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Rekindling My Love for Cross-Country Skiing

The Northeast has received more than its fair share of snow this winter. In fact, Boston is set to receive another 2-4 inches this evening. I’ve taken this opportunity to x-c ski at three of my favorite spots in New England. In January, I celebrated my wife’s birthday by skiing in the Berkshires at a Trustees of Reservations property called Notchview. While researching my first book, Outside Magazine’s Adventure Guide to New England, I skied at Notchview and remembered it being one of the premier spots for the sport. Upon my return trip, it was even more magical, with a healthy dumping of fresh snow creating a winter wonderland of bent pine branches. This past weekend, my family stayed at the historic Mount Washington Hotel in New Hampshire. On Sunday, under clear blue skies, I took my daughter and nephew for a morning jaunt on the web of trails found at the Bretton Woods Nordic Center. Mount Washington and its broad-shouldered slopes and snowcapped peak could be seen in its entirety, not wrapped in any clouds, which is a rarity in these parts. It was another glorious outing smelling the pines while cruising along a stream. This coming weekend, we’re off to Stowe, Vermont, to cross-country ski at Trapp Family Lodge during the height of the maple sugar season (see the best trips of the month section to the right of this entry). I look forward to tackling the Parizo Trail once again and having my bowl of soup in the cozy cabin. For dessert, I’ll try the homemade maple taffy.
 

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St. Lucia Week: Walking the Tet Paul Nature Trail

I’ve always enjoyed taking nature walks, especially in tropical settings where the guide tells me the medicinal qualities of all the leaves and herbs. I’m all for natural remedies to my ailments. So when I heard about the Tet Paul Trail, outside of Soufriere, I had to throw it into my itinerary. Little did I know that the 45-minute long trail offers one of the best views of the Pitons, those volcanic twin peaks that has mesmerized me these past two days. The Tet Paul is run by the local community, and my guide, Macgyver, knew every tree, bush, herb, and fruit like the back of his hand. He also took wonderful panoramic photos with my Apple phone. 
 
Located in a farming community 2,000 feet above sea level, everything seems to grow here. Fruit grows straight on the bark of the soursop tree, whose young leaves are supposedly good for the prostate when soaked in hot water. In fact, it seems as if St. Lucians use tea for all their woes. Rosemary leaves are good for migraines, fennel a digestif. MacGyver picked bay leaves, lemongrass, and mint for me to smell. He pointed to ripe guavas, pineapples, cashews, apricots, the sour orange, used in many fish dishes, star fruit, passion fruit, limes, and mocambos, small bananas great for frying. We passed elephant ear ferns, the red gingerlily flower, the prickly bark of the gri-gri palm tree, which locals call the “devil stick.” 
 
“Now let’s climb the stairway to heaven,” says MacGyver, and we walk up stairs to a platform overlooking Gros Piton and his little brother, Petit Piton. The view is astounding. “Welcome to my home,” he says as I stare down in amazement at the spanking white beach below, part of the Sugar Beach resort. “Thanks,” I respond, “but I’m not leaving, Macgyver. I’m going to build a little shack down the road from you and grow yams.” He laughs as I make a mental note to spend at least two weeks on Saint Lucia my next trip. 
 
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Sailing Aboard the Charles W. Morgan

This past May, the historic whaling ship, Charles W. Morgan, left Mystic Seaport for the first time in more than 70 years and sailed to several New England ports of call, giving folks from New London to Provincetown an unprecedented opportunity to explore the ship. Built in New Bedford in 1841, the Morgan is the last remaining wooden whaling ship in the world and the oldest merchant ship in America. In its heyday, the Morgan traveled across the globe in search of whales, the source of oil for illumination and lubrication in the 19th and early 20th centuries.

 
To commemorate the latest sailing, my longtime colleague, Rob Burbank, had the good fortune to spend 24 hours aboard the ship. Rob’s great-uncle served as a crewmember on the 35th voyage of the Morgan in 1918, and this summer’s sail gave him the opportunity to imagine what life was like on the Morgan nearly a century ago. You can read about that once-in-a-lifetime experience in his recent Boston Globe story. The Morgan is now back at Mystic Seaport and open to the public to tour. For more about visiting Mystic in autumn, see my article in the Boston Globe and definitely make a pitstop at B.F. Clyde’s to visit the oldest steam-powered cider mill in America. 
 
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Peru Week with Abercrombie and Kent: Two Magical Nights at Sol y Luna in Sacred Valley

After touring the historical core of Lima, including the impressive Museo Larco and its vast collection of pre-Colombian art, we flew to Cuzco and headed onward to Sacred Valley. Our lodging for the next two nights was Sol y Luna, where spacious casitas, all with fireplaces and some with hot tubs, dot the grounds of this majestic landscape, surrounded by the serrated ridges of the Andes. I loved it here. Everywhere you walk are flowering shrubs and tall cacti in bloom, another photo to be taken, especially when large hummingbirds would fly into the golden flowers of my back deck. Vases of yellow roses were also found inside the casitas, along with wonderful local painting and sculpture. At night, our group of 18 met in a ranch-style setting for cocktail hour and then a sublime dinner, worthy of the property’s Relais and Chateau rating. We started with pisco mojitos, created with the sweet local mint grown in these parts. Then we dined on trout carpaccio and beef tenderloin, finishing with a dessert of tres leches. This is one Virtuoso lodging that I will recommend highly to our clients. 

 
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Best New Hotels in New England

In the latest round of lodgings to open in New England, history plays an integral role. Boutique hotels have been created out of the former barracks of a 19th-century fort, a venerable captain’s estate, and within the confines of a Federal-style home dating from 1776. The Lark Hotel collection continues to expand in the region, adding inns on Plum Island and Newport. Add a large influx of cash to rehab a resort atop a cliff in Maine into a world-class property and you have our latest list of intriguing places to stay, all making their debut in the past year or two. 

 
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Lake George Week, A Landscape That Inspired Georgia O’Keeffe

In the mid-90s, I was hired by Art & Antiques Magazine to write a story on the period of time painter Georgia O’Keeffe and her husband, photographer Alfred Stieglitz, lived on the shores of Lake George. This was to coincide with a photography exhibition of Stieglitz’s work at New York’s Museum of Modern Art. I knew renowned abstract sculptor David Smith lived in Bolton Landing, but I honestly had no idea O’Keeffe lived in Lake George, since she’s far better known for her New Mexican motif. From 1918 to 1934, O’Keeffe would spend a good portion of her summer at the lake. She would return to Lake George for the last time in 1946 to spread Stieglitz’s ashes at the foot of a pine tree on the shores of the lake. Today, those ashes lie on the grounds of the Tahoe Motel. Next door, the house they lived in, Oaklawn, is still standing at The Quarters of the Four Seasons Inn. On a wall next to my desk, I have a poster of a dreamy mountain and lake landscape simply titled Lake George (1922). My brother, Jim, purchased this for me at the San Francisco Museum of Art, where the original O’Keeffe oil still hangs. 

O’Keeffe wasn’t the only artist inspired by the majestic Lake George landscape. In the 1860s, most of the noteworthy Hudson River School painters, including Thomas Cole and Jasper Cropsey, descended on the shores of the lake to put oil to canvas. Exquisite works by 19th-century American landscape painters like Albert Bierstadt and William Merritt Chase can be found at the Hyde Collection, a gem of a museum in nearby Glens Falls. I returned to the Italian Renaissance-style villa yesterday, only to be blown away once again by the bounty of impressive works that include paintings by Rembrandt, Botticelli, Raphael, El Greco, Rubens, Renoir, and Picasso.
 
A special treat was an exhibition on contemporary sculptor Larry Kagan. Kagan twists tubes of steel into abstract shapes that, when illuminated, project shadows on the wall into images of a bald eagle or a stilletto. I love the images that pay homage to artists Andy Warhol and Keith Herring. Bring the kids–this is an exhibition for all ages to enjoy. Much has been made about the reopening of the Clark Art Institute this summer in nearby Williamstown, Massachusetts. Art lovers should make one additional stop to tour the Hyde. You’ll be happy I sent you! 
 
 
 
 
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Cruise With Climate Change Experts to Antarctica with Abercrombie & Kent

For the past 13 years, Dr. James McClintock has spent at least two months a year at Palmer Station in Antarctica. He has seen the firsthand results of global warming, including seeing ice shelves the size of Connecticut break off from the land, watched as the indigenous adelie penguin population has dwindled from 15,000 to 2,000 breeding penguins, tested for increasingly alarming rates of ocean acidification, and much to his dismay, watched as predators like king crabs, who had never made their way this far south, started appearing in droves. Once a year, McClintock gets some much needed R&R aboard the Le Boreal cruise ship as resident naturalist for Abercrombie & Kent’s two-week voyage to Antarctica. Built specifically for Antarctica, the sleek ship is incredibly stable and about thirty percent faster than most ships that cruise through the Drake Passage. Getting on and off the Zodiacs twice a day is also not nearly as challenging. Yet the best part about Le Boreal is the comfort, with each stateroom featuring spacious double beds, large balcony space, flat screen television and L’Occitane products in the bathroom. Then there’s the spa, intimate theater to hear McClintock speak about the upcoming day, and exceptional French food served daily. If you’ve ever wanted to see Antarctica in style while being educated by one of the experts on the region, this is the way to go.

 

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