One of the things you get when you’re one of our children, my husband’s and mine — along with wide feet and a lot of books — is the opportunity to hike. A lot.

I know what you’re thinking. I should italicize opportunity, because half of these so-called lucky chances must have been parentally-compelled death slogs, right? When my sister and I were kids we used to have FFOs (Forced Family Outings) and, admittedly, there’s been no break in tradition. Even as city kids in the center of Texas, our girls have clocked more miles on trails than on sidewalks. And, OK, not every mile’s been a birdsong.

But my husband and I fell in love on the Barton Creek Greenbelt and in the Santa Barbara Backcountry and on the Ice-Age Trail and at the top of Wilson Peak. This was bound to be part of the package.

So, since they were babies in backpacks, our daughters have hiked. They’ve collected their easter eggs on rocky trails, and played countless games of 20 Questions — on foot and in motion. They’ve skinned the occasional knee and swum in snow-melt. They recognize elk and marmet and hawk and moose. They understand blisters and hydration and the deliciousness of peanut butter on a tortilla, eaten above tree-line. 

This is all by way of saying that we weren’t completely nuts to set off on a stomp around the Mount Zirkel Wilderness last week — seven miles in the Sawtooths with a 6- and an 8-year-old. They’ve trained for it, if you know what I mean.

A good hike is like a good book. There’s the opening thrill — signing in at the trailhead so the rangers know you’re out there, just in case. The potential for success but also for trouble. The titallation of the unknown, even with a topo map. There are the moments of utter poetry — indian paintbrush as big as a man’s hand, a rocky lunch ledge hanging right over a broad waterfall, the eye-shaped knots gazing from the trunk of every aspen tree. And there are the dramas. The switchbacks that get a little too steep for the six-year-old’s liking. The 8-year-old having to hike the whole way in her Crocs because her foot’s all puffy from an ankle twisting at a frog pond and her boots don’t fit. The folks who lost their dog, the end of the summer sausage, the remnants of an old fire on the peak.  And the hail. Yep, really. We reach Gold Peak Lake as the clouds blacken and by the time we turn around to pull out our ponchos, we’re getting beaned with the white stuff.

But here’s the thing, when the weather moved in, that’s when we really got our second wind. The hail was a jolt of energy and adventure, and suddenly we’re traipsing along with new fervor, singing. We’re wet and a little bit cold but the day’s become a page turner. Both girls are beamy and proud when we make it back down to sign out at the trailhead, safe and strong. 

Still, the next day we decided on a hot springs and our little one looked at us skeptically when she asked, “Do we have to hike there?” We didn’t, and boy oh man did it feel good.

I’m still in Colorado, having been joined by my family, and we’ve completed the requisite hikes, multi-night camping trips, and altitude jokes. Tonight, one more notch on the ol’ belt — street performers on Pearl Street Mall in Boulder. 

First we got ice-cream because apparently it’s National Ice-Cream Day, and who am I to snub a holiday?

Then, we settled in on the pavement to listen to The Zipcode Man. You guys, I’m not kidding you, this man is phenomenal. He has folks call out their zipcode and then he says, “Oh, so you’re from East Lansing (or Brooklyn, or Lafayette or Bowling Green),” all casual-like. And then he’ll say something like, “Do you ever eat at that Old Mill Supper Club?” Or, “You must live right near Bowman Street.” 

His grand finale was gathering about 20 people at once, placing them around a sort of makeshift map by zip code, REMEMBERING each specific zip code, and then telling a story about each person travelling to the next place on the map. And the story was funny. And I think he might’ve been juggling while he talked. 

Sheesh. Some people really know how to pull a rabbit out of a hat. 

I don’t have a photographic memory. OK, so I’ve barely got a memory at all. I think that’s why Zipcode Man really blew my mind. But also just because he’s a quintessential performer. An entertainer. An artist, really. He’s got something good and special, he presents it with humour and generosity, and his audience feels kind of lucky that they stumbled upon this particular piece of sidewalk in time for the show. 

And I’m thinking, that’s what I want to be when I grow up. That kind of entertainer. Y’know. Without the zipcode thing…

So, tomorrow is “Tell an Author You Care Day,” according to Whimsy Books, and I think it’s a swell idea.

It’s a dang shame we do all the gushing we do behind people’s backs. 
Worse than gossip, don’t you think? 
How we’re always raving on and on about how witty or brilliant someone is, how big-hearted or visionary. 
And I don’t mean just authors. 
In general, folks are kind of shy about tooting each other’s horns, up close and personal. 

So, I want to send a great big shout-out to Michael Buckley for his Sisters Grimm series. We’re on Book 3 and some nights my husband just keeps on reading after the girls nod off because he wants to see what’s gonna happen next. And I’ve honed a very fine Granny Relda accent. A bit Bavarian.

And also to Rick Riordan, ’cause we still can’t stop thinking about old Percy and the half-blood gang. I mean, creating an obsession in the Greek myths amongst the elementary school set? You gotta love him for that.

And also to Cynthia Rylant for making my heart split open everytime I read one of her books. She’s the whole reason I’m writing for kids. Honest to pete.

And also to Alice Munro ’cause she makes my heart split open, too.

I mean, I could go on here but I won’t because I’ve got to get word to these folks directly. ‘Cause that’s the point. Right?

One lucky reader, signing off…

Tra la la la la. I’m in Colorado, which I where I lived for 15-some years of my life and its the home o’ my heart, to be sure. I CRY the first time I see the mountains. Every time.

I flew in a couple of days ago for a wedding and the rental car company saw fit to give me this jaunty little buttery yellow thang, with a sun roof no less. And I’ve read three books and chatted up all sorts of friends and family. And married off a cousin whom I cradled when she was a baby. And cradled another’s cousin infant for the first time. It’s the good life. 

The only downside was missing my daughters in their big, final, city-wide swim meet. My husband text-messaged me during the entire thing, especially when our elder water bug won the breast stroke for her age group. Won.

It just bowls me over that they grow up and take on the world like this, our little ones.

So, I know it’s not poetry friday but I found a swimming poem that I thought I’d post, in honor. And pride. And all that…

Swimming Lessons

by Lisa Hammond Rashley

Minnows and their moms
hurry in           no running
no floaties         they bob
in the shallow end     feet
lighter than the air    outside
humid hot     hold your nose
dunk     then    sleek heads
break water       gasp in air

READ THE REST OF THE POEM HERE…

For summer fun and as instruction for my own middle-grade work-in-progress, I’m reading all of this year’s Newbery award and honor winners. I mean, I figure these folks know a thing or two about plotting and dialogue and backstory and the like.

So I just finished Cynthia Lord’s Rules and it’s a beautiful little story that is kind of about autism and kind of about rules but more than anything is about kindness or the lack thereof. Plus, there’s a thread of Arnold Lobel’s Frog and Toad running through the whole thing and that’s just delectable. If you haven’t read it, do. And tell me if you don’t think the running in the parking lot scene is just really, really vivid and moving and exhileratingly sweet.

Now I’m half-way through The Higher Power of Lucky. There’s an appealing bit about how Lucky is all one color — from her eyelashes to her arms, from her hair to her lips — all sort of “mushroomy”. And I really like the notion that she’s living with her father’s ex-wife because of what it says about how tenuous and random families can sometimes be. And dang if that whole “scrotum” controversy isn’t just as ridiculous as I suspected it would be. I read the first 20 pages of the book just thinking, Really?? That’s it??? This is what everyone was so freaked out about? Not Short Sammy being so drunk he fell out of his Cadillac? Not the fact that Lucky spends a good chunk of life eavesdropping on hard luck 12-step stories? But this??? Sigh. Moving onto a higher note, the ex-wife/guardian is French and makes some really charming language missteps like when she talks about almost driving into “a cow and her little veal.”

Hattie Big Sky is next on my pile. And I’m as grateful as ever for all you inspired, smart, creative, careful, passionate writers out there, building good books…

The 4th of July ain’t much if you can’t get out-of-doors. 
Parades.
Picnics.
Fireworks. 
Let’s face it — Independence Day is a fair-weather holiday.

So we were understandablly out-of-sorts this morning when the Texas deluge continued. 
Parade — cancelled. Picnic — cancelled. Fireworks — on the chopping block. 
Nevermind the crepe papered bicycles and Betsy Ross hats. The holiday was devolving before our very eyes.

“We could bowl,” I suggested.
“Or see a matinee,” said my husband.

“Not very 4th-of-Julyish,” said the girls. And then they cried.  
It was gonna be a long day.  

When I was little, growing up in the mountains, I think it might’ve been the ski patrolmen who shot off the fireworks, from up on Golden Peak. We spread out on blankets on our backs and reveled in the sight — just like millions of other folk all over the country. When a firework sputtered or shot off too low, we’d shout, “Are you still there, Poopsie?!” in high hopes that nobody’d burned their eyebrows or blackened their fingertips. But when there was a particularly magnificent colored star or weeping willow or cascading candle, we’d call out, “Ain’t she a la la!!” loudly and quickly, like it was all one word.

Later, when we moved to the midwest, we celebrated the 4th in my grandparents’ garden — the same place my husband and I would marry a few years down the road. The fare of the day was grilled chicken and root beer — a whole keg of the stuff — and we had a helium tank so we could send balloons off and bet on where they’d land. Sometime, that week or months later, my grandmother would get a postcard in the mail — from Rhinelander, Wisconsin, or somewhere in the U.P. of Michigan, saying our balloon had been found.

So yesterday, I was ready to make something happen. This was meant to be a holiday of pure pleasure and gratitude, afterall, and we were not going to spend our every waking hour on Lego and laundry. We have windshield wipers — we can make it to a fireworks stand just outside of town to buy our body weight in colored sparklers. We can invite two other little ones over for a red-white-and-blue craft, a  treasure hunt, and a snack of hot dogs and watermelon. And how about some of those sparklers? It’s not dark but it’s not like the sun’s out.

But then it was! The skies opened up. In a good way. We made our way to Zilker Park to watch the fireworks over Austin while the symphony played The 1812 Overture accompanied by real cannon fire, among other things. The whole city was out, emerging after weeks of rain to celebrate the pitch-perfect night. And my daughters next to me yelled, “Aint she a la la!” over and over again.

I’ve just gotten the very fine news that A Sock is a Pocket for Your Toes will be a permanent feature in a new children’s garden! 

Bookworm Gardens, on the University of Wisconsin-Sheboygan campus, is designed to be a playful, natural space where literature comes alive — quite literally. The ‘garden’ will actually consist of multiple, small landspaces — each inspired by and dedicated to children’s books, from Little House on the Prairie and The Secret Garden, to Harry the Dirty Dog and Click Clack Moo. 

My book will be part of the ‘education pavilion’, and I’m not quite sure what that means but I’m tickled pink, to be sure. 

Bookworm is set to open in 2009, and will play host to concerts, classes and countless hours of delightful unstructured play. And here’s what else:

It’s going to be free. They’d like children to visit often.

They want to encourage a love and understanding of plants and nature, and to nurture a life of reading and imagination.

They want to provide a place for families to reconnect. A place that is naturally wireless.

Plus, they say, “nooks and crannies (will be) plentiful”.

How cool is that?

My good ol’ bud W. Joe Hoppe is a poet and teacher here in Austin, remarkable for all sorts of reasons, including his lovin’ dad energy, his amazing full-back tattoo, his wise and talented wife, and his buddist-midwestern-hotrod-classics sensibility.

I could think of no better way to kick off the extended Fourth of July holiday than with this poem from one of his early chapbooks. His newest book is Galvanized. You should get it.

It’d be a Happy Ending
 — W. Joe Hoppe, 8/30/92

You can put my ashes
   in a fireworks rocket
I’m sure my broke down chemical composition
   could make some kind of contribution
          there’s carbon in gunpowder
          my remains might have
   some kind of propulsive possibilities
But truly
   what I’d want
      for what’s left
   is to be one of those flaming embers
          part of a sparks shower
          trailing across the firmament
   or one bright green yellow red blue white
                            dot
   bursting and tumbling through the night sky
Even just a part of something
          a circle
          or a lop-sided heart
      an angel flaring up
      some celestial gift drifting down
   while people lift their eyes
      and ohhhh
   as small planes buzz around
      through the sulfur scented brimstone
          clouds thinning out
             through the dark
  

We are in the midst of the wettest six months 
in the history of central Texas.
I kid you not.   

We’re walking around with swollen joints 
and clothes that smell of mildew 
and bewildered looks on our upturned faces.  
And you should see our hair!

But, everyone asserts,  “We can’t complain…”

Because, really, what is the alternative? 
110 degrees and crispy-brown St. Augustine laid across every front yard in town?

We’ll take the rain. 

The creeks are full to bursting, the swimming holes are brisk, and the mornings are lazier. 
Rain makes a person want to pour a second cup of tea, read another chapter and stay in the ol’ jammies ’til noon. 
There’s mud to sweep from the stoop, but why bother?

“Oh, kids books! I’ve got a couple stories I’d like to turn into books one of these days.”

“Kids books are so expensive! You must make a ton of money!”

“Writing for kids. How fun! Your life must be all rainbows and unicorns!”

Ha. Sorta puts a person in a mood. Unicorns must die. That sorta thing.

I know we’re just supposed to smile and nod and say, “Yes, I’ve been meaning to do some brain surgery when my schedule clears up, too…” but sometimes a gal wants to,y’know, express herself a little. I mean, really. Where do people get this idea that being a children’s author is both easy and lucrative?

As for the money, I’m super happy for old J.K., don’t get me wrong, but her bank account seems to have created a rather unrealistic impression about the rest of us.

And the effort — is it Herculean? No. 
We’re not delivering medicines to dying children in war torn nations. 
We’re not fighting forest fires, round the clock and past the point of exhaustion. 
We’re not teaching classfulls of 2nd graders year after faithful year. 
(Well, actually some children’s writers are doing that, too.)

But “easy”? That’d be a stretch.

There’re the usual struggles — building a titallating plot, creating a sympathetic character, revising every single bloody syllable until the seventeenth draft no longer shares the same genetic material as the first draft.

That counts for something, right? 

Plus, I know we’re an immediate gratification culture and that we could all use a little patience, but Whoa Boy, this industry takes that to an extreme. We wait months to hear back from agents and editors, and then it’s often with a form-letter no.  We wait weeks to communicate with the agents and editors who are already ‘ours’ and we wait years (school kids always think I’m kidding when I tell them this) for our books to come out, even after we’ve finished every last little touch of our work.

And how about marketing? Didja know we needed to be marketing agents of our own employ? At first I thought I just needed to order bookmarks. I could handle that. But we’re talking blogs and bookstores and press releases and holiday fairs and all flavors of things we’re not exactly trained to do. And these efforts can take over your life if you don’t watch out. I mean, it takes hours to do a mailing to all the independent booksellers or all the local librarians. It takes a good dose of courage to show up for a signing that may or may not be attended by anyone other than your children and your neighbor. And I don’t know what you need to write a confident and compelling press release about yourself without feeling like you want to die. Being your own spokesperson isn’t all it’s cracked up to be. 

Especially when you’re your own chef and cleaning lady and launderer and driver and nanny and personal shopper, too. One of the trickiest wickets we negotiate, us childrens’ writers, is the fact that our work and our lives are so entwined, right here, up close and personal. My office, my dog. My desk, my washing machine. My kids, my kids, my kids. Today, for example, no revision because of swim team, a sewing project and the garbage disposal repairman. Tomorrow, a sleepover.  And what day isn’t laundry day? Sigh. Creating boundaries and clarity? Now that’s Herculian.

But here’s the thing (and don’t tell this to the surgeon or the software designer): I think that the muddle of it all may also be the best part of my life’s work. I don’t go away for 10 or 12 hours everyday; this summer, even my teaching’s online. I work in the midst of my family. They steal my tape and stapler, but they also leave love notes on my desk. I get to go to swim team and help wind a bobbin with new yellow thread. I get to read a chapter book aloud over lunch.  

My office, my dog. My desk, my washing machine. My kids, my kids, my kids….
Not easy, not lucrative, but totally worth it.