SALISBURY — A forest fire burned 73 acres in the Bear Mountain area of the Taconic Range Tuesday, May 10.According to Jason Wilson, chief of the Lakeville Hose Company, the fire was concentrated in the Ball Brook camp area which is just above Scoville Ore Mine Road.Photographer Joseph Meehan was out that morning taking sunrise photos. He didn’t realize the fire was moving slowly across the peak but he saw it and captured an image of it that can be seen at The Lakeville Journal’s website, www.tricornernews.com. Meehan said the fire looked like some kind of amoeba snaking in a narrow path across the mountaintop.The initial 911 call for “an unknown fire” was received at Litchfield County Dispatch at approximately 12 minutes before midnight on Monday, May 9.“We spent all of Tuesday on the fire scene,” Wilson said. “We went in at 6 a.m. and exited the scene about 7 p.m.”Lakeville Hose Company crews were assisted by fire companies from North Canaan, Cornwall, Norfolk and Sheffield, Mass., in addition to a team from the Connecticut Department of Environmental Protection forestry unit. The Millerton fire company was standing by to cover for Lakeville, and the Salisbury Volunteer Ambulance Service was also on standby.Salisbury resident Chris Janelli’s morning began a little earlier than usual on that Tuesday — at 1 a.m., with a phone call from First Selectman Curtis Rand, warning him that the fire was near his home.“He told me to look out the window,” said Janelli, who lives at the end of Scoville Ore Mine Road, off Undermountain Road (Route 41).Janelli couldn’t see anything from inside the house, but from outside he could see the fire on the mountainside.And thus began a long day, with teams of firefighters moving into the woods above Janelli’s Bingham Brook Farm, quickly clearing an access trail and setting smaller “back fires” to burn up the underbrush and deny the main blaze new fuel.Incredibly, after the initial warning, Janelli went back to bed.“It wasn’t going to get here in four hours,” he shrugged.On Saturday, May 14, Janelli led a reporter into the woods where the firefighters had been. It’s a fairly steep area about 200 yards above the two houses on the property; the trail runs roughly north and south.Janelli said the trail clearing team was particularly impressive: “Guys with chain saws, guys with backpack leaf blowers, guys with rakes — and they were moving.”All that was visible on Saturday along the newly cleared trail was burned leaves and scorched laurel.The main fire did not make it to the preventive fires set behind Janelli’s home.Janelli praised the efforts of the firefighters and said he wasn’t really worried — except when the wind shifted. “Yeah, it was exciting, I guess.”By Tuesday afternoon, firefighters were using the area next to the tennis courts on Mount Riga Corporation property — about a quarter of a mile from the dam at South Pond on the Mount Washington Road — as a staging ground. The teams moved through the woods on a well-defined if not especially wide trail to the fire area. Mount Riga Corporation caretaker Danny Brazee assisted, with his intimate knowledge of the area, which is a mixture of private land owned by the Mount Riga Corporation and National Park Service land that includes the local section of the Appalachian Trail. The trail is the eastern border of the corporation’s property; the fire was beyond that.There are about 40 summer camps on Mount Riga, but none of them were in any danger. The town of Salisbury maintains the narrow dirt road going up the mountain, and the corporation makes available a public beach, access to an old cemetery, hiking opportunities, the Bald Peak lookout and a waterfall.It is worth noting, however, that corporation lands are clearly marked with signs that prohibit camping and fires.Margie Vail, who with husband Charlie lives at the end of Bunker Hill Road (they also own a camp on Riga Lake) said “it smelled as if someone put out a campfire in our yard.” By the late afternoon the smell was detectable in the Salisbury and Lakeville village centers.Wilson said that only one day-hiker on the Appalachian Trail had to be directed away from the fire area.It was a busy day. “We had approximately 120 firefighters from a total of 11 companies working to put out the fire,” he said.There were no injuries.“The biggest challenge was the difficulty of the terrain,” Wilson said. “There are no roads in the area and the fire units literally had to blaze their own trails, to get the equipment, hoses and personnel in.“The guys really worked hard and did a great job.”
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Greg Fricke and James Boehmer, co-owners of Peggy Mercury in Kent, recently launched their first fashion line, “Imaginary Concerts.”
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Fricke and Boehmer are not there to stock their shelves with the same products customers find at standard makeup retailers. They’re there to help customers find what works for them. That usually means asking customers about themselves and learning about their beauty habits, skin, style and the way they like to present themselves. Fricke and Boehmer believe it’s their job to help customers bring out the qualities that suit them and determine what works best for their look.
So much of the Peggy Mercury world is about emboldening people to become more creative, and possibly bolder, versions of themselves. Some of this comes through the store’s creative collaborations with artists, designers and stylists.
It’s part of an ethos that encourages them and their friends to use the shop as a kind of laboratory, trying out new creative experiments without knowing how they might turn out. Whether in fashion, painting, fiber arts or photography, the projects almost always turn out marvelously.
A line of sterling silver charms they sell started as a small project by their friend Nolan Percival. In the beginning, the pieces were for close friends and loved ones. But Boehmer and Fricke encouraged Percival to get a little more serious about the project and create a whole line for the store. Today, it’s one of their top-selling collections.
Classic styles, bold colors, and creative concerts make up the “Imaginary Concerts” line at Peggy Mercury.Provided
“Imaginary Concerts” has the duo taking their own advice.
The project started as a way for Boehmer to connect with his mother, who had been diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease. Taking old concert shirts from his own collection, Boehmer and his mother began cutting out the graphics with the idea that they would make a quilt together. Unfortunately, she died before they could complete the project in 2025. The pieces, which were ready for production, were put on the back burner as Boehmer and Fricke dealt with their loss and the whirlwind of projects that never seemed to cease at Peggy Mercury.
But the harsh winter of 2026 presented an opportunity to take some time and focus on themselves. Part of that meant revisiting and redefining the concert T-shirt project. This time, instead of looking to the warmth and comfort of a quilt, they turned to another passion — fashion.
Taking a page from their own book, they wanted to create something that felt comfortable to them. They took two disparate loves — one rooted in simple preppy style, with clean lines and classic silhouettes, and the other in the nitty gritty worlds of punk rock and pop — and blended them together to create something entirely new. Pulling from the staples of vintage Brooks Brothers and Charvet collections, they applied the graphic elements with bold stitching reminiscent of punk jackets of the ‘70s and ‘80s, but with a much more sophisticated air.
But the remixing isn’t just the pairing of prep and punk. The pieces are not canon. They take liberties with the realities of concert tours, combining one band’s dates with another band’s logos, mixing them all up until the reality is lost and imagination is the only truth.
Shirts from Peggy Mercury’s first fashion line, “Imaginary Concerts,” hang on display.Provided
Adding to the mix is an element of perpetual creativity. Art can be messy, both figuratively and literally, and many of Fricke and Boehmer’s artist friends carry evidence of their work on them at all times. As a nod to these tireless creatives, the duo added haphazard splashes of bright color, giving the line an even more distinctive feel.
For them, “Imaginary Concerts” passes the “Peggy Test.” The mythical Peggy Mercury is a fictional figurehead for the company, a character who thrives on creativity and change. The name, much like the clothing line, is a mixture of interests: Mercury is a planet, a deity and an elusive, transformative element, while Peggy is the wonderfully stylish and boundary-pushing Peggy Guggenheim.
Everything Fricke and Boehmer put in their store has to pass this test: Would Peggy Mercury approve? For their first collection, the answer is a resounding yes.
Peggy Mercury is at 9 Maple St., Unit 2, Kent.
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