November Open Spaces

November 30, 2019

Hello friends,

I hope you had a great Thanksgiving, and you and yours are getting excited about

Christmas. The year is nearing its conclusion, the decade too for that matter. For Christmas is a really big deal, and I hope the real reason for the celebration doesn’t get swallowed by the hype. Have a great Christmas this year.

I’ve held back this issue of Open Spaces until I could announce the release of Elizabeth’s Journey. And the news is BIG!

Some of you have been waiting for the Misty Creek story to continue. Well, the sequel is LIVE. What does that mean? For one thing if you’re an EBook reader, it’s available NOW. If you prefer the hold in your hand print it should be on Amazon’s and Barnes and Noble’s site by mid-week.

The drawing for the Elizabeth’s Journey pre-release book giveaway was this morning. Yes, I got up early. First I want to thank all of those that entered. The excitement that you have shown as I have pushed to reach is this point is humbling.

The two winners are: Dennis Kelly of Indianapolis, IN, and Laura Schrameyer of Marshall County, IN. Again I wish to thank all of you for entering and Congratulation to the winners.

With the release of this new book I will begin to be having Author’s Events. The first is scheduled for La D’zert Café, 203N. Michigan Street, Plymouth, IN on December 21, 2019. If you’re in the area stop by, we’re gonna have some fun.

If you know a place that might like to host an event please let me know, I’m excited to get the word out.

As always, my friends I wish you blessings.

John

Change is in the air…

By John W. Vander Velden

 

There is a change in the air. As the days grow shorter we realize that summer has passed and soon a new season will begin.   Perhaps now is the time we should think about change. Changes in our lives. Changes in attitudes, in relationships. Life is about change. Changes we have made. Changes we will make. 

The world around us effects all of us.  It bombards us with so many ideas, so many promises of better things, so many demands for our time and energy. It changes us.  It changes us in our relationships, our relationships with our family, our relationships with our neighbors, our relationships with our community…our relationship with God.

Perhaps today is the time for each of to think about change, about what is important, about what we have left behind in our rush toward what the world promises is better.  Perhaps today is the time for each of us to think about our relationships… our relationships with each other…our relationship with God.

Change is in the air…are we ready for a change?

(176 Words)/2009

October 17th

October 17^th

By John W. Vander Velden

The relationship between parent and child is always complex. There are so many facets that influence how the generations mesh...or not. I believe that each person is unique. Even siblings, though they may share genetics are not the same in every way. Life itself and all the challenges and setbacks that each face shape us. So though the same clay might be tossed on the potter’s wheel, the master artist forms each lump a bit differently.

So unique individuals build unique relationships in unique ways. Again it is life, isn’t it? So the relationship I had with my mother and father was very different than the relationship that my siblings had built over the years, not better, just different.

Perhaps it was the vast number of hours I shared with my parents. The unplanned twist of my life that in the end resulted in my lifelong profession led to my working side by side with my father for more than thirty years. But even that does not explain it all. For the profession we shared demanded long hours, early rising and working often till the sky held out its stars for our pleasure. The sheer mass of hours, the countless shared meals, the seven days a week surely made my connection different than others. And over those years, faults and blemishes cannot be hidden, and that came into the mix as well.

Yet it was in the understanding, as best as I was able, these complex imperfect people, and accepting them with their strengths and weakness while doing my best to manage my own life within the few hours left. So looking back I wonder, once again, exactly what was the relationship we shared. I wonder if I met their approval. My father did not understand me...not really. And I am certain, even now, I did not fully understand him. But how could I? I did not live through the depression, survive as a teenager in an occupied country, or leave family and EVERYTHING behind at twenty three.

Yet we must have understood enough to tolerate, even appreciate each other year after year. A partnership, if not financially, in the task. And we did not carry that task alone for mom had her part, a large part in the success of a business that seemed bound for failure at its onset. So the three of us worked together side by side, each with an important contribution as we faced together the steps forward and back as well to at long last arrive in creating a profitable endeavor.

So you can see the life I shared with those who reared me shaped the relationship. And now as I approach October 17^th I am reminded of the years we worked side by side, and I think about my mother and father, for this October 17th would have been mom’s 94^th birthday.  

An Excerpt from Elizabeth’s Journey

An Excerpt from Elizabeth’s Journey

By John W. Vander Velden

The sun shone on a bright spring day, but Elizabeth didn’t notice. She sat alone in a half filled rail car as it rumbled and rattled eastward. Trains would take her to Columbus, Ohio. Elizabeth was going home. The voices of those that shared the space scarcely registered above noise that surrounded her. Having traveled on trains before, she found the swaying of the car and the chunk, chunk, chunk of wheels over the rails expected sensations. The stale air mixed with the cigar smoke from the man five rows forward did not trouble her, for her mind was filled with thoughts and memories, expectations unrealized and disappointments never anticipated. Elizabeth was going home, but had no real idea what her future held.

Seeing the others that shared the car, she shook her head at the thought of how so many would leave Thimble this week. Elizabeth wondered if a similar number had rumbled into the town at the rail’s end the evening before. It seemed that people came and people went. But as she considered the tired old men, and others in their prime, she knew none were driven by the reasons that propelled her.

Alone in her thoughts, Elizabeth considered the reasons she had gone west. The heartbreak that had brought her. The reasons for her return to Ohio were very different. Or were they? As she looked about the rail car she wondered how many had come to Kansas only to be driven back in less than a year. Certainly others, like she, had abandoned—something.

Leaning into the worn leather that covered her seat, Elizabeth eyed a family seated near the front of the coach. A man, a woman, his wife she felt certain, and five children all under the age of twelve sat in three rows. Had they come to visit some relation, or had they sought a new life, like she had, only to surrender and return to some sanctuary or other? But Elizabeth had not surrendered. No, she had made the choice to return to Ohio with no plans of returning. Even though members of the school board begged her to return in September, she could not. Only Rev. Benjamin Smith knew the real reason for her departure, a very private reason. Elizabeth drew a breath as she shook her head to herself. She considered those reasons noble in the least, a choice that was best. Love lost sent her west, and love found chased her back east. And the sacrifice love demanded meant that a new life in Misty Creek would not be hers—could not be hers.

The train rumbled on, the sound reminded her of a wagon ride taken just yesterday. When they had crossed the saddle, she was amazed. The dried up dusty land she had crossed months before was unrecognizable. The prairie was green and vibrant. Wildflowers could be found at nearly every glance. It reminded her once again of first impressions. They were not always accurate.

The Shortest Route May Not Be The Best           

By John W. Vander Velden

I’ll admit it. I’ve gotten lazy.

I don’t always pour over maps, plotting courses, writing down driving directions anymore. Why should I? I have a smart phone. So heading out to Crisp Point on a mid- July morning, Google would be our guide. Two and a half hours we were told, mostly north from our hotel in St. Ignace an easy drive to be sure. I had read that the lighthouse was out of the way, that several miles of back, read dirt, road remained in our path.

Nearly all the highways in the Upper Peninsula are great, so we moved along on an overcast misty morning. But blue skies and sun were promised to arrive by noon, so I had timed our departure accordingly.

Zipping down Highway 123 Jackie said, “Alexa says we needed to turn off there.” She pointed to the right as we whizzed past what certainly did not look like a road.

I know Google’s voice isn’t Alexa, wrong trademark, but we call the female sounding voice that all the same.

But back to the story. All I had seen of the supposed road was a lane with a post standing near the highway. A post with about fifteen boards nailed to it. Each a different color of faded, peeling paint, which pointed to what seemed a path going to the north and through the trees.

It can’t be, my thought, but Alexa seemed confident, well she always does, so I found a place to turn around and guided Pearl, onto the road Alexia had chosen for us. Oh, if you didn’t know Jackie named her Jeep Renegade Pearl. No, we don’t have a birth certificate, if we did it’d be in Italian and couldn’t read it anyway, but the name seems to fit our vehicle.

This was not a paved road. It was not a gravel road. It was a dirt road, mostly sand. Now let’s add to this the fact that it had rained, seriously, sometime during the night before. So that made this lane a mud road, more so in some places than others. There were places the road was underwater. Not flowing water you understand, just deep puddles that reached from berm to berm.

I do not drive headlong through water, standing or otherwise. I paused a second before carefully plodding through what seemed the shallowest portion, along the left edge of the road. No problem. Pearl seemed pleased with herself. Jackie was concerned!

We continued on crossing several water holes, mud puddles, or lakes, choose you own descriptors, when we reached a turnoff, or so Alexia demanded. Barriers prevents our pleasing the voice within Jackie’s phone, for the road had been closed for reconstruction. That blocked turnoff was strangely comforting. The silent bright yellow trucks lined up along Farm Trail Road seemed to prove that we were indeed on a maintained roadway, instead of just on some strange trek into the boonies created by the minds of a machine half a world away.

We pressed on.

The road grew narrower as we continued. As we went, only trees could be seen, though the post with the pointed signs at the highway might indicate that people lived along that way, we saw no houses. Only a few scattered lanes, perhaps driveways, which emptied onto the continually narrowing way we drove. Coming upon a place where the road was, how can I say it, softer, or muddy, with some serious ruts that seemed to scream, “driver beware”, gave me another concerning situation. Hmm... Dialed the 4wdr control to mud and eased into the quagmire. I can’t be certain but as we passed through that obstacle cutting our own ruts, the sound of Pearl’s engine seemed to be a bit like music. It was as if our little Jeep was singing a portion of an Italian Opera. A delightful tune that told us, no worries I got this. She never spun a wheel!

Some miles later, the closed section of Farm Trail Road joined us and Alexa seemed to relax a bit. She can get a bit tedious. Onward we moved confident that though the road was now just one lane, one narrow lane, one very narrow lane, that our destination was attainable. Jackie said, “Soon we reach a very tight right turn. We did, and found a road grader waiting for better conditions wedged at the road’s edge.

“Alexa says it’s still fifteen miles...”

“Say what!” I exclaimed. “Fifteen more miles.” I stopped. Looked down the road, and wondered.

I grabbed my own phone and found we had no cell service. Hmmmmmm.... The branches along the road now nearly touched Pearl. Would the road that continually narrowed get suddenly wider...probably not? Fifteen miles.

Enough already. I turned around.

Without cell service my mind began to run wild. Could we mere humans be able to find our way back to civilization, or would we be guests, one day, on one of the morning network shows.

Today’s we are so happy to have Jackie and John Vander Velden who were lost in the wilds of Upper Peninsula Michigan. They survived forty days living off wild berries, tree bark, and a bottle of water. I shook my head and returned to the task at hand.

I followed the tire tracks on the road, our tracks, the only tracks. That was until we met some bold off roaders mudding our way. They were so kind as to squeeze off the road in one of the rare wider portions to allow us to slip passed.

Through the mud. Through the water. Between the millions of trees. It was ten miles before we reached the strange post with all the pointed boards, and glad of it.

Thirteen miles further on Highway 123 we came to a sign pointing the way to Crisp Point Lighthouse. And yes it was a dirt road. But it was nineteen miles of WIDER dirt road with tire tracks that proved other human had driven the road THAT DAY. The puddles were shallower, the road firmer, survival seemed likely. So much for being guests on morning TV, but I can live without that.

(1025 Words) 8-15-2019

Rainy Days and Thursdays…

By John W. Vander Velden

 

It’s raining and it’s Thursday and I am at the keyboard…again. I really shouldn’t. My to do list stretches from here to, well I don’t know where but outa’ sight anyway. But rainy days do that to us don’t they. They give us the feeling that we should be doing something but the weather gets in the way, and so we head off on a tangent, taking time we should not use on endeavors unplanned. 

Writing has become an important task in my life. I suppose that years ago it was unimaginable that I would spend the thousands of hours tapping away letters into words, words into sentences, sentences into stories. But even now as I plan to change the oil in the trusty PT I find myself putting this rambling together. 

 Rainy days set my mind ta thinkin’. We’ve had a powerful lot of rainy days this year. I guess I’m still not completely thunk out. But the fact is, and I know it better than anyone else, I’m way past the middle of my years. And though I have so much I hope to accomplish, I really shouldn’t be typing right now but doing some of it. I understand that I likely won’t do all the things I hope to do. Sometimes that bothers me, it bothers me a lot. Sorry Mrs. Lambert. She told us that the only use for “a lot” was a plot of ground needed to build a house. But that being neither here or there. I understand that the time God will allot me to do the things I want to do is not infinite. And even if it were I’d probably just think up an infinite number of things to add to my list. 

Maybe I should make a list based on priorities. To get done, my “bucket list” first. Sounds efficient. But others keep throwing sticks in my spokes, adding obligations and such. Then are the unexpected things, repairs, emergencies, and of course heath issues that pop up like the head of a “whack a mole” demanding immediate action. Fix a gutter, wham, get the tire fixed, wham, repair a door, wham, go to a meeting, wham, wham, wham, and my to dos end up being not quite done or worse, not even started. 

Shut the machine down John, you have oil to change. 

But it’s raining. 

So?…The garage is dry. 

But it’s still raining. 

You need to get the oil changed and then work on the revisions. 

Yeah OK...but it is a rainy day...hmmmm. 

There are things to do and I best be at it, so I’m shutting down the old Gateway and going out into the rain on this Thursday morning…

 

(455 Words) 6-13-2019

To the OBX Part 3

To the OBX      Part 3

By John W. Vander Velden

 

It had been a rainy overnight our stay in West Virginia.
The heavy rains spilled down the mountains all
along the route. But there were a few grander waterfalls.

The day broke cool and gray the next morning as we loaded up Pearl, our Jeep  and left the OBX behind. We could have spent more time there. Perhaps next time we will take the ferry to Ocracoke Island, but we enjoyed our few days and had yet another adventure to see on this trip. We left the OBX by a different route than our arrival. Going across Roanoke and driving west across nearly four hundred miles of North Carolina before twisting north in to West Virginia. We allowed Google to be our guide and abandoned the Interstate near Beckley and drove nearly twenty miles of mountain highway on a misty evening. Turns on the narrow way with sheer rock cliffs on one side and almost NOTHING on the other. Low shoulder took a new meaning that evening. At one point the road narrowed to one lane because the other had washed away. Falling rocks took a different significance when you drive beneath stony overhangs. And the smell of coal hung in the air everywhere.

The clouds hung low upon the mountains giving them a surreal appearance.
We took a few minutes to stop at Kanawha River Falls.
 

Jackie was concerned that our little computer friend was leading us far astray as we pushed on mile after mile, through small mountain towns, past coal processing plants, through wood and along river, along overhanging rock walls, and on cliff edges. At last the sight of a Dollar General and a BP station reminded us that we had not abandoned civilization entirely. Highway 3 came at last to a four lane and our confidence in “Alexa” grew.

You drive along back highways and come across some interesting things.
We stumbled upon yet another waterfall.
This one was marked so we could know it was Cathedral Falls.
Though it was a misty day, several people stopped to see this wonderful sight.

The hotel in Chapmanville, WV was very nice, and the jump off place for our last outing of this trip. In 2008 we had come to West Virginia and we used that trip to see Glade Creek Grist Mill. It was there I hoped to return. Much to Jackie’s chagrin the route from the hotel to Babcock State Park demanded forty miles of the same kind of road that we had traveled the night before. Twenty on the same Highway 3 we had white knuckled before. But daylight helped immensely and the three hours the journey took were not unpleasant. The night’s rain had caused hundreds of small waterfalls, rivulets spilling down the rock face at the roads edge, but also fed two large water falls we stopped to photograph. We stumbled upon them in passing and went till we found a place to turnaround to return.  The first one unnamed, or in the least its name was not posted,

the larger, Cathedral Falls, had a substantial parking area and drew several people.

 

 

Onward we reached Babcock State Park and drove directly to the mill. I am told it is the most photographed mill in North America. Seeing it again I could understand why. We spent a few hours wandering the grounds and braving the rain while I shot my photos. Leaving for we had “many miles to go before we had our sleep” we made a quick stop at a bridge nearby. The New River Gorge Bridge is an engineering wonder. Our last hotel was too far for us to spend a proper amount of time there. On our last visit we had a lengthy visit even driving down the gorge across the rickety wood bridge and under the great steel structure 800 feet overhead. But on this quick stop it was rush down hundreds of steps to the viewing platform take some picts and back up to the parking lot to hurry off.

The reason we drove more than two hours on back country highways.
Glade Creek Grist Mill, Babcock State Park, WV.
Our second visit to what is described as the most photographed mill in the US.

All that remained was the drive home. The sun was setting when we reached the last hotel on this trip. I worked on photos and Jackie watched “When Calls the Heart” we don’t get the Hallmark Channel at home. The next day would take us home safe and sound, not really rested, that wasn’t the point, but our head filled with the

Yes, I was there!

memories of another adventure, as we surveyed lawns in desperate need of shortening. Where will we go next? You know we haven’t decided...yet.

 

 



 

Though we had miles to go and the day was becoming quickly spent, we made an unplanned stop.
Here I walked the pathway to the many steps that led down to the viewing platform.
I counted 156 steps...not so many, but hurrying they were sufficient to set my heart a racing.


 

 

 

The New River Gorge Bridge is an Engineering marvel.
The four lane roadway is more than 800 feet above the river.

 

 

But the bridge is not the only wonder you will see from that platform.
Turning you can look down the gorge itself.
Even on a misty afternoon the view is amazing.
(This picture does not do it justice)

 

Off to the OBX part 2

Off to the OBX     Part 2

By John W. Vander Velden

 

 

The grand lighthouse in its new location.
The lighthouse has been moved nearly a quarter mile from its original place to protect it from the surf.
 

Our first day in the OBX broke clear and so we headed south to see what we had  prepared for months to see. For we had been practicing. We ran up the stairs in our home again and again. It has only ten steps but, if you run them twenty times you have reached a sizable number. For we intended to climb the Cape Hatteras Lighthouse. Eleven years ago we walked the grounds of the park, too early in the season to be allowed to climb. Jackie and I would remedy that situation. We had after all climbed many lighthouses, and now we prepared to climb the tallest masonry lighthouse in North America.

There are 257 steps we were told, but like I said we came prepared. The view was spectacular! But more we had accomplished a goal we had set for ourselves. But Hatteras was just the first, a few hours later we stood on the catwalk at the top of Bodie (pronounced Body) Lighthouse. The wind had picked up a bit, but together we enjoyed the view across the marshes of Bodie Island and the Atlantic in the distance and the shining waters of the bay beyond the other side of the island.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Bodie Island Lighhouse

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Up the stairs we go.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Later we walked out on that pier.

 

 

The next day sent us north through Duck, an interesting name for a town don’t you think, which had grown substantially in our absence, up to Currituck Beach and its lighthouse. We were told to prepare, for the winds at the catwalk were over thirty-five miles-per-hour. The blustery breeze added to the thrill of standing more than one hundred fifty feet up on a sunny morning. What a gem.

Currituck Beach Lighthouse

 

 

Most people have heard of the wild horses of Currituck. Abandoned by the Spanish in the sixteenth century, they are truly wild creatures, to be given a proper berth. But we shared the back of a pickup truck with another family while our guide, Gattor, told us all about the horses and countryside. In the sixteenth century the Spanish cast their horses overboard to lighten their ship that had run aground. The mustangs capable swimmers it seems. Now the wild horses of the OBX are the last descendants of those Spanish Mustangs. They are not the cute ponies they appear but wild beasts that roam over thousands of acres of dune land.  We saw more than thirty of the magnificent animals on the shore. The wind, the sand, and the horses,

made another adventure we will never forget.

We closed out the day walking the beach, watching the sea birds, a chain of pelicans flying single file out of the north passing us by and going on and out of sight far to the south. A hawk like bird, a kite I believe, hovered overhead for some moments. Those winged creatures mixed with a few gulls gave life to world we walked, a world of wind and waves, as the tide came in yet again following its age old cycle of rising and falling twice each day. It brought the perfect close to what was so near a perfect day.

 

 

 

 
 

 

 

 

Off to the OBX Part 1

Off to the OBX    Part 1

By John W. Vander Velden

 

If you don’t know what OBX means take heart, we were there for nearly two days before we made the connection. The locals use those three letters to identify their area...The Outer Banks.

View from the parking lot

It had been eleven years since our last visit and there were things the same, like the weather and the ocean, and things different, like thousands of new rental properties. And I expected as much when we chose OBX as our first escape location for the year. Made the adventure a road trip. I would not recommend a straight through drive and we took our time, sorta’, spreading the drive over three days.  Three days? Well yeah, we made a stop and took half a day visiting the Ark Encounter, which in truth added a day to the trip. The Ark itself was impressive and we wandered about the exhibits which were well done. The work they went through to create the lifelike animals on display is amazing.

Four hours plus driving east took us to Charleston, West Virginia, which seemed to make the OBX reachable the next day. Driving through the Blue Ridge Mountains and across the Shenandoah Valley was beautiful, though the I-64 snakes tightly with several seep grades both up and down.

We spent more than a half hour moving less than a quarter mile while we were in Norfolk, Virginia. So close and yet surrounded by an ocean of near stationary cars carrying countless passengers all hoping to reach their own destinations, but wedged together on lanes meant to be traveled, but for that time virtually a parking lot.

The sun had long set when we checked in, but one of the reasons we had come was the Atlantic, and to the beach we went, dark or not.

Our Home at the OBX

The ocean was almost dead calm, maybe six inch swells. Yet there, in the dark with the sky reflecting off the water I felt it. There is something about the sea shore. Something that reaches deep within me, rumbles places that are unreachable by sights and sounds. Something primal. Something emotional. But most of all something spiritual.  A power I could never describe. Something real, but intangible. It made the long stressful drive worth the effort and more.

The sun comes up early in May, but its rising found me walking the nearly
deserted beach, bare feet on the cool sand and splashed by cold water of the rising tide. I beat the sun three mornings in a row watching the coloring sky for the moment the sun’s sphere escaped the water. I live for those brief times when the day begins so clearly, when I find myself where the horizon is distant and clear. That I had the beach very nearly for my own an added bonus. It is too seldom that I find myself where wind water and sky intersect in such a way, and even now look forward to the next opportunity.

(490 Words) 5-15-2019

 

A Thousand Shades of Green

A Thousand Shades of Green               

 

By John W. Vander Velden

 

I view the landscape as I walk in the clear morning, the rising sun low beside me.  The grass and weeds marking the road’s edge, a border to the wide hayfield of tall grass and thick alfalfa, glistening with dew’s uncountable jewels.  In the distance, trees stand, a wood of ash, beech and maple, damp fresh leaves of innumerable tints contrast the snowy trunks of the yet bare sycamores.  It is spring, the world fresh and alive…awaken from winter’s sleep.  Beneath the pure blue sky…foliage moved by the gentle touch of the morning breeze are a thousand shades of green…the colors of the world that surrounds…Can there be a better description for the colors of spring? 

 

(121 Words)