OGT DAILY Day Two Hundred and Ninety Two CONNECTICUT RIVER

I am here on the banks of the Connecticut River for two nights.   Today is Halloween and I remember my father, who passed into the light seven years ago on "All Hallows Eve", as the sun begins to rise in a purple sky over the opposite bank.

I have a long history of waking early on this river.   When I was young my mother took us on a camping trip to the headwaters at the Connecticut River lakes in northern New Hampshire almost to the Canadian border.   There was very little there besides one remote supply store with yellowed postcards, fly fisherman casting into the stony waters of the young river, and a primitive campsite in the woods with pit toilets.   I was delighted and my brothers and sisters and I ran wild in the woods letting sticks and pine needles mat in our hair so it couldn't be brushed.  I had brought my Peterson's Guide to wild flowers and remember being excited to find an abundance pink striped oxalis or wood sorrel among the mossy rocks.  I picked one and pressed it into the pages.   There were also pink and maroon lady slippers which are rare and admired at a distance.

My brother Joe then bought a house in Massachusetts near the NH border near the Connecticut at its widest point.  He'd take us out fishing and we'd settle into a remote spot to eat lunch and swim or dig clay out of the river bank and slather it on our arms. 

Then there were times when we kayaked its length and other times when I backpacked camped and woke up early to see the sunrise.   While this painting is not from the Connecticut, but the Housatonic River some twenty miles west, the memories are similar.