Memorable hikes in my life

~ Jnana Hodson ~ 2 Comments

One of the blessings and saving graces of my youth was being a member of a rogue Boy Scout troop that included a big hike one weekend of each month and primitive camping on another. The two together introduced me to many essentials of the natural world and real life.

One consequence is that hiking has been a big delight in my life ever since, despite a 20-year gap at one point and the reality that my days of being able to hike a 25-mile stretch are long gone.

Here are a few memories I treasure.

  1. My first backpacking experience, from Clifton above Yellow Springs to Belmont in Dayton, Ohio. You couldn’t do that now, not with all the suburban sprawl and the ban on trekking along railroad lines post-9/11.
  2. The week we spent on the Appalachian Trail, ending at Roan High Knob in North Carolina/Tennessee when the rhododendron were in blossom. I had never seen them before. I was 12, with a 60-pound backpack. Funny, though, I haven’t backpacked since.
  3. A brace of Scouting trails we hiked in neighboring Indiana, Illinois, and Kentucky, earning a medal and sometimes a new scarf as a result. These included the Daniel Boone country around Lexington, the Lincoln country, even getting hopelessly lost in Brown County because some crucial trail markers had been shot up beyond recognition. Later, when I lived nearby, I realized the big lake now sat atop a road that had been paved with crushed geodes. Now that I’m thinking of it, in my return to the scene, I had a fine late-winter stroll through the same woods.
  4. Mount Washington, New Hampshire, ’74, introducing me to the amazing flowers of alpine terrain.
  5. Mount Rainier, Washington, multiple times from ’76-‘80. Though I never attempted the summit, I did make it up the permanent snowfields to Camp Muir twice. And the alpine terrain continued to dazzle me.
  6. Mount Stuart in the Enchanted Lakes wilderness area, Washington state. It was an early autumn outing. Again, I didn’t tackle the summit, though I was acquainted with the man who had been the first to make it to the top. The crisp late afternoon air abounded in cosmic rays.
  7. Mount Lafayette, New Hampshire, late ‘80s. Another mountain that reaches above the tree line.
  8. Mount Chocorua, New Hampshire, a decade ago. A more difficult climb than its altitude would suggest. But there are reasons the Indigenous people considered it sacred, even before the lovers’ leap story.
  9. Quoddy Head, Maine, three years ago. The day was foggy and wet, adding to the drama as we moved on the bluffs atop restless Fundy Bay water. The open peat bog and boardwalk added to the wonder. It was the first time since my initial encounter with Rainier that I’d felt so amazed by nature. It’s what convinced me to move to Eastport.
  10. Bold Coast, Lubec and Cutler, Maine, the past two years. Forget Acadia National Park. This is unspoiled and uncrowded. And for me, it’s now part of home.

Oh, gee, how can I not mention that crazy hike up the desert slope of the Yakima Canyon, Washington state, where I was among those to first to see the return of the bald eagle to the valley after a quarter century or more? I was looking down on an incredible wingspan and didn’t even know its species until later. It was still winter, ’77, and, because of the rattlesnakes, I wouldn’t have ventured into the landscape otherwise. It shows up in my novel Nearly Canaan.

The villain raiding our suet feeder

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

I thought I was done with winter feeding of woodpeckers, grackles, and even crows, but all the action around the suet had me continue well into spring, allowing us to watch closely from the kitchen table. And then the holder started appearing open and empty.

I doubted that deer were doing it again, since the tube feeder next to it was still full. Deer, as I’ve discovered, detest a hint of cumin there, so the main birdfeeder’s gone pester-free for months.

Finally, I nailed the culprit, a raven that’s learned to pop the holder open, spilling the block of suet to the ground.

Well, this has given me a good way to get a close look at the large shiny-almost blue black bird, skittish though it may be. I keep thinking male?

The species is more imposing and beautiful than a crow. Somehow, I’m guessing it would take pride in being labeled a villain. Crows seem sociable by comparison.

Does Poe really sway our thinking here?

We live on the 45th Parallel

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment
Marker along U.S. 1’s coastal route in Perry adjacent to Eastport.

We’re halfway between the Equator and the North Pole. It means we have some of the longest winter nights in the continental U.S. and some of the longest days in summer.

As well as the shortest winter days and shortest summer nights.

Quite simply, we’re not just further east than the rest of the continental U.S. but also further north. Take a look at the map, if you must.

Here’s the full inscription.

How I came up with the tags for the ebook edition

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

Don’t know about you, but I do find tags very helpful in searching for ebooks.

Well, they’re also very helpful in finding fellow bloggers. In fact, if you’re not using them, let me urge you to do so. I’ll even give some free advice, if you’re interested.

Part of the trick, of course, is in choosing ones that will connect with folks on the other end. When I was setting up Quaking Dover for release through Smashwords, the tags I had intended led to some others I thought would pitch the book far more widely and effectively, and, to my surprise, more accurately.

Here are the ten I went with:

Faith, Families, New England, Strong Women, Colonial, Quaker, Peace Movement, Spiritual Walk, Community Life.

The book’s already charted as Non-Fiction/History/American, so there was no point in duplicating those.

Do any of those appeal to you?

Check out my new book, Quaking Dover, available in your choice of ebook platforms at Smashwords.com.

 

Nantucket’s Starbucks came from Dover

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

Although it’s offshore of Cape Cod and close to Rhode Island, Nantucket Island was purchased by investors mostly from the Merrimack River watershed just south of the Piscataqua. Prominently, however, one was from Dover – Edward Starbuck. And his son-in-law, Peter Coffin, was another.

Edward’s the origin of the Starbuck surname in America, a signer of the 1640 Dover Combination, and a prominent figure in Dover’s early history. The name also shows up as Starbird or Starboard.

And, no, these Starbucks weren’t known for their coffee.

Before the arrival of the Quakers, Edward was an elder in First Parish, but historian George Wadleigh cites two curious controversies.

In 1648, “The Grand Jury presented Elder Starbuck for disturbing the peace of the church, and for refusing to join with it in the ordinance of baptism; for which he was admonished and discharged.”

Discharged, we can assume, from the office of elder, and not simply having the charges discharged.

(This was a month before future Quaker Richard Pinkham was ordered to start beating the drum to summon congregants to the Sunday service.)

In 1649, the baptism issue apparently involved the matter of children, perhaps his daughter Shuah, but then spread to his very hairstyle.

“The Court being informed of a great misdemeanor committed by Edward Starbuck of Dover, with profession of Anabaptism, for which he is to be proceeded against at the next Court of Assistants, if evidence can be prepared by that time, and it being very far for witnesses to travel to Boston at that season of the year, appointed Captain Thomas Wiggin and Mr. Edward (George?) Smith to take the testimony of the witnesses for the prosecution of Starbuck, whose offence, apparently, was the wearing of his hair beyond the statute length, ‘after the manner of ruffians and barbarous Indians,’ which had been decreed by the Court to be ‘sinful.'”

Let’s note that Anabaptism here doesn’t mean Mennonite. The term was applied to many who objected to the Puritan orthodoxy.

I suspect that some of Edward’s opposition to infant baptism was stimulated by Hansard Knollys before his hasty departure from the First Parish pastorate. Knollys, after all, then became a founder of the Particular Baptists back in England, and as elder, Edward would have been close to him.

Nantucket Island was soon famed for its whalers, and perhaps notorious as a den of Quakers.

I’m uncertain whether Edward had any connection with Quakers in Dover before he removed with his family to Nantucket around 1660, but his Dover-born son Nathaniel definitely identified as a Friend.

In fact, Nathaniel’s wife, Mary Coffin, was a powerful Quaker minister who’s credited with converting the whole island to adopt the faith or at least make it the official town church. Besides, by doing so they wouldn’t be taxed to support an ordained minister.

Mary’s father, Tristram, was one of the island’s proprietors and originally from Devonshire as well as the progenitor of a line in Dover.

Edward Starbuck, meanwhile, was from Derbyshire.

Further connecting the two families as the marriage of Edward’s daughter Abigail to Dover resident Peter Coffin, also prominent in the settling of Nantucket Island and a cousin of Mary.

Another daughter, Sarah, married Joseph Austin, who showed up in Dover around 1647 as part-owner of a sawmill. He was born about 1616 in Dover, Kent, England, and appeared in Hampton, New Hampshire, in 1642.

They had six children before his death on June 27, 1663. She then married Humphrey Varney. Many of her descendants by each husband were Quaker.

Four of the children moved to Nantucket Island: sons Benjamin and Nathaniel and daughters Mary, who wed Richard Gardner, and Deborah, wife of John Coffin.

Their son Thomas remained in Dover and married Ann Otis, daughter of Richard Otis and Rose Stoughton. Together they had fourteen children who then became the stem of the family that proliferated in Dover Friends Meeting.

~*~

Check out my new book, Quaking Dover, available in your choice of ebook platforms at Smashwords.com.

Welcome to Dover’s upcoming 400th anniversary. Its influence is wider than anyone I’ve found has suspected.

 

In the end, turtles

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

wash and wax the narrative, the car to turn to clearly but a break’s essential : all matters of revision, too : interplay of Caribbean poverty and Philadelphia do-gooders comes to mind now : also find reissued later in the day a heavy grocery supply-run to counter any desire to dine out (the big threat to me budget) also potted greenery to make this shell my candy camp all summer

A matter of relative size

~ Jnana Hodson ~ 2 Comments

Eastport is smaller – much smaller – than the model for my fictional Prairie Depot was, and I thought that place was small. Yet somehow Eastport feels more vibrant and whole.

At least in summer.

For a little perspective, the entire winter population could ride a single New York City subway train.

When one seemingly random thought leads to a mental snowstorm

~ Jnana Hodson ~ 4 Comments

Do you ever have something float into your mind, seemingly at random, only to have a cluster of related bits fly up all around, too?

I recently had that regarding the Los Angeles Master Chorale, of all things.

I had long assumed that it had grown out of a marvelous ensemble, the Roger Wagner Chorale, which I heard twice in my early concertgoing exposure. The touring group consisted of 24 excellent professional voices blended into velvety perfection by a choral conductor who, at the time, was considered one of the two best in America.

Robert Shaw was the other and went on to eclipse Wagner. That’s another story.

In the day, both directors assembled programs ranging from Renaissance to Broadway and Hollywood – Shaw had even been groomed to be successor to Fred Waring at the Pennsylvanians before being veered off into hard-core classical by Arturo Toscanini and George Szell.

A close friend of mine told of his high school choir director’s annual summer trek to study under Wagner, returning with a sharpened sense of diction – something I never really considered until becoming a choir member myself – along with some mysterious but nifty tricks to obtain it. (Wish I knew more now.) And then Wagner faded from sight, not without leaving some highly regarded musical tracks on well-known movies.

In southern California, the Master Chorale had somehow taken on a life of its own and was best known in the wider concert world for its work with the Los Angeles Philharmonic. I rather assumed it had morphed into the orchestra’s in-house choir, like the Tanglewood Festival Chorus with the Boston Symphony, but somehow had roots with Wagner. From time to time I’d hear broadcasts concerts.

More recently, in trying to practice for Quoddy Voices on Zoom, I found myself exploring some incredible warmups and performances on YouTube. I chanced across several of a Palestrina motet I’d performed with Revelsingers in Boston, and it was fun to get out my score and sing along. One tape, though, turned out to be 21 minutes of grueling rehearsal with a rather overbearing, name-dropping guest conductor who never let them get beyond the fourth measure, mostly because of diction issues regarding the Latin. Who did he think he was, I objected. The piece itself barely runs three minutes.

Paul Salamunovich?

Turns out he was the Master Chorale’s recently retired leader, and before that Wagner’s right-hand man. And that sent me piecing all of these random thoughts together in a kind of corrective surgery – or is it more like one of those clear-glass globes you turn over in your hand to launch a snowstorm?

By the way, I had the pleasure of watching Shaw live four times in Cincinnati, Cleveland, and Bloomington. Maybe I’ll get around to posting that experience someday.