Country living: not just for hillbillies, by J.C. Kavanagh

The Twisted Climb - Darkness Descends, 

voted BEST Young Adult Book 2018

I grew up in the city of Toronto and moved to a small town (population 1,200) in the mid 80s. I raised my children there and later, moved with them to a slightly larger town. When they left the roost, so to speak, me and my partner headed to the country. Real rural, that is. A bit of property (about four acres). Neighbours far enough away you could walk around naked, if you wanted to (I don't want to).

But I could.

There was a time in my life when I would gently mock the 'hillbilly country folk.' I guess what I saw on TV perpetuated the hillbilly mentality and I totally bought into it.

Shame on me. They're not like that at all. I can say that because now, I am a total hillbilly.

When I say 'hillbilly,' I don't mean it in the TV sense. I mean 'hillbilly' as someone who loves nature as much as they love people; someone who appreciates the smell of the woodstove burning smoke out the chimney; someone who stops to not only feed the birds on a daily basis, but someone who stops to hear the birds singing, whistling and chirping all day and into the early evening.

My 'hillbilly' is someone who has their eggs delivered to the door by the local egg man ($5 for 2 1/2 dozen) and who calls their neighbour to help re-locate a pesky racoon.

Yeah, but my hillbilly would certainly lose if there was ever a 'best dressed outdoors' look. My outdoors look is definitely old-style hillbilly where nothing is colour-coded or even matches, and there are rubber boots that come to the knees as well as a Fargo-inspired furry cap that's a necessity in the winter.

And when the weather turns bad, we have it real bad here. And I guess that also contributes to a 'hillbilly' outlook. We just go with it. So.... power's out for four days? Crank the wood stove.

Snow's one metre deep on the roof? Shovel some off.

Snow's two metres deep on the driveway? Crank up that snow blower.

Winter thaw brings a flood? Bring out the canoe.

Trees are dying or branches breaking? Fire up the chainsaw.

A million stars shine brightly at night and the gossamer waves of the Northern Lights appear in the sky? Pour a giant Caesar, pick an outdoor chair and gaze at the sky.

It that makes us better hillbillies, then I guess we're doing allllright.

A wee, temporary flood in the back... bring out the canoe!

Feeding birds in your pjs? Yup, hillbilly style, right in the hand.

Beautiful, gentle deer all winter long.

Me, not in a fashion show.

These are two bush cords of wood I stacked - 

we use four bush cords per winter for our wood stove :)

Relaxing in overalls by the firepit after a day of cutting wood.

Bald eagle nest and bald eagle guard, near our home.

Our neighbour's Guinea hens come to pick around our bird feeder, almost daily.

Our neighbour's geese also come visiting.

Birds to our bird feeder include Grosbeaks and Baltimore Orioles.

Cardinals are here year-round.

Cheeky blue Jays also here year-round.

Enjoy nature today - it's as beautiful as you are.

J.C. Kavanagh

The Twisted Climb - Darkness Descends (Book 2)

voted BEST Young Adult Book 2018, Critters Readers Poll

AND

The Twisted Climb,

voted BEST Young Adult Book 2016, P&E Readers Poll

Novels for teens, young adults and adults young at heart

Email: author.j.c.kavanagh@gmail.com

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The Wisdom of Winnie the Pooh...by Sheila Claydon

Click this link for book and purchase information

http://bookswelove.net/authors/claydon-sheila-romance/

I often have children in my books and this was especially the case when I wrote Double Fault. The battle for their children, which was at the heart of the story, sometimes made me want to knock Kerry and Pierce's heads together. Yes, I know I invented the characters and wrote the book, but still...that's how it gets you sometimes!

Something else got to me recently. It happened when I was watching a Winnie the Pooh Disney film with my youngest granddaughter. It was the wisdom of children as illustrated by Winnie the Pooh and his friends.

Piglet: “How do you spell ‘love’?”
Pooh: “You don’t spell it…you feel it.” 

Such a simple question and answer, but one that goes right to the heart. And as a writer of contemporary romance, it's a philosophy that features in my books. Fanciful sometimes maybe, but how comforting.

And the pearl of wisdom below must surely be a translation of how Pooh's author, the writer A.A. Milne, felt sometimes when he was sitting in front of a blank page wondering what to write next.

“But it isn’t easy,” said Pooh. “Because Poetry and Hums aren’t things which you get, they’re things which get you. And all you can do is to go where they can find you.” 

And as he said later, when he was standing on the bridge in Hundred Acre Wood:  “Rivers know this: there is no hurry. We shall get there some day.” 

And talking of Hundred Acre Wood, I've actually been there. It's part of Ashdown Forest in the county of Sussex in South East England, about 40 miles from London. It dates almost to the Norman Conquest when it became a medieval hunting forest. The monarchy and nobility continued to hunt there well into Tudor times, Henry VIII being the most notable. 

The forest has a rich archaeological heritage with evidence of prehistoric human activity dating back 50,000 years, and it contains Bronze Age, Iron Age and Romano-British remains.

It was also the centre of a nationally important iron industry on two occasions, firstly during the Roman occupation of Britain and then in the Tudor period when England's first blast furnace was built at nearby Newbridge, marking the beginning of Britain's modern iron and steel industry.

In the seventeenth century, however, more than half the forest fell into private hands. The remaing 9.5 square miles were set aside as the common land which still exists today, and it is the largest area with open public access in South East England.

Nowadays, it is more heath than  forest. Nevertheless, ash trees and hazel vie for space in the wooded areas and in Springtime it's carpeted with wild flowers.   It's the sort of magical place that small boys, like Pooh Bear's friend, Christopher Robin, love. A place of adventure, a place that feeds the imagination. 

”We didn't realize we were making memories, we just knew we were having fun,” said Winnie the Pooh to his friends. 

And when his best friend, Piglet, said, “‘We’ll be Friends Forever, won’t we, Pooh?’ 

‘Even longer,’ Pooh answered.” 

He even understood the need to talk things through with a friend when life gets tough.“You can’t stay in your corner of the Forest waiting for others to come to you. You have to go to them sometimes.” 

“When you are a Bear of Very Little brain, and you Think Things, you find sometimes that a Thing which seemed very Thingish inside you is quite different when it gets out into the open and has other people looking at it.” 

The wisdom of Winnie the Pooh, aka A.A. Milne and the young Christopher Robin could, and did, fill books. And they made Pooh and his friends famous. So famous that many years later Walt Disney made some of them into films that captivated new generations of children (and their parents and grandparents). It wasn't all honey though, even though Pooh Bear considered honey (hunny) to be the cure for everything. For many years the real Christopher Robin hated the celebrity he had thrust upon him. He was teased at school and, in later life, felt he didn't live up to his Father's expectations. He was also estranged from his mother. But Pooh even has an answer for all of that, an answer that Christopher Robin seemed to acknowledge in his own memoir The Enchanted Places, which he wrote in 1974, and which is the basis of the latest magical film Goodbye Christopher Robin.

“You’re braver than you believe and stronger and smarter than you think.”

Or if, like Pooh, you sometimes look at it another way...

”The nicest thing about the rain is that it always stops. Eventually.” 

So there was even angst behind the magic of Winnie the Pooh, as there is angst in everyone's life to a greater or lesser degree. But pick one of Winnie the Pooh's snippets of wisdom and somehow nothing seems quite so bad. 

”I must go forward where I have never been instead of backwards where I have.” – Winnie the Pooh 

    

The Bay of Fundy by Joan Donaldson-Yarmey

http://bwlpublishing.ca/authors/donaldson-yarmey-joan

I started my writing career as a travel writer, researching and writing seven travel books about the attractions, sites, and history along the backroads of Alberta, British Columbia, the Yukon, and Alaska. While working on them I realized what a beautiful country I live in. Since then I have switched to writing fiction but I still love to travel. 2017 was Canada’s 150^th birthday and to celebrate it my husband, Mike, and I travelled in a motorhome from our home on Vancouver Island on the Pacific Ocean to Newfoundland on the Atlantic Ocean. The round trip took us nine weeks and we were only able to see about half of the sites and attractions along the roads.

Today I’d like to describe our stop at the Bay of Fundy situated between the provinces of New Brunswick and Nova Scotia. The Bay has the highest tides in the world and was formally designated one of North America’s seven wonders of nature in February, 2014. (The others are Niagara Falls, Grand Canyon, Yellowstone National Park, Mount McKinley, the Everglades, and Yosemite National Park).

 

 

 

 

 

       From Moncton, NB, we drove south on Route 114 to Hopewell Cape and the Hopewell Rocks arriving in the afternoon. It was low tide so after we paid, Mike accepted the cart ride offered while I decided to walk the trail to the Rocks. I arrived at a viewpoint overlooking the ocean floor and the reddish rock structures.  Mike and I took the stairway down to the floor and wandered out among the tall formations. The ground was surprisingly solid with a few muddy areas.

       The Hopewell Rocks were originally a massive mountain range that was older than the Appalachians and bigger than the Rocky Mountains in Canada. Over millions of years the range wore down and after the retreat of the glaciers during the last ice age, water seeping through cracks in the cliffs eroded the sedimentary and sandstone and separated the Rocks from the cliffs. The incoming and outgoing tides have eroded the base of the rocks at a faster rate than the tops and that has caused their unusual shapes. Those shapes and the vegetation growing on top have given the formations their nickname of the Flower Pot Rocks.

 

 

 

       Due to the tides the Rocks are covered in water twice a day. Some visitors are able to see the high and low tides in one day but since the next high tide would be at night, Mike and I found a place to camp and returned to the Rocks the next morning. There is approximately six hours between low and high tide and the entrance fee covers a return visit to enable visitors to see the Rocks during both tides.

       Again, Mike took his ride and I walked. I reached the viewpoint and the change was astonishing. Just the tops of some of the rocks showed, the rest being under water. The tides can reach a height of 16 metres (52ft), which is as high as a four story building, twice a day. I walked down part of the stairs but the rest was blocked off to the public because they were under water. High tide is a good time to take a kayak tour and three kayakers were paddling around the formations.

 

 

       Seeing all the water and the partial formations, it was hard to believe that just the day before I had walked on the floor of the bay. It was an amazing experience.