EXTRA...

Sand skiing; Father praises CG's herculean effort; Coyote poulation peaks

     ^{David Gessner demonstrates his cross country beach skiing by the Oceanic Pier at Wrightsville Beach.}

Ski by the sea:
Who needs snow when you've got crushed shells and sand? 

Maybe, if you've walked along Wrightsville Beach lately, you've noticed long, shallow tracks in the sand, as if something snakelike had slithered through not too long ago.  Maybe, if you arrived at just the right time, you noticed a bearded guy scooting along the beach on a pair of cross-country skis.

That guy is David Gessner, a nature writer and an assistant professor of creative writing at the University of North Carolina Wilmington. He's a recovering Yankee who moved to the area from Cape Cod, Mass., in 2005. For the past year or so, he's been out skiing on the sand almost every day. (To see a short YouTube of David skiing the beach click the image on right or here.)

"Since I've come down here, I've been jogging," Gessner said, "but I'm 45, and jogging and my knees don't agree."  Gessner tried surfing for a while, but concluded that "the world doesn't need too many middle-aged surfers," as he wrote in an article for Orion magazine last year.

So, last winter, he contemplated the white, gently sloping shoreline and thought back to his skiing days when he lived in Colorado.   "I thought, hey, I could ski this," he said... Read the rest of this Star News story here.  Leave a comment

EDITOR's NOTE: David Gessner is the author of several books, including The Prophet of Dry Hill and Return of the Osprey, which was chosen by the Boston Globe as one of the top ten nonfiction books of the year and the Book-of-the-Month club as one of its top books of the year. The Globe called it a "classic of American Nature Writing."  His latest is Soaring with Fidel, the story of following the osprey migration from the Cape To Cuba and back, which Kirkus Reviews calls "a grand adventure, not just for birders and nature lovers."  To find out more go about the osprey book visit here. His latest is Soaring with Fidel, the story of following the osprey migration from the Cape To Cuba and back, which Kirkus Reviews calls "a grand adventure, not just for birders and nature lovers."  To find out more go about the osprey book visit http://www.ospreyworld.com . In 2006 he won a Pushcart Prize. He has taught environmental writing at Harvard, and is currently an assistant professor at the University of North Carolina at Wilmington.  (By writing about how much he loves Cape Cod he ended up a thousand miles away.) He is the Editor of the national literary journal,
David will be giving a talk and having his first Cape Cod book signing at the Cape Cod Museum of Natural History on June 2 at 2PM. Immediately following all Museum guests are invited to view the OspreyCam in the Marsh View Room where our resident Ospry couple will be expected to become
parents His website is here.  Leave a comment
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 'Whatever happened, happened quick'
Father of fisherman lost at sea calls efforts by Coast Guard to find son's boat 'Herculean'

NEWBURYPORT - The Coast Guard has given up hope that two crewmen aboard a missing Newburyport fishing vessel will be found alive.  The Lady Luck (on right), a 52-foot long, steel-hulled dragger, was reported missing off the Maine coast early Thursday morning. The crew made no distress calls, but emergency beacons were detected.

After a 40-hour search that covered 8,140 square miles, the Coast Guard announced it had suspended its search at 5:34 p.m. yesterday. Missing and presumed dead are the captain and owner of the ship, Sean Cone, 24, of North Andover, and his crewman, Dan Miller, 21, of North Hampton, N.H... The first sign of a problem with the Lady Luck came around 2 a.m. Thursday, when an electronic signal from the ship indicated it may have been in distress. About 55 minutes later, the Coast Guard transmitted a general alert to boaters in the area. At 3:18 a.m., the Coast Guard was able to pinpoint the location of the Lady Luck's emergency beacon - a device that detaches from a fishing boat when the crew launches it, or when a boat is at least 3 meters under water.

Winds were high the night the Lady Luck disappeared, but the Coast Guard has not said if the conditions were severe enough to have caused significant ice buildup. Last week, a New Bedford fishing boat sank off Nantucket, its deck and rigging caked with ice... A half hour later, a Falcon jet took off from Cape Cod, and found the beacon, called an EPIRB, by 4:30 a.m. It dropped a life raft and continued to search... Read the rest of this Tribune-Eagle story here.  Leave a comment
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State's coyote population reaches saturation point
In every town except on the Vineyard and Nantucket

A usually shy but adaptable predator, coyotes have made their home in the suburbs and rural countryside, but have apparently run out of room in the Bay State.  According to wildlife experts and officials, the population of at least 8,500 coyotes in Massachusetts is stable and unlikely to increase because the predatory canines have saturated all available habitat...

"Leave cats inside or accept that when you let them outside they're part of the food chain," Way said.  (Photo on right shows a coyotes pouncing on a prey)

Coyotes are not indigenous to Massachusetts. The eastern coyote didn't move into the state's central and western regions until the 1950s. By the 1970s, coyotes had moved into eastern Massachusetts and Cape Cod.  They now live in every town statewide except for the islands of Martha's Vineyard and Nantucket.  The coyote hunting season lasts four months each year, from November through February. In recent years, the number of coyotes killed annually through hunting has more than doubled... Read the rest of this MetroWest story here.  Leave a comment
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Cities, towns to seek new cash sources
Your restaurant meals may "pick up the tab"

BOSTON — City and town governments will argue for new sources of money this year, including a local option to tax meals in restaurants, as they face another tight state budget.  Gov. Deval Patrick will provide the first glimpse of local aid later this month when he releases his first proposed budget as governor...  Legislators will have about $1 billion less to spend than they did two years ago in a state budget of about $25 billion...

The municipal association is pushing hard for local option meal taxes. It could generate millions of dollars, particularly in tourism spots such as Cape Cod. Patrick supports the idea but there is skepticism in the Legislature.  Besides legislative approval, it would need the support of the local town meeting or city council... Read the rest of this Standard-Times story here.

• Read a recent Op-Ed about this issue "Wake Up and Smell the Taxes, Cape Codders" here.