Rebecca M. Douglass, Author

It took a little patience, but I was finally able to get the library's audiobook of Adam Shoalts' latest, Where the Falcon Flies , which won in the "Journeys" category of the 2024 National Outdoor Book Awards .  I have a bunch of others still on hold!   Title: Where the Falcon Flies: A 3,400 Kilometre Odyssey From My Doorstep to the Arctic Author: Adam Shoalts. Read by the author. Publication Info : Penguin Canada, 2023.  10 hours. Original hardcover by Allen Lane, 2023, 364 pages Source: Library Publisher's Blurb (via Goodreads): Looking out his porch window one spring morning, Adam Shoalts spotted a majestic peregrine falcon flying across the neighbouring fields near Lake Erie. Each spring, falcons migrate from southernmost Canada to remote arctic mountains. Grabbing his backpack and canoe, Shoalts resolved to follow the falcon’s route north on an astonishing 3,400-kilometre journey to the Arctic. Along the way, he faces a huge variety of challenges an...

We are into the summer travel and hiking season, and that means less time to read and review books. But it means more photos to share! We recently spent a week in Maine, so here are a few highlights. Among other things (like visiting colleges with our about-to-be-Senior), we spent three days camping at Flagstaff lake, a large man-made lake about 25 miles from the border with Quebec. This gave us a chance to get up very, very early and see the sunrise (do you know how early the sun rises in Maine a few days after the summer solstice??). Given how warm the days were, it was something of a surprise to find it was only 43 degrees when we crawled out at 4:45 a.m. Mist rising on the water before the sun hits. We thought this pond looked like moose habitat, but the moose didn't cooperate. We went on to climb peaks in the Bigelow Range, some of the highest in Maine (not very high by western standards, but the trails start low and climb rather directly). This was the sucker part, the easy w...