Spring comes quietly in the forest. Ice thaws. A bird calls tentatively. A bud pops. A sliver of green pushes up. The air is cool,...

Sun streamed through the windows as Ray, Ken, Wayne, and several others moved around the vast area. Members of the Back Mountain Railroad...

No, there are no castles InSide the Back Mountain . Nope. Nada. Not even one!  But there are a lot of castle dreams from our childhoods!...

Artists’ studios can be strange worlds, imaginative, full of intrigue. American artist Andrew Wyeth’s studio boasted armies of little...

In the American colonies, an event called an Illumination meant lighting the insides of public buildings and sometimes private ones with...

Ten years ago, November 2014, with much trepidation, I wrote my very first article for InSide the Back Mountain , in which I reflected on...

It all began one afternoon in the art studio as I attempted to explain my inspiration and fascination with the new series of paintings I...

Is there anyone else  InSide the Back Mountain  who remembers that “back in the day,” usually in the elementary grades, our very first...

While perusing Back Mountain Kitchen Treasures , a 1956 cookbook published by Reverend Yost’s Shavertown Methodist (not yet United)...

My parents, especially my mom, taught me to love picnics! Before I was of school age, on the first warm day of spring Mom would exclaim,...

Before American art became a force in the world of painting, subjects tended to be portraits, history, mythology, or architecture. It was...

My mom loved flowers! The rural yard of my childhood InSide the Back Mountain in Franklin Township was never a showplace garden, but it...

I always wanted to be an artist. I experienced my very first art lesson at age 11. I sat in a large room originally used as the front...

“Look at that sunset!” I yelled and took off running down Jackson Street in Cape May, New Jersey in my much younger days! My daughter...

“The fog comes on little cat feet…” wrote American poet Carl Sandburg. Fog can silently envelope a landscape. It can shroud it in...

It still lays in layers on the entire floor of Wyoming Valley underneath the Susquehanna River and climbs up the mountainsides, wrapping...

Aren’t old postcards fascinating? I especially love historical postcards from familiar places. High on my list, of course, are old...

Learning how to draw receding railroad tracks in one point perspective is one of the very first basic lessons for art students learning...

According to the artist Willem de Kooning, texture is a word that denotes the events of our lives. If he is correct, then the texture of...

Those of us who remember September 11, 2001 can never forget the intense blue skies of that infamous morning. InSide the Back Mountain...