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  1. 10 Things to Love About Fall

    September 18, 2012 by admin

    Across the country, fall begins to creep, soon to burst with its telltale phenomenal color. Starbucks is out with its signature fall drinks. Stores are displaying Halloween merchandise. Leaves are beginning to fall.

    As I come home to Wyoming to launch my book, Tough Love: A Wyoming Childhood, I am overcome with nostalgia and awe, both at nature’s blazing show and at the little ways my parents have ushered this remarkable season into their own home, my childhood home.

    I walk into a house where a wood stove has already kindled its first fire. The kitchen smells of warm pumpkin and spice in the wakes of burning candles. Fall decorations color every room: scarecrows and wagons and brown and orange figurines with straw hats, placemats shaped like maple leaves, Mom’s favorite. I am so overcome with gratitude – both for the opportunity to be back in my hometown and for the chance to experience this fall season that, now living in California, I so desperately miss – that I feel it in my chest. My throat nearly tightens at the sight of a Swedish aspen with leaves the color of fire. Because I am in love here. I miss the change of seasons so much.

    As I prepare to share snippets of my own childhood here via book readings and writing workshops, I reflect on fall, the season I love so dearly. Here are 10 things to love about fall:

    Pinedale, WY, 2012, Kate Meadows.

    1)      The brilliant color of the changing leaves

    2)      Crisp air, which, compared to summer’s heat and humidity, is somehow energizing and fresh.

    3)      The way a noticeable transition in season can spawn motivation to revisit goals or launch an inspirational transition in your own life.

    4)      The cozy comfort found in warmth: pulling out a sweatshirt that has sat on a shelf for months, rediscovering a trendy scarf, sitting by a wood-burning stove

    5)      Scented candles: pumpkin, apple crisp, cashmere woods. Warm aromas.

    6)      Favorite fall foods. At our house it’s homemade apple cider, sweet potatoes, pumpkin chocolate chip muffins.

    7)      Pumpkin spice lattes at Starbucks.

    8)      Football. Sunday nights. Monday nights. Thursday nights. (Although I have to admit, “Thursday night football” just doesn’t have the same ring as “Monday Night Football.”)

    9)      Rakes and piles of leaves to jump in. At my parent’s house in Wyoming, the back yard is THE grounds for this. And I happen to have a soon-to-be three-year-old who, assuming we can find a rake, might soon just find himself in leaf heaven.

    10)   Tradition and family. You know. Halloween. Thanksgiving. And all of the stories surrounding these days that over time will knit special memories.

    What do you love about fall? What traditions surround your family this time of year?

     

    Category Books, Creativity, Family, Feel-Good Stories, Home, Inspiration, Life, Nature, Outdoors, Place, Writing | Tags: ,,,,,,,,, | 1 Comment

  2. Trip Taking Part 2: The Journey

    June 1, 2012 by katemeadows

    “A journey is a person in itself. No two are alike. We find after years of struggle that we do not take a trip; a trip takes us.” –John Steinbeck, Travels with Charley

    I awoke on Saturday morning with no butterflies. I was calm, prepared as I could be for our trip up the Pacific Coast Highway (Route 1) – and I knew being prepared meant accepting the unknowns. Who knew if our toddler son would pitch a fit in the backseat after seven hours in the car? I wouldn’t worry about it unless or until it happened. Who knew if I would get carsick along the winding, ragged coast? I stuffed a Ziplock baggie full of ginger chews and vitamin B suckers (a pregnant woman’s friend), threw the baggie in the backpack, decided not to worry about it.

    California Pacific Coast, Copyright 2012, Kate Meadows.

    So many unknowns. The getaway could be daunting, if I let it.

    At the same time, weren’t the unknowns part of what made this trip so enticing? Seeing and experiencing new things?

    We headed out, flying down the 91 freeway and taking detours toward Route 1 – anything to avoid the almost-always traffic-jammed I-5 through LA. The sailing was smooth. We hit the PCH just south of Malibu, and began the long and crooked jaunt up the Pacific Coast.

    We talked about stereotypes, how the ritzy reputation of Malibu didn’t exactly line up with the scrimpy wood-and-metal apartments that lined the PCH and overlooked the ocean. We laughed at road signs – a fish restaurant advertising “Fried Nemo” for lunch, an ocean kayak rental company named Sea for Yourself. Will, our son, pointed out boats and airplanes from his throne in the backseat.

    We planned to make it to Hearst Castle, the former grounds of wealthy newspaper publisher William Randolph Hearst, in time for a late afternoon tour.

    We didn’t get there in time.

    We were too busy taking it slow up the coast, pausing when the moments seemed right, catching a leisurely lunch at the Summerland Beach Café. At the castle’s visitor’s center, upon learning that the last tour of the day had already taken place, we shrugged, gave the Little Man another penny to toss into a glistening fountain. Then, we crossed the highway and moseyed along a pier that offered perhaps one of the most breathtaking panoramic views of the castle anywhere. Young lovers made out on the white sand below us. My husband and I giggled – it could have been us 10 years ago (or even now, sans toddler in tow …).

    Another three miles up the road, we stopped at the Elephant Seal viewing area, and no kidding, enormous blobs of elephant seals – cackling, growling mammals – covered the stretch of beach. We laughed at their noises. Couldn’t help it. A volunteer patrolled the walkway to answer questions. We lingered with her, asking questions every few minutes. Will laughed with us and held onto the hood of his windbreaker tight.

    Elephant Seals on California’s Pacific Coast, Copyright 2012, Kate Meadows

    Further up the road was the place we would stay that first night – The Ragged Point Inn. We checked into the quaint room with a king-sized bed and private balcony that overlooked the ocean. We grabbed a bachelor-like cheap dinner at the mini mart (breakfast burritos, soup, Chef Boyardee), and arrived back at the room in time to watch the sun set over the ocean.

    “The sun looks like it’s just burning a hole in the ground,” my husband remarked as the last neon orange rays sank below the horizon. Flower petals on the lawn below us were the only remnants of a wedding that had taken place on the property earlier that day. We all slept together on the king-sized bed, our son scrunched between us in hot and contented sleep.

    The next morning, I awoke renewed and excited. I lay in the big bed thinking about life stories and how everyone’s experience on this globe is so different. What was the story of the Ragged Point Inn? The couple who was married here less than 24 hours ago? When was the Summerland Beach Café opened? And somewhere, knit into all of that, we certainly had our own story to tell – a Wyoming girl and an Indiana boy making their living as foreigners in California for a short time, now high up on the Pacific Coast experiencing the state in all its blazing glory.

    I could go on about all of the trip’s highlights: the awe-striking beauty and mystery of the Big Sur, waterfalls that plummet to the ocean, bunches of migrant workers still hard at fruit and vegetable picking in Steinbeck’s own town of Salinas.

    But I really don’t mean for this to be a travelogue. Here, I suppose, is my point:

    Sandy hill along Pacific Coast Highway, Copyright 2012, Kate Meadows

    Before we left, I had a long conversation with my mom about how I don’t enjoy or simply focus on “the journey” enough. I am too wrapped up in accomplishment, in achieving an end result to often appreciate the small blessed moments along the way.

    As I look back on our own trip, I can’t help but view it through the lens of that old cliché: Life is not about the destination; it’s about the journey. We never made it to Hearst Castle. But we saw gaggles of elephant seals splayed out for yards and yards along the beach. We didn’t explore much of Monterey Bay or make it to their world-class aquarium. But we saw some of the most breathtaking views of our lives from high up on the craggy ledge of the Pacific Coast. We didn’t dip our feet in the ocean, but we felt the cold spray of forest waterfalls on our faces – the result of stopping at roadside pullouts and exploring dirt ribbons of trail.

    I returned home feeling rejuvenated and, I will admit, a teensy bit proud of myself. Finally, I felt like I had given the journey – and not just the destination – the attention it was worth. Moment by moment up that long jagged highway, and even flying back down the Interstate toward home, I knew I was truly living.

    Sunset, Ragged Point Inn, Copyright 2012, Kate Meadows.

     

    “I like to sit in coffee shops and pass for a native,” Garrison Keilor, the radio personality behind A Prairie Home Companion recently said in an interview with the New York Times. “And so I’ve missed out on the Louvre, the Acropolis, the Roman catacombs, the Lincoln Memorial, because I didn’t want to be taken for a tourist … You set out lumbering down medieval streets, wander impulsively and let yourself get lost and stop for lunch and wander further. When you’re tired of being lost, you hail a cab. That’s a day well spent.”

    How will you spend YOUR day?

     

    Category Family, Inspiration, Life Stories, Nature, Outdoors, Place, Self-doubt, Travel, Writing, Writing Life | Tags: ,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,, | 6 Comments

  3. Trip Taking Part 1: A Planning Process

    May 31, 2012 by katemeadows

    I think it was beyond coincidence that I read blog posts by Astrid Bryce and Beth Westmark days before my growing family planned our own getaway on Memorial Day weekend.

    “When we are in our normal daily routine, we crave adventure,” Astrid wrote in her post, Transitioning between Adventure and Routine. “But we don’t want to pack for the trip. Once the thrill of the adventure is over, either still on the trip, or once home, we crave to be able to slip back into our normal routine. We don’t want to deal with the clean-up/catch-up. Why is the grass always greener on the other side? And why are transitions so hard?”

    Sign on pier near San Simeon, CA. Copyright 2012, Kate Meadows.

    I found myself nodding the whole way through. Why are transitions so hard, even if only for a few days?

    Then, this in a post by Beth Westmark, who had recently returned from her own trip across the American West: “It’s the planning before a trip that almost kills it. I’m not a happy-go-lucky trip planner. It’s my nature to over-engineer, to want to tie down every little detail, to fret about all the uncontrollable and unknowable elements that constitute an adventure.”

    A bit later, she says, “Did I ever tell you I’m a really fun gal?”

    Again I found myself nodding feverishly, hiding a smile because, dang, that’s me, too.

    I spent a good portion of last week annoyed with myself over the agony in trying to anticipate every little detail that this trip of ours would bring. My husband and I both felt it was time to leap – to do something spontaneous and adventurous with the four free days stretched out before us. California is a temporary stop for our family, as my husband, an engineer, has been assigned to a two-year power plant construction project in the southern part of the state. We want to experience as much of California as we can during our short time here, and our “bucket list” of places to explore in CA is long.

    Hearst Castle near San Simeon, CA. Copyright 2012, Kate Meadows.

    San Francisco. Death Valley. The Redwoods. Yosemite. Disneyland. Lego Land. (And hooray! We can scratch a couple of items off our list: The San Diego Zoo and Joshua Tree National Park. Following our three-day camp trip to Joshua Tree last November, I wrote an essay exploring the meaning of “Joshua Tree,” its relationship to the land, my relationship to the desert. I am still in the tweaking mode.)

    We were looking at a wide-open opportunity to take a leap into one of these many untapped adventures. Yet as I tried to ponder what that leap looked like, my belly churned with butterflies over all of the unknowns.

    How easy it is to fall into the trap of staying buttoned up in your comfort zone:

    -because you have a toddler

    -because you’re seven months pregnant

    -because planning a trip quickly becomes expensive

    Pacific Coast from Route 1, Copyright 2012, Bryan Meadows

    -because so many “what-ifs” creep in (what if said toddler doesn’t do well traveling? What if there is a problem with the hotel reservation we booked online? What if pregnant mama is too tired to move? [Insert your own "what if" here.] What if, what if.)

    Plans to drive to San Francisco and spend a couple of days wandering along and near the Golden Gate Bridge dissolved after a botched attempt to reserve a hotel room that would fit three people and didn’t charge $30 extra per day to park. Parking in a public lot and relying on the public transportation system to navigate our way through the city could have worked – yet the image of me carrying a bundle of hefty pillows in one arm (to accommodate that big belly when I sleep) and holding my toddler’s hand with the other while hubby lugged a single duffle bag into which we had “lightly” packed was a bit laughable. Midway through the trip planning, we struck it all together and started over with a new idea.

    Sunset at Ragged Point Inn, CA. Copyright 2012, Kate Meadows.

    Salinas, CA. The home of my favorite author and a favorite author of my husband’s, John Steinbeck.

    Almost instantly, as we started to revise our trip and think about what this four days could look like, I felt lighter, freer, like the air around me wasn’t quite so heavy.

    We would take our time driving up Route 1 along the California coast. We would stop when we wanted to, see whatever we felt like seeing, arrive at no specific time to our destination.

    Check in tomorrow (Friday 6/1) for Part 2: The Journey.

    Category Family, Inspiration, Nature, Outdoors, Place, Self-doubt, Travel, Writing | Tags: ,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,, | 3 Comments

  4. Memorial Day: Sparkling Memories of Cold and Color

    May 24, 2012 by katemeadows

    Memorial Day. I remember camp trips and snow. I remember pulling out the tents and mattresses, dusty, dirt-covered belongings that had hibernated in the garage for many long months, soon to make their debut seasonal appearance on a weekend that we in Wyoming always willed to be warm but that rarely was.

    Copyright 2009, Kate Meadows, Yellowstone National Park, Wyoming.

    I remember Mom planting flaming orange and yellow magnolias in the flower boxes near the house. Then, I remember her saying a prayer that those sunshiney plants would survive any remaining cold nights.

    I remember talk of frost – when would it finally go away to give reign to true summer? I remember staying glued to television weather reports, trying hard to discern whether to attempt a weekend camp trip or forego it.

    I remember treating the long weekend as wild adventure, loading up the camp gear and heading for the low mountains, packing plenty of wool socks and long underwear. I remember pitching tents in snow flurries. I remember the pure goodness of hot meals over the weekend – goulash in the Dutch oven, Bear Creek brand soup.

    We slept in snow storms. On cold Sunday mornings, we rose and brushed the feathery white snow off the firewood, the cooler (why did we stock it with ice, again?), the bed of the truck. Then, we would assess: Do we stay in this wilderness another two days, or do we go home to hot chocolate and  movies?

    Sometimes we stayed. Sometimes we returned home (though never without a good story to tell).

    I remember the painting I created in art class, Karly Konicek and I roasting marshmallows around a bright orange campfire with neon blue mountains spiking up in the background. The picture came out of a Memorial Day weekend memory. It is still propped up against an aspen bookshelf in my dad’s study.

    This Memorial Day weekend, we look out at the hazy mountains of western California. A trip to San Francisco with a toddler and another baby on the way was in the works. But it got too hard, too expensive.

    Now, we are revising our plan. Still creating an adventure – just one that won’t require quite so much walking for me at seven months pregnant, won’t include a boxy hotel room with just one double bed (a Priceline flounder), one that will allow more freedom and ease on our pocketbooks.

    The weather looks grey and borderline chilly – in the ‘60s. (I smile at that, thinking of ‘60s as “chilly” coming from such long Wyoming winters that so often extended into May.) We still look toward adventure. It’s just an adventure of a different sort.

    This morning, as I drove our son to daycare, I noticed city workers mounting American flags to light poles. Red, white and blue. It is because of our hard-fought freedom, the selfless acts of so many servicemen and women, that we even have the opportunity to consider such adventure in the first place.

    Flag image credit: www.us-flag.net

    Let us not take that for granted as the long weekend opens up before us, whatever adventure (or non-adventure) is headed our way.

    Find me back here next Thursday, with the adventure report. In the meantime, tell me what adventures you and yours are up to in the coming days.

    Category Family, Home, Life Stories, Nature, Outdoors, Place, Writing | Tags: ,,,,,, | 5 Comments

  5. In Bloom.

    May 3, 2012 by katemeadows

    In Wyoming, where I’m from originally, spring is blooming. “Bursting” may be more like it. Just the other day, my dad described the way the color is starting to creep into the lower country, bright blues and greens that glimmer with the sheen of run-off water, while up high, the peaks are still capped in white.

    Copyright 2009, Kate Meadows, Sublette County, WY.

    One thing I am missing so much about the Rockies right now is spring time – how everything just bursts open with color after such a long and cold winter season. It’s like the world is waking up again after a blistering cold hibernation, and all who live there get to be witnesses. You feel like you’ve “earned it” somehow, having experienced that long hibernation yourself. When the world opens itself up again, there you are to breathe it in.

    I remember this time of year when I was growing up, how it was always such a season of renewal. I broke out my journal for a new list of goals. I was ready to pull on running shorts and start running outside in the mornings, no matter how cold it was because, hey, summer was just around the corner. I remember the totally unique and striking contrast of getting into a snowball fight high up in the mountains and then seeking the strong, warm sun to warm up again.

    In Wyoming this time of year, beauty happens. And it’s easy to see.

    Spring happens in southern California – just a lot more subtly. You have to intentionally look for it: the trees greening up a bit, some flowers restoring a more vibrant color, a more intense rainy season. Maybe the birds sing a bit more intensely, with a renewed fervor.

    But here there is no feeling of reward, no feeling of having earned a warm, bright season because, really, the sun shines here all the time. After all, this is the golden state.

    Copyright 2009, Kate Meadows, Yellowstone National Park, WY.

    What are your “best moments” of spring? What memories does springtime evoke for you?

    Here today, the sun is hiding. We are in what California folk call “May Gray.” (This is to be followed by “June Gloom.” Boo hoo.) I miss that clear view of the blue-grey mountains waking up to the warmer months. I am homesick, but so happy to have those crisp memories to which I cling so tightly.

    Category Home, Nature, Outdoors, Place, Writing | Tags: ,,,,,,,,,, | 2 Comments

  6. Disconnected (On Not Being a Slave to the Screen)

    May 1, 2012 by katemeadows

    I missed a lot yesterday.

    I missed writing a blog post. (I was waking up to cheap coffee, a shower and a hearty pillow fight with my husband and son in a hotel room.)

    I missed checking and responding to email. (Instead I was taking pictures: Little Man watching a baby giraffe, Little Man and his dad looking for snakes in glass cages, Little Man and his Grandma eating hot dogs and mimicking peacock noises.)

    Copyright 2012, Kate Meadows, San Diego, CA.

    I missed a noon conference call for a class I’m taking. (We were watching an elephant get a pedicure.)

    I missed the traditional weekend.

    My mother-in-law was in town all week, and my husband had to work on Saturday. You bet he took a day off to spend at least a few quality hours with his Mama. That day was yesterday. We did a spontaneous overnighter in San Diego to visit the San Diego Zoo yesterday.

    I am both blessed and cursed by the flexibility I have as a full time mom and writer. Without an 8-to-5 work schedule, it is easy to accommodate my “off time” (with writing, I mean, not with mothering, ha) with my husband’s. But that balance between being assertive with sticking to my own work and taking time off when my husband can finally catch a break is tricky.

    What I mean is, when you are tied to your vocation 24/7 and not bound by a work schedule that is imposed by someone from the outside, it can just be dang hard to let go sometimes.

    Take yesterday, for instance.

    At first, I was stressed about missing some important work hours – tending to the blog, participating in that conference call, the simple act of writing itself. No email. No Facebook. No blogosphere.

    But then I started thinking, Am I really that addicted to screen time? Is the world going to be any different if I post a blog entry on Tuesday rather than Monday this week?

    I know I can pre-plan these things, stock-pile blog posts for times such as this, etc. But that’s not really the point. The point is, how do we remain proactive in our art and daily interactions without becoming a slave to them?

    Copyright 2012, Kate Meadows, San Diego, CA.

    It took some mental work, but yesterday I was able to just let go. (I realized this in the middle of watching that elephant, Smitty, get her pedicure. It was 12:10 when I checked my watch. The conference call had been going for 10 minutes. I hadn’t thought twice about that call all morning.)  To not worry about what I was “missing,” but to instead focus on what I was gaining by having a complete day devoted entirely to family.

    Often those family days happen on Saturday. But that wasn’t possible this week. So we just shifted some things around a bit. Bryan worked, and so did I. How nice it was to wake up to each other yesterday morning and say, “Hello,” and start the day off with a pillow fight.

    When was the last time you completely let go of your work? When was the last time you disconnected from the technological world? Do you feel like you’re a slave to some of these things that are meant to keep us conveniently connected – Facebook, Twitter, blogs?

    If so, take heart and know all of these things will still be there thrumming away tomorrow. The world, for a day, will not notice that you’re gone.

    And if it does, well, you are pretty important. But you can still just give it a wink and promise you will return again, soon.

    Category Creativity, Family, Motherhood, Outdoors, Parenting, Social Media, Technology, Writing, Writing Life, Writing Process | Tags: ,, | 8 Comments

  7. Signature Scent (A Story of the Family Business)

    April 12, 2012 by katemeadows

    With the small business history, Bucky’s: Stories and Recollections from 50 Years in Business soon to be published, I share today one of the knock-out stories that will appear in the book. This memory is shared by my dad, who reluctantly joined the family business full time after graduating college in 1975, seeing no other choice. The business, Bucky’s Repair, operated a hide and fur business on the side as a way of diversifying business and adding income. Here, a glimpse into my grandfather’s crazy notions as a self-taught wildlife expert and businessman, and just how far one family would go to earn a buck.

    “Coyote prices had gone way up, and Dad had perfected what he thought was the all-time best coyote scent. It took him a year to get it just right: a potion of rotten fish, ground up beaver glands and other juices. He buried this stuff for one year to let it age, and age it did. When we dug up the scent and opened it, we could not stand to be within a block of the stuff.

    Dad used eye droppers to divide the potion into small vials, dispensing one drop at a time. In the fall, he set out a large coyote trap line. He was very excited to go for the first follow-up run to see how the potion worked.

    Well, it worked extremely well: His traps were full of badgers. It seemed his potion was exactly what badgers craved. Dad had a dilemma. How could he catch coyotes if badgers kept getting into his traps?

    Being ever so creative Dad thought he would trap badgers that fall, to get them out of circulation. But it would be silly to just trap them and kill them, since badger fur could net him some money. The problem was that badgers don’t get prime until March. He had to figure out a way to keep them until March, when their fur would be prime and worth a sale. His solution was to trap beaver and use the beaver carcasses for badger food. Doing this, he figured he could keep the badgers alive until they grew prime.

    That fall, thanks to his signature coyote scent, we ended up with 29 badgers in three pens out behind the shop. Dad made the pens himself, with wire and hog rings and two-by-four legs and frames. The badgers fought like crazy, day and night. They were very snarly, with deep-throated growls, very vicious sounding. We had never given a thought to the possibility of their fighting, until we put them in the cages together. With all of the fighting going on, we knew we had to call the local vet; now we were dealing with a bunch of badger wounds. Once a week, the local veterinarian, Glenn Millard, came to the shop to doctor the wounded animals. Dr. Millard would apply antibiotics from a distance with a swab on a stick.

    Once, the chief of police, Win Farnsworth, came by to inspect the place. He was a former FBI agent from Texas who had come to Sublette County and hired us to take him on a bear hunt. He had fallen in love with the country, gave up his FBI job and moved to Pinedale. Now as Chief of Police, he had received reports that cock fights were taking place behind Bucky’s. When we showed him what we had, he was relieved we weren’t having cock fights. He said he would be happy to report there were no cock fight going on at Bucky’s. That was that.

    By mid-January, the beaver meat ran out. We had no choice but to shoot the badgers, skin them, and work the fur up to be sold. They brought an average price of $10.00 each, which was very low. A good, prime pelt in March would have brought us $30-$35.  But the price of beaver had gone way up, so Dad made out good, anyway. He didn’t use the potion any more. He didn’t need it. We were all beyond glad, as none of us could stand to ride in Dad’s truck that fall.

    For more about the project, or to pre-order a book, visit www.buckysstory.com.

     

    Category Family, Life Stories, Outdoors, Place, Writing | Tags: ,,,,,,,,,,, | No Comments