adventuresafield.blogspot.com
Adventures Afield: FIRST BLOOD
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Who Is Matt Reilly? Tuesday, December 20, 2016. I don’t like killing things. Photo by Matt Reilly. That may come as an unexpected confession from one who loves the sport of hunting, and has a somewhat precipitous body count in the area of squirrels and deer. I’ve got a lot of blood on my hands—not in the least figuratively. No more, though, than any regular consumer of meat. I don’t like killing things, but I don’t think twice about it. The offensive voices of a defensive, out-of-touch society scream at ...
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Adventures Afield: LAKE ANNA GAINS A NEW SPECIES
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Who Is Matt Reilly? Wednesday, January 29, 2014. LAKE ANNA GAINS A NEW SPECIES. Hybrids currently fin the waters of just two of Virginia’s impoundments—Claytor Lake and Flannagan Reservoir—thanks to stockings elsewhere in the Piedmont; but certain characteristics also make them a perfect match for Lake Anna. 8220;Hybrids are being added to the mix due to their tolerance of lesser water quality than pure stripers,” reports Virginia state fisheries biologist, John Odenkirk, the project lead. The principle ...
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Adventures Afield: April 2016
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Who Is Matt Reilly? Wednesday, April 20, 2016. CONQUERING MOUNT ROGERS- VIRGINIA'S ROOFTOP. Photo by Matt Reilly. Mount Rogers is Virginia’s tallest, and arguably wildest mountain. Located in the heart of the 200,000-acre Mount Rogers National Recreation Area (MRNRA), the once-active volcano steeps over Southwest Virginia at an elevation of 5,728 feet, and serves as the crown jewel of the vastly foreign (to Virginia) landscape of the Grayson Highlands. It was a sunny, albeit slightly cold and windy, Satu...
adventuresafield.blogspot.com
Adventures Afield: October 2016
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Who Is Matt Reilly? Wednesday, October 26, 2016. ELK RETURN TO AUTUMN IN VIRGINIA. 5x5 bull elk taking stock of his field in Buchanan County, Virginia. Photo by Matt Reilly. Eyes glued to an enclosure, on which headlights born of Kentucky would soon appear hauling a livestock trailer containing 45 of the hide-colored bobs. Camera cradled, I climbed from the Expedition, followed by Taylor, and stalked quietly behind a screen of brush to subtract twenty yards from the distance separating us from the elk...
adventuresafield.blogspot.com
Adventures Afield: December 2016
http://adventuresafield.blogspot.com/2016_12_01_archive.html
Who Is Matt Reilly? Tuesday, December 20, 2016. I don’t like killing things. Photo by Matt Reilly. That may come as an unexpected confession from one who loves the sport of hunting, and has a somewhat precipitous body count in the area of squirrels and deer. I’ve got a lot of blood on my hands—not in the least figuratively. No more, though, than any regular consumer of meat. I don’t like killing things, but I don’t think twice about it. The offensive voices of a defensive, out-of-touch society scream at ...
adventuresafield.blogspot.com
Adventures Afield: POOPING ON MOTHER NATURE'S FLOOR
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Who Is Matt Reilly? Wednesday, October 19, 2016. POOPING ON MOTHER NATURE'S FLOOR. I’ve worked at two different kinds of jobs in my brief 20 years—one that stimulates my mind and soul and satisfies the curious outdoorsman in me, and retail. And I haven’t worked retail much—just long enough to learn to despise it and that the biosphere is headed for the gutter. Let me explain. In a simpler time, when small businesses ruled and globalization hadn’t yet broken communal webs to bits, a respectful relat...
adventuresafield.blogspot.com
Adventures Afield: September 2016
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Who Is Matt Reilly? Wednesday, September 14, 2016. My dictionary features a perpetual list of definitions for the word “success.”. Photo by Matt Reilly. One is manifest by the personal discovery of large, wild fish in an otherwise humble setting. On one such afternoon, when I was indulging myself in just that challenge, I encountered a hole chest. From it I pulled three smallmouths of several pounds—each respectable and seeming novelties for the size of the river. Their spirits were strong, but...It was ...
adventuresafield.blogspot.com
Adventures Afield: DROUGHT
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Who Is Matt Reilly? Thursday, December 15, 2016. It's been a while since I put fly in water. A while by my standards. The water is cold, despite its level, as I slosh my way upstream through the familiar vein that slices through thousands of acres of national forest land. The sun pulls the barren forms of hardwoods over its face. My mind expands into the hills and then sounds inward like the rapidly branching plot of a soul-striking novel. I am home again. Mine is roused, too. It's been a while. It’...
adventuresafield.blogspot.com
Adventures Afield: June 2016
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Who Is Matt Reilly? Tuesday, June 28, 2016. Photo by Matt Reilly. One such route recently transported my time machine and I to a township called Second College Grant, or “The Grant,” as it is referred to by citizens of nearby Errol, New Hampshire and others geographically related. Unless you happen to be one of the oft-manipulated, Dartmouth-associated gate key-bearers, the gravel road that traverses the property is restricted to foot-travel. Therefore, much of the interior remains rugged wilderness.
