Time was when my husband (then boyfriend) and I used to backpack 17 miles in a day — uphill both ways — fueled by a few dried apple rings and some creek water with a tab of iodine thrown in for good measure. And the next day we’d get up at sunrise and do it again.

I know it doesn’t actually sound fun, but it was.

We’d go for days without seeing anyone but each other.
We’d meet rattlesnakes and red-tail hawks and foxes, up close and personal.
We’d daydream.

And when we had children and had to toss in the teeny tent for a bigger one, we grieved. Car camping just wasn’t the same, though dang if we didn’t try. We trucked our kids all over god’s green acre with cans of beans and a camp stove, all for the pleasures of smelling campfire smoke in their hair and showing them the stars that just plain don’t show up at our house. It’s been worth it, but still…

This past summer, a decade into parenting, we fitted the girls with their own small packs and made our maiden family backpacking voyage into the Tetons, in Wyoming. It went so well that we just did it again, over Thanksgiving (this time in Big Bend National Park), and lordamercy was it fine.

We hiked and climbed and stomped for three days — covering about the distance we might’ve used to in one.

We carried all our own water — needing to be certain that we had enough for the kids to drink.

And we ate a heck of a lot more than dried apple rings. There was corn chowder and oatmeal and trail mix galore. I even toted in an itsy bitsy pumpkin pie for Thursday night.

But the integral reasons for getting out there were still fully realized.
Intimate togetherness.
Wildness and staggering beauty.
Space to dream. (Um, in a chatty sort of way.)

As my husband said on our last day (a day in which we’d already played some hilarious rounds of 20 Questions, discussed which other National Parks we’d like to visit, made up mysteries, and played a newly-invented acronym game), "They do the same random free associating we do when we walk… they just do it aloud."

And now we’re home. It’s cold and rainy today — not the weather for a good walk. The girls are back in school, I have a lunch date and the laundry is the most astounding sight around here.

And yet.
We saw a black bear this weekend.
And oaks that had turned gold.
And the summit of Mt. Emory.
We saw each other and it was really, truly fine.

Our little family is trying something new this year.
We’re taking our Thanksgiving groove on the road or, rather, the trail.
Since our girls have recently proven themselves to be utterly burly, Thursday will find us backpacking in Big Bend National Park.

One of the charming little blurbs on the Big Bend website is titled How NOT to Die in the Desert, so I think we will pack in plenty of water but we’ll skip the pumpkin pie. I assure you, I have not a thing against pumpkin pie, but I’m not sure how well it would hold up in a stuff sack.

We will celebrate Thanksgiving, though, by counting blessings and gratitudes. And I’m feeling like I’ve got so many that I’d better get started.

I’m so grateful for…

My daughters. Every funny, loving, surprising, brilliant, curious inch of both my daughters.

My husband. Ditto the above. Plus supportive. Plus patient. Plus tolerant. Plus etc.

My purring black cats. Including the one we used to call "Needy Sicko". He’s come a long way.

My wise, old white dog. Lumps and limps and all.

My mom, dad and sister, my sisters-in-law and brothers-in-law, my neice and nephews, my aunts, uncles and cousins upon cousins upon cousins.

My Goodness. Enough said.

My many, many friends. Ditto the above.

My agent. And all her hows and whys and humor and recalibration and connection.

My editors and illustrators. Geniuses, all.

SCBWI, the Brass Tacks, the Poetry Princesses, the bloggers. It takes a village.

Also, my house full of light… yoga… running and running partners… good food (esp chocolate, asparagus and strong cheese)… sleep (whenever it comes)… books I can’t put down… my daughters’ very fine school… kind neighbors… the trips on my upcoming calendar… my thesaurus… decaf coffee that tastes like regular coffee… mistakes I learn from… my bike… my muse… libraries… bookstores… thick lotion… bare feet… earrings… board games and playing cards… health… funny people… good people… people who try… pretty pottery… pretty music… cute musicians… pecans… hot baths… sunshine…

And that ain’t the start of it…
Goodness is at hand and I wish it, with love, to you and you and all of you…

Happy Thanksgiving, friends, and namaste…

Those of you who’ve been visiting my blog for awhile have heard about the amazing Shakespeare program at my daughters’ school. My Tall One has been reciting soliloquies and performing pratfalls since she was newly nine (an age at which I’m not sure I’d even heard of Shakespeare).

Swoon.

Or, as our friend William would say, "Can one desire too much of a good thing?"

Well. The good thing this year is that my Small One gets let in on the fun.
And she is positively giddy with the grandness of performing something "so old and quite famous."

Yesterday, she and one of her best buds were out in our front yard rehearsing a scene from As You Like It.
There were gestures and dramatic pauses (which may have indicated forgotten lines, but nevermind).
There were makeshift props and costumes.
And there were audience members.

Yes, a line of water balloons (all named) observed quite politely from the top of the picnic table.
Lend me your ears, indeed.

Such is the life of the Shakespearean actor at eight…

There was a time quite a few years back that I had to make a promise to myself to get
No.
More.
Speeding.
Tickets.

Because it was becoming a little habitual.

And the folks at the insurance company don’t like that.

So.
I slowed down.
I just plain did.
And it wasn’t actually that hard.

I just had to start thinking of myself as another kind of driver.
The, um, careful, law-abiding kind.

So this week I’m re-thinking a different kind of recklessness.
The tooling-around-online-all-the-time kind.
The facebook-google-multitasking kind.
The time-sucking-work-justified-email-obsessing kind.

(And how is it that even still, I can’t clear my inbox??? Oi. I digress…)

Seriously, though.
It’s like speeding — you trim very little time and you miss all the pretty stuff along the way.
Y’know?

I’m sort of tired of technology telling us how much we need it.
Aren’t we supposed to be in charge of this relationship????

So, I’m doing an experiment.
(I even told my kids about it so they would hold me accountable.)

I am turning off the computer at 2:30 p.m. every day this week, right before I jump on my bike to pick them up.
And I am leaving it off until around 9:00 when they’ve gone to bed.

Maybe I’ll discover that that puts me way behind and makes me crazy busy — crazy busier than I already am.
But I kinda doubt it.
We’ll see….

I mentioned the other day that I’d been crying over all my good reading this fall.

I seem to have chosen an emotionally heavy stack for myself lately — sometimes we just do that — and that includes books for adults as well as young people.

Today’s Poetry Friday feature is no exception.

This spare novel-in-verse, written by the ever-thoughtful Susan Taylor Brown, tells such a big story I had to check the page numbers a few times to be sure it wasn’t longer than I thought it was.

Hugging the Rock lets us in on a whole year of Rachel’s life-without-her-mom in poems that are both conversational and crystalline. The first-person perspective combined with Rachel’s coming-of-age and family circumstances make this a lump-in-the-throat read from the first page to the last.

Here. You’ll see what I mean…

Every morning
Sara meets me at the corner
so we can walk to school together.
We’ve been best friends
forever
and I’ve never kept a secret from her
until now.
I want to tell her
except telling her
will make it more real.

(excerpted from the poem School)

I realize Mom is more than gone.
She’s lost
and doesn’t want to be found.

(excerpted from the poem Lost)

Sara says I look different
but when I check the mirror
I look just the same
to me.

(excerpted from the poem Summer Vacation)

There’s all this and then there’s Rachel’s dad, the rock of the title, who isn’t perfect but is there, in both body and heart.
He about broke mine a few times… in a good way.

Thank you, Susan, for writing such a bare and open book.
It felt good to fall into it as a way to remember the fundamental basics of what a kid needs.
What anyone needs, really…

Oh, I have had such a fine fall of reading.
I was going to say a "happy" fall of reading, but that would be misleading because I have cracked some serious tear-jerkers, my friends.
And I love nothing better than a good book-induced cry.

So, today’s the first of four brief blurbs on the books I’ve loved and cried over recently.

Let it be on the record that I know and love Sara Lewis Holmes, but I’d have embraced Operation Yes if it’d been written by a perfect stranger. Because in Operation Yes-land, nobody’s a stranger for long. Mercy, this is an intimate and heart-felt tale.

Operation Yes is about military kids and the unique challenges and transitions they must reckon with — moving… goodbyes… fear for their parents in dangerous spots. And it’s about how they negotiate those challenges and shore each other up and become their own best selves in spite of — or because of — it all.

Which, of course, is what’s not unique to military kids. It’s what we want for all our kids. It’s what we want for ourselves. To become — in the face of challenge — bigger, wiser, stronger, more generous and more full of love, rather than diminished.

I was only the new kid in school once.
I was 13 when we moved from Colorado to Wisconsin.
It was …. hard.

I did not transcend it the way Bo and Gari do in the book.
I merely plowed through.
I  wish I’d had Ms. Loupe there to inspire me, and a backpack of little green men to hold me accountable.

Because the thing that is so awesome about Operation Yes is that the kids in the book do so much more than is absolutely required. And so does Sara Lewis Holmes. She could’ve written a smaller book — less complicated (structurally), less profound (emotionally), less true (logistically). And it still would’ve been a pretty sweet story about kids stuggling to find themselves with the help of a fine teacher and improv theater.

But why do just what’s required when we can do so much more? suggest Sara, Bo, Gari and Ms. Loupe.
And to them I say, Yes.
Yes.
Yes.

Since before it came out in September, All the World has been received very kindly by a bunch of very fine folk — from bloggers, librarians and reviewers to cereal makers, booksellers and honest-to-goodness kids.

For me, each note or nod acts as ballast to the careening nerves and crises of confidence that beleaguer my everyday work.

Because while I’m mindful that I oughtn’t attach myself too closely to external affirmation, it doesn’t hurt to be told (in not so many words) to carry on.

And that’s what happened this weekend when we got a little love from the New York Times.
THE New York Times.
Seriously you guys.

First, there’s this lovely review that includes one of my favorite spreads from the book.

And then (this totally flipped my lid) we made the top ten list of Best Illustrated Children’s Books of 2009.

Gulp.
Yipes.
Sigh.

Carry on…

Your bedside table probably looks a lot like mine,
careening to the left with books open and shut,
dog-eared and not-yet-cracked.

Things of beauty and possibility!

There was a time (with small daughters) when I was so tired that it took me months to get through a book.
I’d nod off after reading a page or two.
I loved my babies something fierce but dang, I was off my game.

Now I can stay awake, usually, for a chapter — sometimes chapters on end.
And then there are the ones we read aloud as a family.
And the occasional book-on-tape in the car.

Books, books, books.
My bedside table may be leaning but the world has righted itself…

Here’s a book poem for today, from Henry Vaughan. Enjoy!

The flexible, generous and poetic Elaine has jumped in to host Poetry Friday at Wild Rose Reader!
Head on over there…

I had coffee this morning with my newish department head at ACC.
She’s the bomb.
Smart and calm and assured and idea-centered.

The kind of person with whom you can talk about real stuff and not get rattled

So we were talking about teaching.
And, in particular, about teaching creative work within the confines of an academic environment.

We touched on deadlines and grades.
We touched on craft.
We touched on clever assignments.

And then we settled into how we might help students come to something deeper than just a class — a practice that will extend way beyond December and will allow their writing to become not individual "assignments" but rather bigger works in progress, full of possibility.

The only way to do this, as far as either of us could see, is to encourage openness to revision.

If students aren’t receptive to the concept of revision, willing to listen to critiques and suggestions, and ready to take on the actual practice, then everything they write is sort of a one-shot deal — potentially kind of vivid but quick to fizzle.

And of course the same is true for all of us.
Getting stuck in our own stuff and being unwilling to listen, tweak, undo or mess with means that it will never evolve like it might’ve.
And, likewise, getting paralyzed by workshops, critiques or requests for revisions stops us from fully realizing the possibility of a piece.

So what Charlotte recommends to her students is that they come to the process with a balance of humility and audacity.

Humility = willingness to listen, openness to change, acceptance of critique
Audacity = fearlessness, relentlessness, self-confidence

Most of us tend to fall a little too far on one side of the teeter-totter, but I think she’s right.
We need both to grow our work as big as it can be.

I’m telling my students that and I’m telling myself…

It’s November?
You have got to be kidding me.
I seriously wouldn’t believe it if I didn’t have a few wrinkled jack-o-lanterns on my front porch.

I’m having a wild and juggley fall and there are many days when blogging takes a back seat to other business. So, in an attempt to catch up, here’s a scatter-shot of news I’ve been meaning to share:

1. The General Mills Spoonful of Stories poll is now closed. I owe you all a humungous stupendous debt of gratitude for voting with vigor! The official la-de-da announcement won’t come ’til January, but by all accounts ALL THE WORLD is going to be one of five books in select Cheerios boxes in 2010. And that is all thanks to you good people. I’m just tickled, and the kids getting books with their breakfast will be, too.

2. Got word this week that ALL THE WORLD is a Publisher’s Weekly Best Children’s Book of 2009. Yipes! Just reading the other names and titles on this list is enough to bring me to my knees. (And also squee with glee for fellow Austin authors Chris Barton and Jacqueline Kelly…)

3. Also just in — ALL THE WORLD made the New York Public Library’s recommended list of 100 Children’s Books for Reading and Sharing! (Cheers again to Chris and Jackie, and co-Beach Lane Bookers Mem Fox and Jan Thomas!) Yippee!

4. Huge whoppin’ thank yous to Clay Smith and all the good folks at the Texas Book Festival. I don’t know if they arranged for the weather, but boy-oh-man was it perfection. My reading was launched by the most delightful 1st grade class from Casis Elementary who made up a song for me! I’m not kidding! I about fell over and it would’ve been a soft landing if I had because I was on Cloud Nine. Oh, yes I was.

5. This Saturday I’m speaking at the monthly SCBWI meeting in Austin. I’ll be at BookPeople at 11 am, talking about Going with your Gut. (If I can make friends with my PowerPoint program that is.) This event is open to the public and ya’ll are welcome to come on by.

6. Here the books that have recently blown the top off my brain. I will post about them separately and with more attention soon, but in the meantime, scurry to the library and get in line to read:

Operation YES by Sara Lewis Holmes

Hugging the Rock by Susan Taylor Brown

Zeitoun by Dave Eggers

Stitches by David Small

(Yes, to get on my list you apparently have to have a double-barreled surname or be called David.
I can’t explain it… it’s just the way it is.)

7. Happy Wednesday, my friends. Namaste…