Open at 9 am. The temperature at 6 am is 4º. The forecast high is 21º. It will be hard to not overdress today and tomorrow.

All trails are open and the skiing is really nice. Chickadee, Loon, and Waite’s Place Loop were are skiing really well.

The photos above were from the weekend. Joining the Ski All The Trails In One Day club. Aka The Full Feather, or The Full Flock. A number of names were added on Saturday and 1 more on Sunday. Ski it while we can.

And more housekeeping details about this time of winter.

If you haven’t thought about your roofs, it is time to shovel the parts of your roof that need to be shoveled. (Thanks to Jamie for the photo below.)

And February 2nd is the old timers day to measure your wood pile. You should have half your wood left. Chuck said, “maybe” about the wood supply in our basement we use to heat the house. In the barn, for the warming room, ski shop, and fire pit we have a little under half left. We aren’t worried about wood supply, we have plenty of wood cut and split outside down in the field. But the wood we had mentally allotted and physically moved and stored for this winter, may or may not be enough.

Open at 9 am. The temperature at 6:30 am is -8. The high forecast for the day is 14º.

Skiing is great. So good the ski reports are becoming redundant. Hilary and Jamie, after skiing the Middle Blue Jay, said it was a 10+++. But we have a lot going on around here….

So here is a little blurb about one of our season pass holders, one of the cast of characters that hangs out here at Wild Wings, Jud Hartmann.

The photo above is our friend Jud Hartmann. Jud skis here 4 to 5 days a week, training for the weekend ski races in northern New England. In 1977 Jud and his wife Gretchen started Grafton Outdoor Center, a Nordic ski center in Grafton, Vermont. They ran Grafton Outdoor Center until 1987. During this time Jud was also carving sculptures and opened his first gallery in Grafton Vermont.

Jud is a very talented sculptor and is hands on through the whole bronze process. He is also a devoted historian and story teller of the subjects he chooses to sculpt, though he might tell you they choose him! You can see some of his storytelling on his YouTube channel. Here’s a great one.

The photo above is the sculpture that welcomes you to Jud’s gallery and practically everyone who enters Blue Hill as it is a sort of land mark there. Jud’s quote that goes with this sculpture, called He Who is Without Equal, is especially interesting. Perhaps Jud shares this Native American lacrosse mindset in fitness and achievement in his favorite sport: cross country skiing.

His endurance, strength, speed and grace were legendary. He could run down and slay a deer. His years as a renowned warrior and hunter required of him lightening quick reflexes and senses that were honed to an astonishing degree. Only the aboriginal hunter and warrior, whose very life depended on these qualities for survival in the great forests that were his natural home, could bring these attributes to the playing field, to the game that was a gift to the Iroquois from the Creator Himself.

In the mid-17th c., at the height of Iroquois power, amidst the giants who played the game then (with a level of skill that would have left modern players in awe) he was the greatest player of his day. He was known as “Iah-onhka – senha Eneken Tehote” that is, “he who is without equal.”

We are honored here at Wild Wings to have a print by Jud. This print is from the only wood carving Jud has done and there is a story behind this print. Catch him booting up in the warning room and you may get the story.

Jud’s true love is Bronze sculptures and are best enjoyed in his studio in Blue Hill, Maine. The second best way is to click here to visit his web site.

This sculpture, Susquehannock, is the one that greets you when you first open the door to his Blue Hill gallery. It’s four feet tall and up on a pedestal so looks you right in the eye as you enter.

Jud loves to give out skiing tips on the trail. And he can be booked for a ski lesson. And as much as Jud loves to talk about skiing, his true love is the history behind his sculptures. If you are lucky enough to go to Blue Hill to see his work, or you catch him out and about, any of his stories are a gift.

The following is a quote from Jud’s website that inspired him to sculpt Susquehannock.

“…60 of those Susquehannock came to us . . . such great and well-proportioned men are seldome seene, for they seemed like giants to the English . . . these are the strangest people of all those countries both in language and attire; for their language it may well beseeme their proportions, sounding from them as a voyce in a vault. Their attire is the skinnes of beares and woolves, some have cassocks made of beares heades and skinnes . . . The half sleeves coming to the elbows were the heads of beares and the arms through the open mouth . . . one had a head of a Woolf hanging from a chain for a jewell . . . with a club suitable to his greatness sufficient to beat out one’s brains. Five of their chiefe wereowances came aboard us . . . (of) the greatest of them his hayre, the one side was long and the other shorn close with a ridge over his crowne like a cocks combe . . . The calfe of whose leg was 3/4 of a yard around and all the rest of his limbes so answerable to that proportion that he seemed the goodliest man we ever beheld!”

From the voyages of Captain John Smith (of Jamestown, Va)
1607 – 1609

Open at 9 am. The temperature at 6:30 am is 0º. The forecast is for a balmy 12º.

All photos are from yesterday morning. The skiing is oh, so fine!

Skiing is great all day. The warmest part of the day will be between 11 am and 3 pm. Folks have been staying warm. Key components are something on your neck and mittens. Yesterday in the parking lot when the wind blew I was happy to have 2 hoods to pull up.

The kids from the West River Sports program were here skiing yesterday, 3 to 4:30pm. Between 80 and 100 kids. All well dressed, skiing and happy. This was at the end of their practice. These kids were done with their group and could have gone inside. But were so happy to be out and moving and skiing and playing.

And speaking of mittens. We have a new selection of mittens in stock. Mary has been waiting for a larger size, the wait is over. Stop in to check it out, this pair is an extra large, other sizes available.

Open at 9 am. The temperature at 6:30 am is -5º. The forecast high for today is 4º. We did have a dusting of snow overnight.

Ian groomed the low trails, Turkey, Woodcock, Snow Goose, Grouse, Goshawk, and Peregrine. And Jon was on the snow machine on the Chickadee. Upper and Middle Blue Jay were groomed earlier this week.

Yesterday was Sverre’s day to ski all the trails. Added his name to the board.

And another poem by Wendell Berry this time.

The Peace of Wild Things by Wendell Berry

When despair for the world grows in me

and I wake in the night at the least sound

in fear of what my life and my children’s lives might be,

I go and lie down where the wood drake

rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds.

I come into the peace of wild things

who do not tax their lives with forethought of grief.

I come into the presence of still water,

And I feel above me the day-blind stars waiting with their light.

For a time I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.