I spent my thanksgiving break back home with my parents. Most of my time was spent hunting all over my parents land as well as state and private properties all over the Northeast Kingdom of Vermont. My family owns a sugaring operation and our sugar house sits down the mountain from my house. As I walked out of my house and towards the woods down below my house I was struck by the beauty of the sunrise. I stopped and looked at it for over a minute. It was the best one I had seen in a log time, maybe the best I had ever seen. I took a couple photos to send to my friends and also some just for me. I was shocked at how amazing it was that morning, I was full of joy and optimism that morning as I proceeded on and tried to find tracks fresh enough for me to track down a deer. Later that day I realized it was Thursday, Thursday meant thanksgiving, I was even more shocked when I realized this. I had wanted to post the photo on social media but I felt it an inappropriate time to do so as it would fall under the stereotypical thanksgiving post. I still plan on posting the photo as I will here because it is simply breathtaking. I won’t share the photo for a few days but I will still explain how lucky I am to have grown up in this amazing place that can still take my breath away as I walk out the door.
When comparing my home to my phenology site at the Salmon hole on the Winooski I can draw a few connections. both of these sites I use for outdoor reasons like hunting, hiking, fishing, yet my home has very few people out there with me. If I was to see another person most days I would be shocked. at the Salmon hole it is not uncommon to see 2, 3, 4 or even more people down there. Many times that I have gone down with my friend Alex we find trash of all sorts. We find fishing line, bottles, bags and other trash that has been thrown into the river by people. many times after a heavy rain the river stinks and I don’t even want to touch my line after letting it get into the nasty water. This is less the case back at my house however it still occurs I just don’t see it because there are a lot fewer people using the resource. However hunting is very big at this time of year and road hunting is fairly common and one of my biggest pet peeves. People have very poor ethics in my area as well and often they don’t care about fair chase, all they want is to kill something, most of he time they don’t even have enough respect to make a clean kill or they do very inappropriate things such as letting the animal suffer when they should be finishing it off and preventing the suffering. both places are very different but in both cases I see ways that people are abusing the resource and aren’t using good ethics.
https://www.google.com/maps/place/Erik’s+Sugarbush/@44.5446967,-71.9256881,17z/data=!3m1!4b1!4m5!3m4!1s0x4cb43a1403039fff:0x24a8ddbacca58268!8m2!3d44.5446929!4d-71.9234994
Recent Comments