The Return of the Rambler

The Rambler is back. After taking a break for the last few months the River Valley Rambler has returned from retirement. It made sense to end the Rambler at the time because most of the content in the column concerned outdoor activities. At the same time I was launching a new column, blog and podcast called Doing Stuff Outdoors so I decided to focus exclusively on outdoors content. It's worked very well. The Doing Stuff Outdoors program and blog is now heard and read by people all over the world. I invite you to check it out at doingstuffoutdoors.com.

But the demise of the Rambler column limited my ability to write about the local River Valley area. Sure there are plenty of outdoor related topics to write about in this region but there are also many other interesting and important things going on. I felt constrained restricting the column to only outdoor content. At the time of the change the River Valley Rambler blog reverted to postings of previous columns from years past. I was surprised to find that quite a few people still checked into the site regularly at RiverValleyRambler.com. Something else happened that encouraged me to bring back the rambler column in this paper and in a new and expanded web site. The popular Bay Info web-page dealing with community events and news shut down at the beginning of the year leaving this area without a regular web presence. At the same time people were telling me they missed the old River Valley Rambler. We're also heading into an exciting and busy period for Grand Bay-Westfield and the surrounding area. Development seems to be happening everywhere and there's a municipal election coming in the spring. The time is ripe for the return of the Rambler along with a redesigned web-site. The Doing Stuff Outdoors column will remain as a source of information about outdoor activities and will alternate with the Rambler column in this paper. But the exciting and interesting content is what I hope will develop online.

I'd like the new RiverValleyRambler.com site to fill some of the gap left by the closing of Bay Info. It has provided a valuable service to the community and I thank the producers of Bay Info for their efforts. RiverValleyRambler.com will continue mainly as a blog providing readers with a collection of thoughts, comments, reflections and ramblings about life in the River Valley area of New Brunswick. It will also contain posts of some of the old columns that have proved popular with some readers. I will endeavor to post new content and photos as often as possible. This is new material in addition to the regular column you'll find published in this paper. But for that to be successful I will need your help. I'd like to fill the site with useful and interesting information and stories about life in this community. That's where you come in.

If you have a story suggestion send it to me. If you've written a story about a person or an event happening in the area send that along as well. If you have birthday or anniversary wishes to pass on or community news of any kind send that too. I'm looking for all sorts of local content. If you have some great photos of the area, old or recent, send them too and we'll find a place for them on the Rambler site. If you know of something interesting going on in the community let me know about it and we'll pass the information along. In addition to photos and text, I'm planning to include video and specialized audio content on the site as well.

More than anything else I'd like the River Valley Rambler to become a place you visit on a regular basis to find out more about your community. I'd like you to be able to go to it often and always find something interesting, entertaining and useful there. But for this to work I'll need your input. I can't do it all myself.

The River Valley Rambler has a new email address. Send your stories, suggestions, community events and photos to rivervalleyrambler@inbox.com and check out the new site at RiverValleyRambler.com.

River Valley Rambler - Guess I'm a Blogger

I guess with this column I officially join the ranks of internet bloggers. A blog is a web site where you post your thoughts and opinions in writing and share it with the online world. A true blog is interactive so readers can comment on your comments and you develop this kind of interactive community on the web. Blogging started back in the 90’s sometime and now there are hundreds of thousands of blogs on every conceivable topic imaginable.

My new blog is called… what else, River Valley Rambler. I figured since I’ve been writing this column in the River Valley News for longer than I can remember I may as well throw it out on the web as well. The blog will feature all the regular columns written for the paper from now on. In addition I’ll go back and look through some of the past 352 columns and post some of them from time to time, sort of a retro-rambler. I can also post photographs and other content on the site. For example I’ve included a column I wrote last summer after my wife and I became grandparents for the first time and I added a picture of our new granddaughter Ava. It’s worth checking out the blog just to view that photo of Ava, probably the most beautiful baby in the world. Well she is to us.

When you have a column your deadline is whenever the paper is published. So in the case of the River Valley News I come up with a new column every two weeks on average. But with a blog there is no publication date or deadline. You post something new whenever you want. I try to keep each column to about 500 words but blog postings can be any length you want. So for these reasons my blog at rivervalleyrambler.blogspot.com is going to be more than just the biweekly columns. I call it a collection of regular columns published in the River Valley News as well as thoughts, comments, reflections and ramblings about life in the River Valley area of New Brunswick with special emphasis on outdoor recreation and activities. That sounds like a mouthful but what it really means is if something of interest is happening in the area, chances are you’ll be able to read about it in the blog. This is especially true if it has to do with the outdoors and activities like hiking, biking, canoeing, kayaking, skiing and so on. This column has always had a focus on active living and outdoor adventure and the blog will build on that. I hope at some point the web site will be the first place for people to go to find out about outdoor activities happening in the local area.

So far you’ll see postings and photos about skiing, walking and snowmobiling on some of the local trails. Conditions by the way have been fabulous. There’s also a story about an annual ice climbing festival that occurred on a frozen waterfall on Ministers Face on Long Island in the Kenebecasis River. It attracted ice climbers from all over the Maritimes. By the time you read this in the print edition of River Valley News there’ll probably be other postings on the site. You’ll never know exactly what you’ll find there. That’s part of the fun of it. Down the road there will be information about other projects that are in the works that will include video and audio and other content online.

I invite you to check out my new blog and visit as often as you like. I hope you’ll leave comments and suggestions for stories and other content you’d like to see online and in this column. Bookmark the site. It’s easy to find at rivervalleyrambler.blogspot.com.

(Visit rivervalleyrambler.blogspot.com for previous columns and new content about life in the River Valley)