Writing to me is….

This weeks blog post is in conjunction with the Blog-A-licious Blog Tour. I am pleased to be on the tour along with some very interesting and informative writers. At the bottom of this post will be a listing of the addresses of the other bloggers discussing this weeks subject. I encourage you to visit them also.

Thank you for visiting my blog, I hope you enjoy it and sign up to follow it.

The topic for this week’s Blog-A-licious Blog Tour is:

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 “Writing To Me Is…”

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.…the tunnel is dark, long and narrow. The walls and ceiling drip with slime and an unhealthy gooey substance seemingly moving of it’s own will, while a green, stagnant substitute for water slouches loudly over my boots leaving a dirty, oily residue behind. The smells of mold and stagnation fill my nostrils and assaults my senses as my mouth puckers and crinkles against the bitter, metallic taste or the cavern.

My hands and arms bleed and sting from bumping against the sharp, craggy walls and my legs are stiff and sore from the running. But I cannot stop. I must keep moving back, ever back, deeper into the tunnel, further away from the light. It’s been so long since I’ve seen the light bathed in its radiance – reflected in its power.

I’ve forgotten the caress of the sun on my face.

How I long for the sun.

But I must keep moving deeper into the tunnel, deeper into the darkness – away from the beast.

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The Book that Inspires Me the Most

This weeks blog post is in conjunction with the Blog-A-licious Blog Tour. I am pleased to be on the tour along with some very interesting and informative writers. At the bottom of this post will be a listing of the addresses of the other bloggers discussing this weeks subject. I encourage you to visit them also.

Thank you for visiting my blog, I hope you enjoy it and sign up to follow it.

The topic for this week’s Blog-A-licious Blog Tour is:

Okay, dk – what book inspires you the most? Wow! That’s a tough one. Kinda like going to a Baskin’s Ice Cream parlor and having to choose one flavor for the rest of your life.

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Publishing in a Paradigm

This weeks blog post is in conjunction with the Blog-A-licious Blog Tour. The topic for this week is “A  World without Books”.  I’m not going to talk about what a world would be without books as just think of ‘Hell’ and subject closed.  So I’m going to talk about the Paradigm that’s occurring in book publishing that is changing how we look at, feel and think about ‘books’ today with an opposite concern of a world of books without any controls on it.  Please see http://peacefrompieces.blogspot.com/ for the addresses of the other bloggers discussing this subject also.  Thank you and leave your comments and thoughts below.

Every week there’s a half a dozen blogs and articles written about the changing publishing world and the future of books. There are as many opinions as there are writers and they’re scattered across the landscape like Saguaro cacti in the deserts of the Southwest.

Will paper books survive? Will ebooks reign supreme? Will publishing houses go bankrupt? Will libraries close their doors? And on and on.

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the ‘pirate’ ship – the buffalo – and the loss of innocence

It was appalling how quickly the ‘takers’ had converged on the river.

Overnight taverns, hotels, mills and souvenirs shops had sprouted up everywhere, each vying for the best location and view of the mighty Falls to fill their insatiable selfishness and greed.

It was only a few short years earlier that a trip to Niagara, to experience the great cataracts, was both difficult and dangerous, available only to the hardy and the adventurous. Access to Niagara was overland, either by carriage, horseback or on foot. The journey was long, tedious and bruising.  Routes were few, roads were bone jarring and treacherous, taking days to cover only a few miles.

But it was worth it, to see the majesty of creation in its fullest glory and radiance, untouched, unspoiled, unblemished by human intervention. Just the pure beauty and splender of nature.

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What was the ‘Ice Demon’?

I want to thank everyone who has or is reading ‘Bridges’. It thrills me to know you are enjoying the book and the stories within.

More than one reader has come back asking about the ‘Ice Demon’ the boys ‘encountered’ on their journey down into the Gorge. What was it?  Was it real?  Was it their imagination? What did it mean?

Who among us hasn’t had experiences they can’t explain? Seen something – sensed something – heard something – that wasn’t there?

Who hasn’t had the hair stand up on the back of their necks and a chill run down their spine when a sudden wind blew across their face?

Or felt goose bumps run up and down their arms? Or heard the shuffling of feet outside their door at night – when no one was there?

Or the tolling of a bell where there is no church?

How many times  have  we seen a shadow flicker across the corner of our eyes and upon jerking our heads around – we see nothing?

There are things that happen in life we can’t explain – and we accept them because if we don’t  - we go mad.

The boys seen something – that much I know.  There was something in the ice.

Was it only the sunlight reflecting through the giant ice pillar?   Maybe

Was it only the cold that fused their hands to the ice and kept pieces of their flesh?  Maybe

Was it their imagination, their adrenalin or their heightened sense of awareness that made them feel and sense things they otherwise wouldn’t have?  Maybe – these are plausible explanations, and like the things mentioned earlier, we find plausible explanations – to keep from going mad.

Or was there a living force dwelling inside the ice?  If so – was it a ‘demon’  or an angel?

I don’t know – I only recorded their story.

Like me – you now have their story too – what do you think it was?

I know this: Before they touched the ice, Kevin and Chuck were adversaries with a gulf of turbulent water between them and after they touched the ice,  a  ’bridge’ crossed that turbulent river changing their relationship from that time on.  Why?  What happened?  I don’t know – maybe you do.

25 years later – Kevin still didn’t know what they touched in the ice that day.

thks

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Come – Walk with Me

Come – walk with me… let’s step back in time together –  let’s roll the hands of the big clock back. No -no – not that little one on the wall. I mean the ‘big’ one – the ‘big clock of life‘. You know, the one that’s measured in years and centuries. Let’s roll it back, ohhhh, shall we say – 10,000 years or so. Back to a time when the only technology was the layers of time etched in a rock or the rings of life buried in a tree.  Back to a time when there is no combustion engine – no Twitter –  no electricity – no war (?), well no people as we know them, anyway.

Back to a time when God walked the planet.

 

Let’s walk His Creation…and maybe He’ll walk with us…

… along the shores of the steep canyon, where the impatient River races to join with the ‘Big Water’ up North, cutting a wide trench through the land, slicing a deep scar across the face of the earth.

It hasn’t been given a name yet – but walk with me along the shore of what we know will one day… be called “Niagara”.

We travel down the side of the canyon, carefully watching the placement of our feet and clinging tightly to our life, gripping the growth of the steep wall to secure our journey downward.

Down… down... down the sides of the great trench.

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The Cathedral in the Woods

He liked being alone in the woods long before the sun’s first light broke upon the trees, piercing a darkness so thick you could feel it peel away from your skin as you stealthily moved through the cold night air. It was a comfort the old man yearned for in a world turned upside down for him.

In those pre-dawn hours, alone in the forest, the night cold and close around him, the world was a different place and time – a special place and time – his place and time. A place and time found nowhere else on earth. Where the ‘day’ creatures were slowly waking up, preparing to forage and the ‘night’ creatures were silently slipping through the darkness, to beat the approaching light, scurrying to the safety of their “homes”. It’s the quiet time in nature’s clock, when the mind and soul can find that single thread of unity that enables understanding – and healing.

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Why the Niagara Gorge?

Being born and raised in the Niagara Frontier, I grew up on the Niagara River – above the great Falls.  I spent my formative years as a ‘river rat’ – not in awe of the mighty cataracts, but in fear of it, seeing them as a threat to my upper river escapades. More than once myself and my fellow ‘rats’ barely escaped the ominous current as we tubed down the river or drift fished off of Navy Island. The Falls to us was something not to be marveled at but were held in great fear and to be avoided at all costs.

That perspective changed the first time I went down into the gorge below the Falls (during summer of course – I wasn’t as crazy my ‘boys’ were to go in winter) and “discovered” the lower river. There, like Saul on the road to Damascus, I was overcome by the wonder of the river and consumed by the mystery of it.

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