Sailing Away

I started this post about 6 months ago after I watched a video called "Stories from the Stage" one of my newer loves is someone standing up in front of total strangers and telling a bit about them self. That day a woman of about my age told of wanting to quit everything to live her dream and after much anguish she did. Since I am the reliable steadfast type it is hard for me to imagine sticking my neck out that far. I mean I wouldn't have a steady paycheck or insurance. How could I be so reckless?
My dream would be to sail a sailboat up the Mississippi River and then the Ohio River. Why? Because it is something my dad talked about when we were kids building a boat and sail it up to Ohio and see if he could get all the way to where his brother, my Uncle Chuck lived. That was from when I was less than 10 years old. Uncle Chuck died when I was in middle school but I have never forgotten that my dad wanted to do that. Maybe it was his dream to get away but more likely with him it was to prove that he could do it. That is why I do most of the things I do. Just so I can prove to myself I can do anything I put my mind to.

Dad did build that sailboat in our driveway as kids. We used to sit on the deck in the driveway sunning ourselves. We have pictures of every step of the building process from plans. First the wooden frame and then he built the fiberglass hull and created something from nothing. He had a party when the hull was finished to flip it over. I can't remember how many guys it took to get the hull flipped from upside down to right side up in a cradle that still holds it today.. That boat moved from one driveway to another at least 3 times.  That boat has never floated. It has never quite been finished and now that I am well past the age which he started it still seems like a project that needs to be finished and honestly I have no idea what it would take other than hard work.

I think about the sailing adventure and stopping along the way and meeting new people and having old friends visit me as I travel along. I have watched plenty of movies about sailing adventures and most don't end up as the sailor expects. There is always that unplanned hurricane, crashing into a cargo container or the mast breaking. These are scenes from one of those movies Brian wouldn't watch All is Lost. Now the title does kinda give away it isn't gonna be the best trip ever. But it is one of those movies that there is no dialog except for a few expletives that Robert Redford says to himself. Even though this isn't a movie about visiting lush islands and sinking barefoot into the sand as you jump off your boat on a tropical island. It is about how things can go.

In the months that have past since I started this I found a book by an author that I really liked his first book that I read Blue Highways by William Least Heat Moon. I really love travel adventures. Finding places you have never been and then going. Another thing I have in common with my dad. Since his retirement every few years there is a trip that lasts a month or so. He plans from the time one trip ends until the next starts. I am not sure which part he likes more planning or doing but when he does it he goes all in and lives the life. Well William Least Heat Moon has a newer book called River-horse about crossing the United States by boat. Trying to use rivers and interior bodies of water. I read the first chapter online the other day and ordered the book.At the beginning he speaks of his road atlas the way some would speak of their favorite book. It may be taped together but it can not be replaced.

It is like I tell Brian just because we don't know where we are we aren't lost. I love turning the corner and finding a new way to get somewhere. Maybe one day the boat will be finished and I can sail it.

Reading and Writing

After last weeks post a friend of mine said that maybe it is time I write a novel. I have been thinking about this for the last week or so. I have started short stories, written poems and posted to this blog over 70 times but a novel. That is a vast undertaking. Just for information sake a post to this blog usually on a good night I will spend an hour on it. I will read it through multiple times before spell checking and reading it to Brian aloud and then posting it. I then promptly turn off the computer and do not think about it until the next day when I will re-read what I wrote the previous night and grin or cry or whatever I was trying to get out of it the night before. One thing about the words I write, they are the voice in my head. That to me is like the talking to your best friend. Sometimes it is the only voice that understands me and that is usually the voice of reason except for when it is ridiculous. Anxiety always makes me wonder how I can know something is in my head and yet I still believe it to be true. But that is for another night. Tonight it is about reading and writing.

I have ideas for a novel in my head. It has to be fiction because I could not just write the facts. But I love fiction that is about real people. Some of my favorite books have Beatrix Potter and her animals as characters. The Cottage Tales of Beatrix Potter by Susan Wittig Albert. There have been at least 8 of these novels and I have loved them all. Murder mystery with a twist of pixies and fairies and animals that talk like the cat named Tabbitha Twitchet and an owl they call the Professor. These are some great fantasy novels with a bit of history in them.

Any book that includes a map is for me. I love to know where we are going and how we are going to get there. By train or bus or horse and buggy. Books that were written before all of our modern conveniences are great. You know that people went to bed at dark to save the candles for when they needed them. And got up with the sun to start a new day. I have recently finished a book called Blue Highways which was written about 1980 about a trip on the small roads of the US around the perimeter and the people the author William Least Heat-Moon met along the way. I loved the view from his windshield and the people he met and picked up.

Another book I recently finished was by Bill Bryson A Walk in the Woods. This story took me on a trip hiking part of the Appalachian Trail. Something that I have decided that the next time we are in North Carolina we are going to go to Hot Springs where the trail cuts through town and walk a bit of it. Just so I can say I walked it. I would love to have the ambition to walk more than a few miles but I don't think I do. At least not right now. But today I saw the movie by the same name and it is as funny as the book. In the book as I read I found the character Bill took along on his trip to be funny and pretty much he is what he is matter of fact. Not in any shape to make the trip east from Iowa let alone to hike the AT as they refer to it on the trail. I loved the views in the movie and I loved some of the human drama that would come along with just such a trip but I missed what I thought was one of the funniest parts of the book. Towards the beginning of their hike Bill would get ahead of his friend Katz and at times wait for up to an hour for him to catch up. He also sometimes would go back looking for him to make sure he had not died. There is a bit that was in the book but not the movie about Katz flinging his food off of a cliff to lighten the load he was carrying. The description in the book was laugh out loud funny. Nick Nolte as Katz an unlikely person played the perfect character. I found him to remind me a lot of my father which I don't know if either would find it to be a compliment but is true. I thought after the movie I wonder if Bill Bryson picked Robert Redford to play him? I mean how often do you get to pick who plays you? And his wife thought man I could of had Robert Redford.  Maybe not.

So I have talked a lot about books I have read and like to read but none about the one I want to write. Let's not say want but must write. Here is my biggest stumbling block. What I want to write or need to write is not a trip down a trail I truly want to walk all the way through. I have walked a section here or there through this story in my head but there are parts I am not ready to go through and I have to take others along and I don't know if they are ready for the trip either.  The weather is a source of concern because it can be very hot and sometimes very cold where we are going. Parts that I have already completed not the book but the sections of the trail were hard. Not all the characters experienced the same things on their sections of the trail. Some will not even recognize the trail to be the same one they walked but I promise it is. Even the ending is different for each of the characters. Some will go back to Iowa and go to the state fair as they have for the last 39 years but others... Well they are my concern. I must take into account the lives of the other characters on the trail. So in the mean time I have projects that I am working on my kids travel book which takes them on family trips to places they may not find interesting but will find all kinds of real history and fun along the way. I also have a children's book that the illustrations are being worked on now and I hope will be published in the not to distant future.

So until we meet again. Walk softly and carry a big stick. Or just stand back and enjoy the view from where you are. But either way. Open a book they are full of adventures.