Josh Baker's Blog (6)

It has been a little chilly up here latley. My wife and I had a geothermal unit installed this fall and it is great - we were a little worried about the prolonged cold snaps...something about 500 feet of tubing buried 6 feet below the ground for insulation took care of that. This Sunday The Outfitter is hosting the 10th annual Nub's Nord at Nub's Nob. Nub's Nord is a great way to try telemark demo skis, ski with telemarkers fro all over the sate, eat pizza and have fun! All you have to do is sh… Continue

We stood atop Smooth Sailing, an excellent Blue run at Nub's Nob in Harbor Springs, my student and I, our tele tips poised on the edge. An excellent alpine skier and snowboarder is he, yet we were waiting, seeking out the best looking line. We hemmed, we hawed, we talked about weighting the skis and staying low in the tele turn all the way through; then, after much fidgeting, we plunged. Telemarking is about two things, in my simple mind: grace and power. It is also, in the midwest, about re-le… Continue

For about twenty-five years, The Outfitter has groomed the cross country ski trails at Birchwood - a large, wooded subdivision north of Harbor Springs. Our good family friends, owners of The Outfitter for twenty-three years, began the ritual and we continue it. With the same snowmobiles. Grooming trails truly is a labor of love - an exercise that emphasises the reward at the end of the tunnel. The end result is awesome for skiers: pefectly laid-out tracks that ribbon around through the trees ov… Continue

Some of my favorite things about about fall have ended: the campaign ads. We had an inch or two of snow in our yard last week, and today it was an outstandingly beautiful 70 degree day. Wowzer. All of the sudden we can see the corn field on the other side of the woods on our drive into school - the leaves are down, the turkeys are strutting and the coyotes are yipping after rabbits in the cool nights. Arlo and Willa, our wonderdogs, treed a ginormous porcipine yesterday (treed, thank god: leath… Continue

Molly, my wife, and our three kids picked apples last week at my folks' place. A lot of apples. Apples may well be the zucchini of the fruit world: "it didn't seem like I planted that many..." One taste of these home-grown, 10' cyclone fence-protected, lovingly-pruned and hastily-picked beauties, though, and you know fall: tart, crisp and gone too soon. Yesterday, four friends and I kayaked on a little inland lake just… Continue

Getting out on the water. Living away from Harbor Springs for fifteen years did nothing to quell my desire for boating; the big lakes, inland lakes, rivers running or frozen - nothing beats getting out on the water. What a different view we get of our home town, our favorite getaway, our morning walking path! Kayaking last week with a group from Kentucky on the Inland Waterway was telling. The colors sneaking out along the shore of Crooked Lake, the water warmer than the air and only one houseb… Continue