About Ian Strever

Ian Strever is an outdoor enthusiast who moved to Falls Village five years ago to become the Assistant Principal at Housatonic Valley Regional High School. He has explored the local area on foot, on bike, on ski, and on snowshoe, and has written about it for The Lakeville Journal and on his blog, outdoorsct.wordpress.com. He graduated with a BA in English from Albright College, and MA in English with a Writing Focus from Western Connecticut University, and a MA in Educational Leadership from the University of Bridgeport. He has taught English at the high school and college levels, and his prose and poetry have appeared in a number of publications for nationwide audience

First Person Singular

Many tear-sodden, crumpled papers ago, I wrestled with the geometry of diagramming sentences (yes, I went to Catholic school). A two-word sentence was simple enough, all horizontal and vertical, but when things went all 45 degrees, and sentences became complex and compound, my diagrams resembled a thicket […]

By |2023-03-02T16:15:09-05:00March 2nd, 2023|Featured Article|

Sharon Land Trust

Right about this time, 17,000 years ago, the Main Street distribution area was covered by hundreds of feet of ice. From the Housatonic to the Hudson, South Taconics to Catskills, the Laurentide Ice Sheet shaped our area at literal glacial speed, scouring bedrock and depositing minerals in places that would determine the character of this […]

By |2023-01-31T17:58:43-05:00January 31st, 2023|Our Environment|

The Iceman Cowereth

In most publications, this is the part of the article that usually includes a disclaimer meant to either dissuade the reader from engaging in the about-to-be-described activities or at least distancing the writer or publication from any kind of liability for the reader’s suggestibility and – let’s […]

By |2023-01-06T20:58:25-05:00January 6th, 2023|Featured Article|

Oh The Places You’ll Go

In the city of Xian, China, a bird flits along a ten-inch wooden perch inside a mahogany-colored cage. I don’t know what kind of bird it is, but the cage itself catches my attention. Cylindrical and peaked at the top and bottom, it is shaped like the […]

By |2022-12-01T10:27:52-05:00December 1st, 2022|Featured Article|

Natural, by Design

A few years ago, a cryptic acronym began to appear in my social media feeds: “FKT.” Too lazy to look it up, I assumed it was expletive-based shorthand for the exasperated athletes who used it in association with stupidly long undertakings like ultramarathons and “Everesting,” where a cyclist attempts to climb the height of Mt. […]

By |2022-11-09T18:01:29-05:00November 9th, 2022|Our Environment|

The World Championship of the Berkshires

“To finish is to win.” – Josh Billings

“If you’re not first, you’re last,” – Ricky Bobby

This year’s season at Tanglewood will end with a flourish: back-to-back nights with Van Morrison and Ringo Starr is about as impressive a finale to their concert season as anyone could conjure, short of the ghost of John Lennon sitting in […]

By |2022-09-01T21:44:48-04:00September 1st, 2022|Sports|

Southern New England by Contrast

This is a beautiful part of the country, it really is. At least once a week, a certain slant of light or the fleeting glimpse of a fox reminds me how lucky we are to live amidst such natural wonders.

But March?

This year, that fifth month of winter nudged me toward a madness that inspired the […]

By |2022-05-28T18:19:15-04:00May 28th, 2022|Our Environment|

Getting into the Flow

When interscholastic sports first appeared, it was in the form of school organizations that reached out to neighboring schools in the manner of colleges and universities. Track and field, baseball, and football clubs eventually became teams, which in turn spawned leagues, divisions, state championships, and cottage industries […]

By |2022-04-29T20:42:51-04:00April 29th, 2022|Featured Article|

The Peregrine

I hope this finds you in a quiet place: the armchair by the window, a glass of cabernet at your elbow. Or under a baffle of comforters, with the bed stand lamp the only light on in the house. I’d even take a bathroom, so long as […]

By |2022-03-14T10:19:28-04:00February 25th, 2022|Featured Article|

Blue Moon

The night required a couple layers of wool but no headlamp. As I stepped down from my truck at the Undermountain Trailhead in Salisbury, CT, a row of pines stood before me like a curtain, awash in moonlight, blue and bare like a Hopper painting, though no […]

By |2022-02-16T09:29:05-05:00January 28th, 2022|Featured Article|
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