Herb Terns and his dog, Cooper, shown on an adventure in the Central Adirondacks, took a different trip together more recently, near Middleburgh.

“I love Vermont but it’s the season of the sticks,” Noah Kahan sings on his recent album “Stick Season.” Those of us in the Northeast understand stick season as that time after the splendor of the fall foliage departs and before the landscape is decorated with snow.

A string of obligations, family and others, kept me from getting outside in peak foliage season. It’s with an irony I suspect Noah Kahan would appreciate that I missed the colorful leaves displayed on calendars and magazine covers and instead unloaded my dog Cooper at a trailhead just outside Middlebugh during peak stick season.

In addition to stick, it was bow-hunting season, so the tan-colored Cooper donned a bright orange vest that he does not like. Among other things, the straps inhibit his........

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