Riverman An American Odyssey by Ben McGrath

This tale took me by surprise. It’s a non-fiction modern mystery about an unconventional traveler who’s lasting impact on those he meets along his way becomes poignantly clear.

Dick Conant had paddled his canoe thousands of miles along American waterways until by providence, on Labor Day 2014 he skirted past author Ben McGrath’s Hudson River home in Piermont, New York.

McGrath, like dozens he would come to meet, found something about Dick Conant and his self-directed quest to be unforgettable. They met a few times before Conant continued on his latest endeavor; to canoe from Canada to Naples, Florida.

The book includes a map of the many waterways Dick Conant navigated throughout his life, as well as photos of the man and his own journals. During his exploits, he took on the famous and the lesser known bodies of water and didn’t limit himself to just rivers. He traveled The Ohio, The Allegheny, The Mississippi, The Yellowstone, The Missouri, The Snake, The Holston River, The Timberidge River, The Mobile River, Lake Pontchartrain, The Gulf InterCoastal Waterway, Matagorda Bay, and ultimately The Hudson and Chesapeake Bay.

There is a quiet power to the story and I’m able to imagine the same was true of Dick Conant.

 

On The Road by Jack Kerouac

After reading ‘On the Road’, I definitely caught the breeze of a free-wheeling, music-loving lifestyle wherein the characters feel deeply and live wildly.

I had difficulty choosing excerpts from Kerouac’s gorgeous, hopeful, yet at the same time, dingy prose. My words don’t measure up to the seamless stream of the author’s pen. So in the place of my weak attempt at conveying why I found enjoyment in this American odyssey, I rely on these passages. Read the book and see if the words and characters don’t roll into your head as the wheels roll across the continent.

“And here for the first time in my life I saw my beloved Mississippi River, dry in the summer haze, low water, with its big rank smell that smells like the raw body of America itself because it washes it up.”

“Great beautiful clouds floated overhead, valley clouds that made you feel the vastness of old tumbledown holy America from mouth to mouth and tip to tip.”

And he hunched over the wheel and gunned her; …We were all delighted, we all realized we were leaving confusion and nonsense behind and performing our one and noble function of the time, MOVE.”

“Then we started down. Dean cut off the gas, threw in the clutch, and negotiated every hairpin turn and passed cars and did everything in the books without the benefit of accelerator.” …”In this was we floated and flapped down to the San Joaquin Valley. It lay spread a mile below, virtually the floor of California, green and wondrous from our aerial shelf. We made thirty miles without using gas.”

“Dean’s California-wild, sweaty, important, the land of lonely and exiled and eccentric lovers come to forgather like birds, and the land where everybody somehow looked like broken-down, handsome, decadent movie actors.”

And I now see how Natalie Merchant’s rambling musical poetry of ‘Hey Jack Kerouac’ gave me glimpses of the exploits of Sal Paradise and Dean Moriarty long before I eventually found author Jack Kerouac for myself.

Hey Jack Kerouac, I think of your mother
And the tears she cried, they were cried for none other…

…Hey Jack, now for the tricky part,
When you were the brightest star, who were the shadows?…

…You chose your words from mouths of babes got lost in the wood.
Cool junk booting madmen, street minded girls
In Harlem, howling at night.
What a tear stained shock of the world,
You’ve gone away without saying goodbye.

Natalie Merchant / Robert Buck
Hey Jack Kerouac lyrics © Christian Burial Music

10,000 Maniacs’ In My Tribe 1987

‘Dissolution’ The First in the Matthew Shardlake Series

‘Dissolution’ is author C.J. Sanson’s debut novel featuring Master Matthew Shardlake, an attorney who serves the infamous reformer Lord Thomas Cromwell in the year 1536. I confess to not knowing very much about the Reformation period other than what I learned on Masterpiece Theater and films like ‘Anne of A Thousand Days.’ My Catholic grammar school history classes were, not surprisingly, willing to skip those significant chapters in church history.

The Reformation period is arguably just as much of a central character as Shardlake, his protege Mark Poer, and the cast of monks and servants at the struggling monastery at Scarnsea where the story unfolds. The historical backdrop is that of King Henry VIII and Cromwell’s relatively swift process of dismantling and closing the giant machine of monasteries that dominated England’s economy.

Tasked with investigating the gruesome murder of one of Cromwell’s commissioners at Scarnsea, Shardlake’s loyalty to The Reformation and belief that the enormous wealth of the monastery system will be equitably divided becomes as murky as the dangerous surrounding marshlands used by smugglers and a cast of nefarious suspects.

Matthew Shardlake is haunted by personal losses, his own physical deformity and he often admits to being confused, exhausted and fearful. It’s a refreshing portrayal of how hard it has always been to be a hero in times of corruption and conflict. Some things never change.

Looking for more? There are seven titles in the Shardlake series; Dissolution, Dark Fire, Sovereign, Revelation, Heartstone, Lamentation, Tombland.

 

Seed Day

January in Wisconsin does not easily offer the gardener/farmer a lot of opportunity to get their hands dirty. With a little planning, the process of seed stratification gave me the chance to play in the dirt on a recent cold, snowy day.

Last November, at a native wildflower seed exchange hosted by the local Wild Ones chapter, I scored around a dozen types of seed and, most importantly, learned that with any luck, I’ll have hundreds of tiny germinated seedlings in plugs of soil ready for the ground come spring. Learn more about the vibrant global seed exchange community here.

On a snowy January 11th, as a big winter storm took aim, the time was right to sow the variety of seeds in the milk jugs I’d been saving for just this purpose.

Follow along until spring planting in the meadow!

Thursday, January 11, 2024. Prepared containers.
Cut container – leaving a hinge.
Fill with 3 to 4” of garden soil. Good excused to show off my new Hori Hori knife.
Label and fill with soil.
Duct tape closed of course!

All set to transfer containers outside to get the necessary chill hours. See Prairie Moon Nursery’s seed stratification description or wonderful Wikipedia for more details.

The exciting part of this method is that these hefty plugs of soil in the jugs can be easily opened, watered, checked for germination and moved around to get more or less sun exposure.

Once we get frost free nights, we’ll dig out areas on the property based on sunlight and moisture requirements, and look for clumps of our new plants to show up! Stay tuned friends! The groundhog did not see his shadow this year!

Out the door!
And into THIS!

Rivers and Travel Highs Converge at Harper’s Ferry WV

Harper’s Ferry, West Virginia was a highlight of a spring roadtrip – a place with the perfect blend of history and scenery at the  confluence of the Potomac and Shenandoah Rivers.  It offers a unique 2-for-1 deal in that the town and Harper’s Ferry National Park are actually indistinguishable. 

At the base of ‘The Lower Town” sits ‘The Point’ where the mingled waters of the two mountain rivers flow along the boundaries of Maryland, Virginia and West Virginia.  Driving in this entire area is a dizzying game of automobile pinball as you bounce across state line to state line in a crazy game of geographic boundaries.  Harper’s Ferry is actually a quaintly* compact place, tightly hugging the hills and yet, the stocky B&O Railroad tunnel gawks right out of the mountain above and bringing the Amtrak line straight from Washington D.C.  Abolitionist John Brown’s Fort is also a sturdy thing to behold, hunkered proudly at the confluence point in the Lower Town, as if to dare the rivers and hills to make it budge after all of these years.

*”Quaintness” should only be expected during “low” seasons. Due to the narrow, steep streets and lack of space for parking, the place has to be an over-crowded trap during spring break, summer and fall color season!   Hence the Park’s need for the “official” National Park center above the town. It’s only there to shuttle crowds down the hill to John Brown’s Fort and the other historic sites. Or, take the train from Pittsburgh or DC.  A final tip, dining options were limited.

A natural spring runs through The Rabbit Hole Gastropub.

One of the few open restaurants in early springtime, The Rabbit Hole offered scenic  dining on the deck overlooking town & railway station.  It’s almost “as old as the hills” when you realize that there is a visible mountain spring running through the main dining room.

Another kind of confluence is the Appalachian Trail Conservancy Headquarters & Visitor Center just above town. Spend a little time in the office and you’ll hear the stories of through-hikers, day-hikers and meet people from all over the world.  We hiked straight out of the trail office towards the rivers and alongside places where Thomas Jefferson walked.

ATC Headquarters, Harpers Ferry WV

A short walk up those same hills brought us to our suite in a beautifully restored house across the road from the ATC headquarters. Perfect homebase for your visit.  https://www.potomacadventure.com/

Happy Trails!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

New host New post

After a few years hosting with Siteground, a switch to A2Hosting for eatprayreadlife.com has put me through my website hosting paces. Just like any cable or streaming service, once they get you, they don’t want to make it easy to leave.

A successful site migration isn’t rocket science but it took more time than I’d like to admit…and all of my photos didn’t make it into my posts! Stay tuned as I remedy this by going back to GIS days when I learned a file had to be in the correct directory or it just won’t come along!

I also should document the fact that eatprayread@wordpress.com had to transition to eatprayreadlife.com because someone has registered the more succinct domain of eatprayread.com and btw he/she has it “parked” with GoDaddy and publishes NOTHING to do with eating, praying or reading…just saying!

Bottomline, I’m out here enjoying this as a learning process to create and maintain a place that aspires to nourish body, mind and soul. I hope you find some enjoyment as you share and follow along.

 

The Boys In the Boat by Daniel James Brown

image from the bibliophage.com

A non-fiction story that could have been penned by script writers from back in the day. Let’s see, first we’ll set the scene during the start of the Great Depression. Add in a bunch of mostly working class/downright poor heroes to compete for college degrees and championships in a wildly popular upper class gentleman’s sport and oh, yes add an epic showdown with Adolph Hilter!

The University of Washington Rowing Team’s pride and ongoing rivalry with University of California Berkeley is just the beginning of the athletic triumphs the author Daniel James Brown brings to life. I had no idea of the immense popularity of rowing in those days. Throngs of folks lined shorelines, boarded boats and even rode trains that traveled back and forth along the race course to watch their teams compete. And the fervor seemed to be more intense the farther east you went – all the way to Poughkeepsie NY and back to Oxford and Cambridge for what they simply refer to as “The Boat Race.”

There is plenty of time taken to describe the craftsmanship that went into making the racing shells, the hardships many of the men endured, and the intense competition to be one of the nine chosen for the Varsity boat. All done while the reader more and more anxiously waits for the next race to begin!

No spoilers here, however as each race takes place the intensity and pressure to succeed increases. The author quietly fills us in on the enormous efforts taking place in Germany as the Third Reich wakes up to the idea that the Berlin Olympic Games could serve as the perfect backdrop to fool the world for just a little longer. The boys in the University of Washington boat certainly have something to prove to the Nazis, to the rest of the world, and mostly to themselves.

 

 

 

Same Kind of Different As Me by Ron Hall & Denver Moore

The Word says God don’t give us credit for lovin the folks we want to love anyway. No, He gives us credit for loving the unlovable. The perfect love of God don’t come with no conditions. – Denver Moore

Just finished this true story co-authored by two men who’s lives could not have started out more differently. Spoiler alert…they find a common bond of faith and hope when an exceptional woman touches both of their lives, and the lives of many others.

The book shifts authors in quick chapters between Denver Moore, a black man who lived a pitifully poor and oppressed life in modern day southern United States to Ron Hall a college educated white man who blythely finds a beautiful devoted wife and stumbles into a wildly successful career as an art dealer.

Deborah Hall is the woman who has faith in her unfaithful husband, and exceptional faith in finding hope and promise at Union Gosel Mission in Fort Worth Texas. There, Miss Debbie sees potential for change when Ron and most others see despair and just a place to volunteer and maybe score points to get into heaven.

The story inspired and challenged without being dramatic or saccharine. It rings true and truth is a beautiful thing to share.

The story was made into a film in 2017.