Place

by Rain Trueax

"Where we choose to be-- we have that power to determine our lives. We cannot reel time backward or forward, but we can take ourselves to the place that defines our being." 

Sena Jeter Naslund. 

In my own books, place is almost always key. My characters are often a product of the region in which they grew. It's not everything, but I've considered it one of the characters for how it shapes someone. It's why I only put my stories in places I have either lived or spent time. Not all writers need this for their stories, but I always have wanted it. Of course, imagination adds to it. One of my books is an Oregon Trail story, and even though I didn't follow the whole Trail, I've been on major sections of it. Even more, the dream of what these pioneers would find when they got to Oregon, I understood from my own experiences.

So what I want to write about today is how place has helped shape who I am as well as my stories. This is about the land where I have lived 42 years. My place is on a year round stream. Water is key to life and this stream has quite a story it could tell.

In the Oregon Coast Range, the quiet lays round the spring, buried in ferns, sheltered by large trees. Water rises up through layers of basalt and clay. It bubbles to the surface and heads on a journey. As with all coastal streams, it is a product of springs. It is not fed by snow melt as this is a mostly temperate climate. The surface springs here are fed by rainfall. Far below their surface is an old lake where its waters are much different for their chemical makeup. The streams do not depend on it.

When the water reaches the thirty acres outside my windows, it has traveled less than twenty miles from its origin. It has been added onto by those springs on the hills. Here it’s eight to ten feet wide and most places no deeper a foot or two except when in flood. The water takes on a new name when it plunges into a river about a hundred feet from our home.

The water I can touch as it passes the farm will be carried through canyons and farm lands, past forests, cutting through cliffs of clay and sandstone before it enters rivers that grow

larger before it reaches the Pacific Ocean. With time, it will return to this land as rain and start all over again. This is part of an ever changing ecosystem for a host of insects, birds and animals. They live out their lives here, taking their life for granted. I never take my time here for granted.


The deer, raccoon, turkey, fox, bear, cougar, duck, steelhead, and trout seem unlikely to have named my stream. Wild things know where these places are but don’t need to title them. Humans like to name things. The Kalpuya probably had a name for it. It’s lost to time if they did. Over centuries, they traveled in a yearly cycle and here they fished, hunted, dried meat, gathered berries, dug roots, and ground acorns as they camped along the banks.They left behind arrowheads and grinding bowls as well as hidden burial sites.

The first Europeans who came to these beaver-rich valleys, were trappers and explorers. It is thought they may have brought with them malaria which decimated the numbers of the indigenous already here.  When the first settlers arrived, they talked of seeing a few Indians walk past. It was a peaceful coexistence. There were no Indian wars fought in these valleys. I've been told that the ones here knew of the burial of one of the Kalapuya on a knoll—a hidden grave. Maybe it's not far from where the first pioneers established their cemeteries-- both a family and community one. There are other small family plots behind many of the farms with only a few left to know their place or tend them.

The early settlers did name the creek as they claimed the land, built cabins and barns, birthed babies, and died along these banks. When I wade the creek, I find evidence of all who came before me from Kalapuya to settlers where broken pottery and parts of equipment were buried in the sandy soil. When we first got here, there was a steel cable across the creek which was used by loggers to move their logs to the nearby river and get them to the sawmills that were here when we first came. Jump dams stop the stream enough to float them down as they released the water.

Below our barns was where wagons forded the stream on solid sandstone-- before bridges. I've been told that in the seven oaks there would be metal rings that were used to tether horses. One logger said that if you try to cut down some of those old trees, your chainsaw would run into them. I'd only cut one down if it became dangerous to the house due to disease or old age. Ours are now well over a hundred years and a hundred feet tall-- huge, precious oaks shelter this house and saw what I've only read about. Their acorns fed families and now feed sheep.

I’ve only been here forty-two years, making me a piker in this rural community where some have always been here. Although I also grew up in a home on the edge of wilderness, it was not this one. None here knew me as a child, but my children have many who can say they knew them back then.

What I learned when we first came to this valley is that my family had come here when they left South Dakota for health reasons. One of the homes still standing had family who hosted them until they could get settled in another nearby community. I had distant relatives here that I had no idea. Does place draw us in ways we don't really know consciously?

Is place important to who we are? Some would say no and that we bring us with us wherever we go. Others know it's the core of their being. In this Oregon valley where I live, there are people who have never lived anywhere else, have barely been out of these hills. For some, their parents were born on the land they still occupy. Of those I met when we first arrived, many are now buried in the country cemetery above the church as are my parents and that of Ranch Boss'.

Times have changed-- yet in many ways not so much as we still do what we came here to do-- raise cattle and sheep, which we market as grassfed. I no longer buck bales but still love the land and its stories. I sought this life of ranching and despite its pain, sometimes tragedies, and the hard work, I feel blessed to have experienced a place so deeply as I have on the banks of this stream. Does being a country woman define me? Not totally, but it has been an important part of what has for most of my life.

The other thing that helps define us are our stories. I have one to share with my December blog in Sweethearts. It was told me, and I have also researched it. It's about one of those first families, settlers to the land on which I live today. 

My first book about a family and the journey west on the Oregon Trail. Round the Bend

My romances are historicals, contemporary, and paranormal 
with more about them at Rain Trueax 

Inspiration coming from the land and an author

by Rain Trueax

Zane Grey with one of his guides-- painting inside the lodge at Kohl's Ranch

Most writers have authors who inspired them. For me, one of the earliest, was Zane Grey for his mix of action, romance, and nature. His books made me want to be in the places he described because I knew he'd written of what was real. I loved how he depicted the land having the power to change lives.

Alongside my desk is one of his books. It originally came out as To the Last Man, inspired by a real feud in the Tonto Basin-- [The Pleasant Valley War]. Years after the censored version, the book came out as he had originally intended-- Tonto Basin. Even back then but more so today, Zane Grey is criticized for not being politically correct. He had his prejudices and was a product of his time. He wrote his stories when the West wasn't that far removed from its wild and woolly days. Remember Arizona was denied statehood until 1912-- some say because the rest of the states thought it was still too violent. There was some conflict over it not wanting to be one state with New Mexico for possible racist reasons. Add to it that it seemed barren without water. Whatever the reasons, it was the last of the contiguous states to be admitted.

Much as I loved Grey's heroes and heroines, his descriptions of nature inspired me the most and probably contributed to my own love of it for my writing. He brought the land alive as a real character in his stories. As a hunter and fisherman, he walked the trails about which he wrote.

As an example of what I loved, the following is a snippet typed from the book. It was worth the work as I am still inspired to remember to bring to my books the nature that I always found in his.

 "Early in July the hot weather came. Down in the red ridges of the Tonto it was hot desert. The nights were cool, the early mornings were pleasant, but the day was something to endure. When the white cumulus clouds rolled up out of the southwest, growing larger and thicker and darker, here and there coalescing into a black thunderhead, Jean welcomed them. He liked to see the gray streamers of rain hanging down low from a canopy of black, and the roar of rain on the trees as it approached like a trampling army was always welcome. The grassy flats, the rocky slopes, the thickets of manzanita and scrub oak and cactus were dusty, glaring, throat-parching places under the hot summer sun."

 

As I typed the snippet, I was tempted to put in the commas that I am dinged for missing; but no, this is how it is in the book and how he wrote when you knew he'd experienced that kind of day.

We have been on the Rim many times but just one time through the valley where the feud happened. It is out of the way and required some gravel roads to leave it to the south.  It's a small place, very pretty with homes and business spread apart-- at least when we were there. Grey changed the names; but in an interview, he said there was still fear and anger from those he spoke to about that bloody time-- when it came down to the last man.

 

This photo above is not in Paradise Valley; but from 2011, near where Grey had a cabin under the Rim from where he hunted, fished, hiked, and wrote his Arizona books. 

My first time at his cabin came out of my desire to find his hunting and writing cabin. It was 1974. We had camped several miles below. It turned out the road to the cabin was closed due to storm damage. I had to see it, and we began walking. I think it was just over two miles.

Part way, some young rangers stopped and asked if we wanted a ride. We rode in the back of their pickup to the turnoff to the cabin. We were lucky that day that the caretakers were there. The cabin was one room with no bedrooms. Inside was a desk where he wrote. His guests and Grey slept in cabin tents. On that first visit, there were books for sale, and I bought three paperbacks even though I already owned them. 

In 1979, we had a second visit where the road to it was open. We parked in the parking area, but the caretaker was not there. We though could be on the porch and look in the windows.

My third time was 2011, after the monster Dude Fire had come though the rim country, and despite all efforts to save it, burned the cabin. A few mementos were saved. When we drove up anyway, the property was gated off by the association that apparently owned it.

Today there is a replica of Grey's cabin in Payson, a nearby town. I chose not to go into it as although it resembles the cabin, it's not the same for energy as when it was possible to see inside the walls that inspired a writer to create stories that still live on. 

When I wrote this, it reminded me of wanting to watch again the most recent movie (I read there were 112) based on one of Grey's books-- Riders of the Purple Sage. It's on Amazon, but I own it-- some movies I know I'll want to see again and again.  

Grey had a prejudice against Mormons and used some words that are not okay today, but this film avoids that and goes to the real problem with some groups using religion-- greed, search for power, and fundamentalism. Ed Harris and his wife, Amy Madigan, starred and kept it true to the energy of the book. It was filmed in gorgeous, red rock country, which is not on the Rim but to the north. Arizona is a state of diversity, which is why I've loved having a home there for over twenty years now and where I have placed so many of my books. 

 https://www.amazon.com/Riders-Purple-Sage-Ed-Harris/dp/B00A92MD8G

collages as inspiration

by Rain Trueax

Every now and again, writers are asked from where came their ideas. The answer is usually a mix of places-- where we've been, something we read, the Muse/muse, our own lives-- maybe even past lives. Sometimes though, they come from something we don't really connect at the time and only later in looking back realize-- you've got to be kidding.

Making soul collages held that moment for me. In 2001, I read about doing these collages. The idea is you take old magazines, cut up images, and with the ones that resonate with what you want in your life, you put them together and then paste them to a board. 

So, I sat on the floor with stacks of my art and western magazines, which I had decided had been saved long enough, cut out photos, paintings, advertisements, put them out on a board, arranging and rearranging and then gluing them in place. The collage below is that first attempt, which I had framed behind glass and put on my wall behind my desk in Oregon.

That year ended and I considered-- uh what's this about? Nothing seems to have changed-- not that I was sure in what way they could have. In Tucson, I created another one for 2002. I found images that I hadn't considered so important in the first one. I also had that one framed and hung it behind my Tucson desk.

Another year passed. In 2003, I created another, adding words to go with the images. It was as satisfying as the first two. They were all full of ideas I loved. It was fun figuring out how to put them together. By this time, I wasn't sure they were getting me where I wanted to go. Their creation was not exactly fitting with the clay sculptures I was also doing (wet and muddy hands don't handle images well). I did no more but did study them on the walls now and again-- often wondering why I'd chosen this or that image.

During those collage creating years, besides the sculpture and painting, I was continuing to write, as I always had, historical, contemporary, and paranormal romances. I was not trying, however, to get the books published. It was not until 2011 that I read about indie publishing and decided to take the risk (and putting out creative work always is a risk). With books I'd written as far back as the 70s, I spent 2011 editing and editing again. In December, I sent off the first.

It wasn't until 2017 that I looked at my collages with a new understanding. Those images represented my books-- even the ones I had yet to have written when they were created. They were visualizations of the books I had been creating and hoped to create.

As has happened a lot in my life, what I had actually been doing was feeding the energy I needed for the work. I just hadn't seen how it was coming together. For someone who likes to always be in control, that might have seemed a problem. For me, I loved the insight, as serendipity has long played an important role in how I see my life.

I recommend doing soul collages to encourage creativity-- especially if you want something in your life you don't have. What I had wanted, but had not known, was more writing and actually getting those books out where they could be seen. The energy of those collages is all so western and so much what I have wanted for my romances whether contemporary or historical. The collages tell the stories before they were told.

To do soul collages, buy a foam board of the size you want, corral your old magazines and begin going through them for images that speak to your heart. The result might not end up as you expected but it can be a creativity boost both in the doing and the outcome.

a few of my links:

https://romanceswithanedge.blogspot.com

https://www.amazon.com/-/e/B006UX64X8 

http://rainydaytrailers.blogspot.com/

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WHO INSPIRED YOU TO YOUR PROFESSION?

Do you remember which author turned you on to reading with a passion? From the time I learned to sound out words, I’ve loved reading. When I became mesmerized, though, was in fourth grade when I discovered Nancy Drew mysteries. How could I not love an author who drew me to follow in her footsteps?

The person I’m featuring today is not western, but she influenced a great many writers who have become western authors, including me. Under the name Carolyn Keene, Mildred Augustine Wirt Benson wrote 23 of the first 30 Nancy Drew mysteries. I had no idea, however, that she wrote many more young adult series. In addition to being a journalist, she was a prolific fiction author.

Mildred Wirt Benson, Journalist and YA Author

Benson was born Mildred Augustine on 10 July 1905 in Ladora, Iowa to Lillian and Dr. J. L. Augustine. She earned her degree in English from the University of Iowa in 1925, returned and earned her master's degree in journalism in 1927, the first student to do so there. She worked for 58 years as a journalist. She married Asa Wirt, who worked for Associated Press, and, after Wirt's death in 1947, married George A. Benson, editor of the Toledo Blade newspaper of Toledo, Ohio three years later; he died in 1959.

The character of Nancy Drew was dreamed up by Edward Stratemeyer, who provided an index card plot outline to Ms Benson. She took the plots supplied by the Stratemeyer and created an imaginative world of suspense that has thrilled young readers for many years. Wirt was the first ghostwriter to expand Edward's roughly-drafted Nancy Drew plots, writing the first five books. Texts were then edited and rewritten as required, and the Syndicate approved and had all final books published under the Syndicate's name. Subsequent Nancy Drew stories (with some exceptions), for which Wirt provided text, were all re-written by Edna Stratemeyer Squier and, primarily, Harriet Stratemeyer Adams, after their father's death in 1930.

Published book rights for the Nancy Drew series were owned by the Stratemeyer Syndicate and are currently owned by Simon & Schuster. As with all syndicate ghostwriters, Benson was paid a flat fee of $125 at first and later up to $500 for each text, plus a Christmas bonus. At Edward Stratemeyer's death, under the terms of his will, all Syndicate ghostwriters, including Benson, were sent one fifth of the equivalent of the royalties the Syndicate had received for each book series to which they had contributed.

Ms. Benson was only 24 years old when she wrote the first book, THE SECRET OF THE OLD CLOCK. She did not churn out a mystery every six weeks as has been rumored. According to her website, the time varied from just a couple of weeks to up to a month or 6 weeks depending on scheduling and how quickly the publisher needed the book. Also according to her website, her favorite of her Nancy Drew books was THE HIDDEN STAIRCASE. How I longed to find a hidden staircase or an attic filled with forgotten treasures. Never happened, but you probably guessed as much, right?

The Nancy Drew books originally had 25 chapters and about 200 pages. In addition to 30 of that series, Mildred Wirt Benson authored 14 Kay Tracey books as Frances Judd, 18 Penny Parker books (which she told a reporter was her favorite) as Mildred A. Wirt, 16 Dana Girls books as Carolyn Keene, 4 Penny Nichols books as Joan Clark, 3 Connie Carl books as Joan Clark, and 3 Madge Sterling as Ann Wirt. In all, she wrote 135 books under a dozen or so names while working full time as a journalist.

Ms Benston was inducted into the Ohio Women's Hall of Fame in 1993 and into the Iowa Women's Hall of Fame in 1994. In 2001, Benson received a Special Edgar Award from the Mystery Writers of America for her contributions to the Nancy Drew series. After retiring, in December 2001, she scaled back to a monthly column. She died at the age of 96 from lung cancer 28 May 2002. Mildred Benson was at work doing what she loved until the very last, they way she would have wanted it. 

I'm grateful to Ms Benson for the part she played in encouraging me toward creating and writing my stories. 

Caroline Clemmons is an award winning and Amazon bestselling author, One of her 2014 releases is MAIL ORDER TANGLE, a two book duet written with Jacquie Rogers. Hers is the first in the duet, MAIL ORDER PROMISE and Ms Rogers wrote MAIL ORDER RUCKUS. The Amazon buy link is http://amzn.com/B00MZ6ZRXC

Another box set in which she has recently participated is WILD WESTERN WOMEN. This set of five western historical novellas contains stories by Kirsten Osbourne, Callie Hutton, Sylvia McDaniel, Merry Farmer, and Caroline Clemmons. Right now the set is only 99 cents, but the price will increase very soon. The Amazon link is: http://amzn.com/B00O35YY0U