deep down I hope 2016 will be different. 

The arrival of spring after a horrific winter in Boston

Two photographs of lovely Brookline, Mass 

Summer in Beacon Hill, Boston

View of Boston from Cambridge, along the Charles River

Sherborne Castle in Dorset, England 

Sherborne, England

Natural History Museum, London 

Albert Memorial, London

West End, London

Deer Isle, Maine

Southwest Harbor, Maine

Prince Edward Island

Nearby: Parker River National Wildlife Refuge and Sandy Point

Last July, a few weeks before I visited Ohiopyle, I explored the Parker River National Wildlife Refuge and Sandy Point State Reservation on Plum Island. The island is about an hour's drive north of Boston just beside the quaint town of Newburyport, one of my favorite towns on the North Shore.  On my first visit to Newburyport, I passed the sign to Plum Island only because I did not have sufficient time to explore it properly. So I returned a couple months in the height of the summer, when it was flocked by not only birds, but beach-goers and the like. Situated along the Atlantic Flyway, the Parker River Wildlife Refuge's most important visitor is the migratory bird, of whom this refuge was established for in the 1940s.  It's a place of multiple habitats including salt marsh, forest and sandy beach. The latter was by far the most popular destination when my mother and I visited, but it was the paths we found in Sandy Point Reservation, found on the tip of the island, that were the most enjoyable for us. The good weather prompted by abundant sunshine allowed us to enjoy the island to the utmost as a nearby escape from Boston. Though I imagine both sites offer a different type of allure on a damp day when its features are hidden by fog. This morning Boston endured the presence of snow yet again, and I think we will take any type of weather at this point, besides the cold. Fog and rain would be infinitely better, though we'll hope for blue skies like the ones from last summer found on Plum Island. 

Ohiopyle State Park

March is the month I give myself permission to think of summer. Spring cannot truly be called thus in New England-what we experience, if we experience anything besides winter at all, is something called mud season, and it's as uninspiring as it sounds. What thrills me at the moment is the thought of July and a land called Ohiopyle. It's an area south of Pittsburgh, happily positioned in the Laurel Highlands. Last summer I made a journey during one of my visits back to the burgh, and I never had the chance to share the pictures. Now is something of an appropriate time, all these months later, when I'm daydreaming about hiking through the highlands and having picnics beside waterfalls. The first two pictures are of Cucumber Falls and it's truly a must see in the state park.  Besides the many waterfalls, the natural waterslides are also a sight to see and beckon throngs of swimmers in the summertime.  There's also rafting on the Yough River (Classes III-V) and two Frank Lloyd Wright homes to tour including Fallingwater. In addition, the Great Allegheny Passage Trail, which runs from DC to Pittsburgh, goes right through Ohiopyle. It's a lovely area and one I am all too happy to think of during this last stretch of the New England winter.