The Week Before Christmas

The Christmas tree hunt went well.  We bagged a twelve foot Lodge Pole Pine.  Every year we say that we are going to get a short tree and end up with one about this size.  Last year, we cut one down that was about fourteen feet tall.  Fortunately, my son tried to pick it up by the top and broke about two foot off of it.  Picture, if you will, trying to position an extension ladder against a beam that is eighteen foot off the floor.  If the ladder slips more than about three inches, it falls off the beam and stops only when it hits the floor.  Now guess who is dim-witted enough to climb that ladder and decorate the top of the tree.  Yup! You guessed it, me.  When I’m hanging off the ladder trying to snare the top of the tree and hold it so I can put the star on the top, with nothing but empty space between me and the floor, I really wonder what we were thinking when we built a house with such a high ceiling.  Luckily we managed to get the top of the tree decorated with out anyone falling off the ladder, although we did have to pull one of our cats off several times.  Maybe I can train the cat to put the star on the tree next year!

 As I sit here writing this, the biggest winter storm we’ve had, since spring of 2003, is starting to release its grip on us and the sun is trying to peek through the clouds.  The wind is starting to slow down a bit and, in a few hours, it will be time to go outside and try to dig the cars out of the snow drifts.  The last three days have been quite hectic.  My Son played his cornet in a holiday concert and a jazz concert.  He actually did an improv solo during one of the jazz concert songs.  He didn’t do too badly for an eight grader.  My daughter sang in four high school choir performances.  They actually did two sold out concerts in one night at our local performing arts center.  These shows included the band, choir, and orchestra.  The last song, O Holy Night, was done with the orchestra on the stage and the choir standing along the sides of the auditorium.  As I was listening to this moving, surround sound arrangement, I couldn’t help but reflect on the phrase “ Oh hear the angels’ voices”  it brought tears to my eyes to think that every one of these kids were someone’s precious angel, and that we were, in reality, hearing the angels’ voices.  I can’t let you listen to the entire choir of angels but you can listen to my daughter sing Coventry Carol by Following this link.(Sorry this link is temporarily unavalable)  We recorded this early in the fall and it is our Christmas gift to you.

Merry Christmas!

Vince

Abraham Lincoln's Thanksgiving Address

Of Dreams, Memories, and Motivation

Well, it has been an interesting half a month up here in the wind.    My daughter, who turned 18 at the end of September, got to vote in her first election.  I have to say she was probably more informed about candidates and issues than were most people who voted.  She really got into the whole scene!

We’ve had days that were so sunny and warm we thought it was summer and several mornings this week the temperature has been down into the teens.  I don’t mind the cold weather so much since we have moved out of town.  When we lived in town, our only source of heat was a typical gas furnace that kept the house one nice uniform temperature.  I couldn’t put my finger on it at the time, but there was something lacking in that house with the nice convenient furnace.  We still have one of those furnaces as a back up source of heat, but now days we heat mostly with a wood stove.  It wasn’t until our second winter here that we installed the stove and lit it for the first time.  All at once, the partially finished house glowed with a warmth that, despite the lack of insulation, I had not felt since I was a boy sitting in front of my parents’ fireplace.  It was then that I realized that I missed not only the radiant heat produced by the stove, but also the crackling sound that the fire made and the slight aroma of wood smoke that occasionally wafted into the room when the wind hit the chimney just right.  The other thing I like about using a wood stove is that everyone in the house can find a spot were the temperature is just right for them by adjusting their distance from the stove. 

As I sit down next to a newly kindled fire, I think back on the reasons we decided to make the move out of town.   We actually started looking for land back in April of 1996. We had been living in the same house for about seven years and had watched the neighborhood slowly turn into a rental neighborhood. The houses were so close together we could be sitting in our living room and see what the neighbor next door was cooking for dinner. At least that is what it felt like to a couple of people who had grown up in the open air of the country.

My wife and I both grew up in Pueblo County Colorado where our play yards were about an acre in size plus several hundred acres of overgrown fields that had not been developed yet. We both have fond childhood memories of riding bikes in open fields without worrying about traffic, watching crop dusters fly over nearby fields, and flying kites in our own back yards. We both had the opportunity to help with the family garden that was big enough to supply most of the vegetables that we needed. We also had the responsibilities of taking care of family chickens and, in my case, my sisters and I helped take care of my dad's horse that he got when he was a kid.  Digging holes to play in, drinking well water, hanging out in the barn for shade, and being able to see for several miles around, were things that we took for granted.

Our children, on the other hand, only got to experience these things when they visited their grandparents, and even then most of the open space had been developed. It was our desire that our kids have some of the same experiences as we did. We did not want them to only have memories of a 3,500 square foot yard with houses all around and enough buried cables to make digging a hole to play in impossible.

It was with these dreams and desires in our hearts that we set out to find a home in the country.

Welcome

Welcome to the first official entry to the Windy Valley Digest.  The characteristic that most people notice, when they visit us here at our humble abode, is that the wind blows quite a bit.  They only know the half of it. The wind up here blows harder than anywhere I have been.  There have been times when a strong gust has swept me off my feet and deposited me firmly on the ground.  In a vain attempt to keep our outdoor belongings organized, we stack them neatly on the leeward side of the house and place heavy rocks on them.   Inevitably, the wind rattles the rocks off, and everything gets scattered down the valley.  We end up with a mix of firewood, bicycles, patio furniture, and any toys that the kids happen to have left out.  Once in a while, we find objects that are from some mysterious source. They just appear from out of nowhere.  They don’t belong to us and none of the neighbors claim them.  We had a stray cat show up in our woodpile once.  Since the nearest neighbor with a cat lives more than a mile away, we often entertain the notion that the cat rode in on one of these storms.  Today, we have pretty much given up on keeping things outside neat and tidy and have embraced the eclecticism that the wind creates.

My Idea for this blog is to create a mix of updates on current projects, stories from our past experiences, and maybe some fiction, poetry, and pictures blown…. oops I mean thrown in here and there.

The name, Windy Valley Digest, describes the predominant weather condition where I will be doing the bulk of the work, and like the belongings that lie scattered and mixed around the yard, I hope that the digest will contain a scattering of postings to indulge wide and varied interests.  My desire is that a work will turn up from out of nowhere and, like the cat that is now a treasured family pet, you will find something that will, in some small way, touch your heart.

Hello!