This white pine made a good landing spot for this 11-week-old bald eagle’s first flight during late June. Its nest, several hundred yards away, was also in a white pine. The pine cones, green in this image, take two years to mature; the seeds drop during the second summer
From sailors to siskins; the great white pine
The Eastern white pine (Pinus strobus) is so common in the region that a person only need walk outside to see one—more likely, a lot more than one. Outside of dropping pollen and sap on the car and pine needles in the yard, we normally don’t think much of this tree except of its nuisance factor.
Will Rogers, the sage of Oklahoma, once said, “It ain’t what people don’t know, the problem is what people do know that just ain’t so.” For years I have been looked down upon by other fly fishers because I persist in reeling with my right hand when playing a fish. Some years ago, some genius wrote an article stating that the proper way to play a fish was to reel using the left hand. This obviates the need for a right-handed caster to switch hands after hooking a fish.
