Adjacent Religious Histories

Angie and I finally took advantage of a nice, open Saturday to drop by the Joseph Smith Birthplace Memorial in South Royalton, VT. Only 90 minutes away, it's a really beautiful area and the grounds there are spectacularly well-maintained. There is a visitor's center with some interesting info and friendly senior missionaries on hand to do their best to answer whatever questions you might have. We had a good time wandering the trails and seeing the old foundations of Smith/Mack family homes including the one in which Joseph was born which, according to the nice senior missionary from Mesa, AZ, has only been marked since last year.

Afterwards we took a moment to locate an "ancient Celtic temple" stone chamber that was rumored to be near the JSM. Since our little visit to America's Stonehenge in North Salem, NH I have been doing a lot of research on these kinds of sites with growing interest. I had read a lot about this particular stone chamber, but (as is the case with all these sites) nobody ever publishes their exact locations for fear of vandalism, etc. Well, after easily 8 hours of careful searching beforehand, I did find one 20-30 year-old source that provided written directions for finding the chamber in South Royalton. We followed the directions that afternoon and with a little creative interpretation of the author's somewhat lacking instructions, there it was!

Even Angie thought it was pretty darn cool. It looks like a hobbit hole-in-the-ground. You can only access it by crawling nearly prone through the birth-canal of an entryway, but it opens up into a circular room that you can stand up in with stone walls maybe 10 feet apart. There are some grooved markings in the stones that experts claim to have been able to translate as a dedication of the chamber to the sun god, "Bel". It didn't take long before we realized that the chamber contained copious amounts of enormous black, shiny spiders and we got out of there.

America's Stonehenge

I recently learned about the existence of stone-age ruins right here in New Hampshire. Angie and I took the short drive to Salem, NH near the Mass border to check them out. It was really cool! They've dated some of the ruins at 2,000 BC. There were complete chambers to walk through, which was really awesome.

Some archaeologists think they were built by visitors to the New World. I'm not so sure about that, but some of the chambers were slightly reminiscent of burial chambers we explored in Ireland from the same period:

After further research, I learned there are sites like this all over New England. I can't wait to go out and find my own!

Squam Lake

This is the gorgeous view that Mona and I were treated to Saturday morning on our hike looking over Squam Lake. Things are getting very green and lush here again and I couldn't be happier about it.

Cedar and Sage's New Album

My brother Jacob and I (Cedar and Sage) officially released our new album "Rendezvous" today! It would thrill us if you took a second to check it out. You can download and/or stream all 14 tracks free on our blog (until April 26):
http://cedarandsagemusic.blogspot.com/

Just some background- Jake and I recorded this album together while living 3,000 miles apart! We used Garageband and Dropbox to collaborate and considering the challenges and limitations, we are both pretty darn proud of what we were able to accomplish!

If you like what you hear, spread the word!
We're on facebook, too! click here 

A Decade Together!

(one of the earliest I could find of us; Spring 2003)

 

No, your calculator works fine- We just celebrated our 6th wedding anniversary in December- But it was on this very day, exactly 10 years ago that I met the love of my life.

I'm not the kind of person that remembers relationship "firsts" of any sort, but fortunately, I have the advantage in this case of being able to associate that night with another event, which was, at the time, a very big thing for me- a huge CD release show that my band organized and executed on March 28, 2003. It was our second album and we had put so much time, effort, and money into its production that we wanted to put on a spare-no-expense-or-effort concert at the rather posh Ellen Eccles Theater in Logan, Utah to promote it.

The show sold out and was a huge success, not to mention tons of fun for us on stage. After the show the band was selling and signing CDs, chatting with people and just enjoying the energy and celebrity that is in the air after a great show like that. It was there on the red carpet of the lobby, late into the evening that a good friend and neighbor of mine Miriam Williams introduced me to a cute little bandana-wearing, curly-haired friend of hers that she had dragged along with her that night, named Angie Olsen.

It was probably only a matter of days before I took her on our first date. We went fishing- she got the catch of the day and has been outperforming me ever since!

I'm a lucky guy to have such a wonderful companion as Angie, and the last 10 years have been the best of my life! Love ya, babe!

Scratch That One Off My List

 

 

Ice fishing never really intrigued me until moving to New England. Folks here take the sport much more seriously than I had been exposed to growing up out west. I love fishing, but I hate sitting and waiting. I like the kind of fishing where I am working my way up a stream, constantly reeling, jigging, snagging, etc. Thus, icefishing didn't seem my cup of tea. I wanted to give it a shot though, before I passed any final judgement and I had my opportunity this last weekend. A co-worker had invited me to come with him and a couple of guys that work at a neighboring planning commission to Crystal Lake, near the NH-VT border. The experience was not altogether unpleasant and we actually were pulling up some fish every now and again. The top 6 inches or so of the ice was just slush, which made for some soggy boots and rather chilly down-time, but I have to admit it is quite a thrill rushing to your tip up, pulling in that line hand-over-hand, and yanking out a big fat large-mouth bass. I might be tempted to try it again if the conditions were right.

Dangie on Ice

So Meredith is home to the annual New England Pond Hockey Classic, which is this huge weekend-long tournament on the frozen bay. This year over 200 teams registered. We took Mona down on the bay and she seemed to be wondering "how long has this awesome park been here?" It was really crowded, but we went back again Sunday afternoon and I got to try out my new hockey skates. For a couple months in the winter, the bay is dotted with ice-fishing "bob" shacks. In a couple of weeks there will be the annual ice-fishing tournament on the same bay and we're told that the hundreds of bobs out there make quite an impressive sight. I'll be sure to take a picture!