My 2021 Agenda

(Blogger’s Note: This is Part II in a series of year-end blog posts.)

Last week, I published the newly developed foundation of core ideas that will guide my 2021. They are:

• Mission (the Great Commission)
• Gifting (writing/mass communication)
• Passion (food/hospitality)
• Love (family)

With these in mind, next year shapes up like this:

•We’ve set into motion a collection of legal paperwork that will create the Tranquility Base Charitable Foundation a 501(c)3 non-profit organization that I’ll lead. Our goal is collecting enough financial support to purchase a nice food truck or food trailer. We will feed the hungry wherever they exist and travel to different disaster locations feeding front-line emergency workers and others in need. I have board of directors spots open if this is something that might strike your interest.

•Also at Tranquility Base, we’ll offer a regular Sunday Brunch for 4-6 people. It will be the ultimate Sunday hospitality experience, not to mention some pretty good food. Give me a call to make your reservation. Proceeds from this project will go directly to our Foundation.

•I’ll launch a new YouTube variety program in January. Honestly, I believe we’ll focus a lot on the culinary world, and interviews with interesting people. This serves no real strategic purpose other than my own personal enjoyment. And we’ll focus a LOT next year on building our email subscription list. Maybe this will be a good tool. Have thoughts about ways you can help grow my email subscription list? Give me a call.

•I’ll continue my work at the Stone County Leader reporting news and writing feature columns.

•Will spend a few hours each month coaching no more than 6-8 clients looking to make headway in the publishing world. If you’re one of those folks, drop me a line. I’ve learned a lot down in the trenches the last few years.

And finally, my two big announcements. I’ll pursue two book projects next year. One is a deadly serious topic that’s timely and needs telling. The other is a “personal pleasure book” designed to help keep my sanity from the deep work of the first one. Let’s begin with the former.

Bless My Heart: Unlearning My Religion in the Bible Belt South – this narrative, non-fiction-ish, memoir-ish book will be a personal recount of what many gospel-focused evangelical Christians have experienced the last four to five years. That is a rather fast evolution where the church that taught us about core gospel principals such as kindness and humility and servanthood and compassion traded in those principals in exchange for hateful hollering matches, braggadocio, focus on self, and downright arrogance. For those of us with a certain worldview, we were called unpatriotic, the enemy, part of the problem, not to mention whatever a libtard is. Bumperstickers in church parking lots boast of guns and ancient racist Southern traditions, and a plethora of other empty convictions. You see, putting a bumper sticker on a truck is easy. Tackling a societal issue like abortion is another. It requires more than running your mouth.

In this book, I’ll discuss from a personal level (with stories from others) what it’s been like seeing the Bible-Belt Christian church I care about become more of a frenzied political group, essentially saying that the values we see exhibited by our current president … well, we need more of that.

The church moved. I didn’t

And I just want to keep the faith.

A final word on this book. Many will perceive it as just another radical taking easy pot shots at the church, written by someone who doesn’t understand the church and what it is, and what it represents. In their righteousness, they will blow off the message and dig deeper into preserving a new creation supposed by people who haven’t dusted off a bible in years.

Those perceptions of this work will be wrong.

I have labored for months about the idea of speaking against the church. It’s a big deal and not taken lightly. There is a certain level of accountability when you begin speaking this language. And it’s a judgment I’m willing to stand in. Because things have reached a point where I believe it is a greater sin to stay quiet than it is to bring these issues to the surface.

Next …

On Assignment: How a Job Telling Stories Made a Life Worth Living – I’m SO excited to bring you this book. It serves no particular grand purpose, and will solve no world problem, but it’s chocked-full of great stories about behind-the-scenes life in the newspaper and magazine world. In one story, I’ll share about an 18-month period covering an ongoing (and very public) saga where I must have written the word “masturbation” at least a half-dozen times a week during that long stretch. Not the kind of thing you expect as an idealistic freshman journalism undergrad.

Outside a focused effort to spend a LOT more time with my family, and serve them as a patriarch should (I am rapidly approaching that status in our family if not already there) the plan above is where next year is going.

There is no mantra for next year, but if there was one, it would be “no empty convictions.” I want to make a difference, not just run my mouth.

PS: I’m pretty happy with how the mission, gifting, passion, love concept help get me through these ideas. If I can help you with your strategic plan for next year, drop me a line.

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‘Bear’ly a Deer Hunter

My weekly column from The Stone County Leader:

“Black bears rarely attack. But here’s the thing. Sometimes they do. All bears are agile, cunning, and immensely strong, and they are always hungry. If they want to kill you and eat you, they can, and pretty much whenever they want. That doesn’t happen often, but – and here is the absolutely salient point – once would be enough.”

-Bill Bryson
A Walk in the Woods

There it was.

Unmistakable, though I’d never seen one in that context before.

Eyes don’t lie. And with a few buttons pushed here, and a few arrows pressed there, the number four slide on my partner’s game camera jumped out, commanding immediate attention.

She was on all four, big, black, with a massive and burly form that just looked onery. Must have been 400 pounds, and right there not more than a few yards from my hunting spot for this year. The one I’ve been so excited about as I take an all-new adventure into the world of deer hunting.

Immediately, my thoughts turned to the potential headline, likely one my boss would bury on page 5B of next week’s Leader.

Bear Eats News Reporter: Good While it Lasted, the inglorious news likely lining someone’s bird cage a week later.

Ah, the adventures of the great outdoors.

With most of my years spent in the heart of the Mississippi River Flyway, I’ve logged many more hours in a St. Francis River duck blind than in the deer woods. It’s an exciting prospect as opening day approaches this Saturday – my first major investment in pursuing the elusive giant buck. Those days growing up on the St. Francis produced some of the richest experiences a young boy can know, and some of the fondest memories I had with a father who wasn’t exactly Ward Cleaver. Here’s an excerpt from a recent writing about those good times:

•••

When he wasn’t in the duck blind, my dad would sit at a bedroom window for hours, binoculars pointed to the river just a mile and a half west. Duck hunters dream of that magical day when there are so many ducks you can’t keep them off your pond, and the steel of your gun barrel stays hot, no time between rounds.

In those days, you’d find dozens of pickup trucks scattered about Highbanks Landing and the more northerly Jackson’s Landing, hunters having gathered for boat launches oftentimes long before there was enough light to maneuver the tricky river runs. Most could navigate by memory, jumping one log after another and dodging brush along the way. Shooting hours began precisely at sun up, and mallards move early for the day’s first feeding. Run a boat to your blind late between prime shooting hours of six and nine in the morning and you might just find it unplugged and half sunk at the landing tomorrow morning. One of the first rules on the St. Francis River is respect for the other guy.

If you’ve never been there, if you’ve never felt the adrenaline rush that overpowers you when 25 mallard ducks decide they’re coming into your pond, it goes something like this:

Three hundred yards out, a spotter first sees them headed due north. The blind’s designated chief caller, oftentimes an old river veteran in his fifties or sixties, makes his way to the shooting window as he reaches into a camouflaged vest pocket for his long caller. The call, maybe a black P.S. Olt, or a smooth, synthetic Rich-N-Tone, is doubly secured around the caller’s neck with a lengthy cord adorned with duck bands from past hunts. These bands, likely placed around the bird’s leg in the northern nesting grounds, are a research and reporting tool effective only when the hunter harvests the duck and returns the band to the research organization. Many prefer wearing the bands like an Indian bead necklace, each representing the memories of a past hunt and signifying their place within the tribe.

The chief caller takes a deep breath bringing the mouthpiece to his lips and the hopeful long call begins. The long call has a rhythm. A series of loud duck-like calls that grow shorter and closer together as the caller manages his breath with as much perfection as a first- chair trombonist. Almost like a plea of sorts, the long call is loud and imprecise, designed only to get the attention of ducks moving at a distance. Get their attention, and maybe they’ll like what they see. They’ll assess the wind, the pond configuration, decoy pattern, water clarity, and other factors before moving on or breaking for a descent. If he gets their attention, the caller then has a “working” bunch of ducks. Things are serious now, and the beauty of a seasoned caller unfolds.

Instinctively, the mood changes. Hunters give a quick check to their Brownings, Winchesters, and Remingtons. Safety on. Chamber full. Locked and loaded.

There is anticipation in this critical moment when it’s important to read what’s happening outside the blind. It takes years to get really good at this. The chief caller and the spotters now work together watching the ducks work the pond, their necks twisting and turning out the shooting window. The calling changes, now more intentional, more precise, as the ducks assess everything around them and make a final decision about a water landing. This is the moment a seasoned duck caller shows his skill alternating between working calls. There are calls to get the ducks’ attention, others that lure them in, feeding chatters, and a “come back” call for those that want to move on. The pros give the ducks exactly what they want to hear. This can go on thirty minutes or more, and callers frequently become so short on breath they find themselves light-headed.

There is not a memory from childhood more vivid than the clarity of my father’s eyes as he worked a bunch of mallard ducks on a freezing cold St. Francis River day. In those moments, all self-consciousness, issues of self-worth, all his imperfections vanished. Fluid, at ease, and seasoned with experience, he demonstrated complete control, perfect peace.

The call is reduced to the occasional soft chatter now. This is what separates the great duck callers from the good ones. A great duck caller knows when to call, and when to be quiet. Then, it’s in that quiet moment you first hear it. They’re coming in right over the blind. If Dad said it once in that thrilled whisper, he said it a million times. Grab your guns, boys. Get ’em on three …
You hear them before you see them, and the sound is unmistakable. Once a four-pound mallard duck commits to landing on water there is no turning back. With feet extended, body bowed, and wings cupped, the ducks flap wings violently for a soft landing. As they do, the wind whistles across long feathers in increasingly quick repetition. Shew-shew-shew-shew-shew. All movement in the blind ceases and you can hear a pin drop. Guns up. One, two, three!

The purest sportsmen will set their gun sights and pull triggers just before the ducks hit the water. Some prefer allowing the ducks to land, giving them even more time and accuracy for a maximum harvest. Either way, there’s not a moment more thrilling than the sound of wind over wings. It’s rare, but on the good days this scenario may play out six or seven times. They are the days you recount to your grandchildren.

•••

I’m hoping to share a few fireside chats with my own grandchildren from this deer hunting thing.

Here’s hoping not to be a mid-morning snack before a long, winter’s nap.

See you in next week’s newspaper.

(Steve Watkins is a reporter for The Stone County Leader. He is the author of two books, Pilgrim Strong, and The King of Highbanks Road.)

All Things Self Publishing: Join Our Virtual Retreat Oct. 22-25

If you’ve ever thought about self-publishing your own book, but just get overwhelmed at the thought of all that’s involved, and if you’d like to discuss best practices with two seasoned pros who have been in the self-publishing trenches, read on.

Our virtual retreat is scheduled for Oct. 22-25 and we’ll spend two and a half hours each evening speaking directly with participants in an interactive forum covering everything from craft of writing, to audience building, to sales and marketing ,and after the release … what then?

Beth Jusino and I are friends and colleagues. We’ve both authored books on our pilgrimage experiences walking the Camino de Santiago. Beth’s book, The Author’s Guide to Marketing is a fantastic guidebook for all things promotion. She’s a veteran writer, editor and writing coach who launched her career as a literary agent with Alive Literary Agency, and she’s also the author of the award-winning Walking to the End of the World: A Thousand Miles on the Camino de Santiago. Beth has worked as a developmental editor for some of the best authors in the business and counseled dozens of clients as they maneuvered both the self-publishing and traditional publishing realm. She speaks and teaches at the international level.

Check us out on this recent podcast.

I’m a mass communication professional with 25 years experience in the world of journalism, and someone who loves all things self-publishing. My first book, Pilgrim Strong: Rewriting My Story on the Way of St. James won several awards across the country and launched a nationwide speaking tour at 54 locations from the Potomac to San Francisco Bay. My new release, The King of Highbanks Road: Rediscovering Dad, Rural America, and Learning to Love Home Again was an Amazon #1 New Release 10 hours after it debuted just a week ago.

Beth and I love to talk about this stuff and share our experiences! Won’t you join us?

It’s affordable, convenient, and designed to include everyone. There’s even an opportunity for individual consults on your latest WIP, your platform, or even if you just want to talk marketing strategy.

Check us out here, and get signed up today!!!

The Art of Loafing in a Parts Store

When you think on it, it’s amazing just how much of nothing can go on in a little town. In the seventies and eighties, Monette, Arkansas had at least a half dozen places dedicated to doing nothing. If you wished to laggard about and pick up on the latest second-hand hearsay, there was a group and a place just for you.

Claud Earl Barnett’s parts store was headquarters for some of the older, more refined,  town loafers. It was an exclusive club and the store was configured so patrons could park around back. Those who took a view from main street were none the wiser who was there.

Farmers had two primary loafing hot spots. The offices at Keich-Shauver Gin were appointed with fifteen wooden chairs around the periphery where some of the more legitimate loafing took place and the topics focused mostly on farming. Gin manager Raymond Miller was one of the smartest men in town, the kind of man a kid could listen to forever.

Not a hundred yards south at Ball-Hout Implement was where the real cut ups and the tallest tales got told. Of course, it was David Watkins go-to place of belonging. Oftentimes, I thought, the center of his world.

Loafing hours started at 6 AM and ended at 5 in the afternoon. Ball-Hout, known to locals as the International (Harvester) Place, was the only location in town with a room dedicated entirely to hosting town loafers. In retrospect, it was some of the most brilliant marketing of the day.  A rectangular room with two extra-long couches and a couple of vinyl cushion chairs, there was an industrial-sized coffee pot that parts manager Doyle “One-Eye” Yates freshened on the hour. All this across from the long parts counter and a small room where you could buy Nacona boots and toy tractors. The store and its loafing customers were so amalgamated, there was a huge framed art piece above the parts counter featuring a Western bar scene with dozens of characters, each named for store employee, or a special customer. I spent hours admiring the piece in the near eighteen years I accompanied my dad there. It hung until the store closed forty years later.

In many ways, loafing with dad at the International Place taught me a lot about what it meant to be a man. One day you’d hear stories of uncommon valor from some of World War IIs bravest veterans like J.L. Kimbrell or Tinkie Wimberley. The next, a rambling tale from some of town’s most lovable drunks.

It was in the International Place where I learned that in casual settings a man can cross his legs one of two ways — with one leg perpendicular straight across the other, or hanging down in a more feminine sort of way. Some of the toughest men in town went with the feminine style, and by four years old I was replicating their behavior — a young boy’s admiration for some of America’s finest. A little of each lives on in every child who ever loafed there with his dad.

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Photo of the Week

Inaugural picnic on the grounds of Tranquility Base. 2/29/20 (Photo, Frances Merrell)

More Than Just a Story

During the last eighteen months and through the process of drafting The King of Highbanks Road, there is something I’ve not shared with you. It’s the kind of thing that troubles a writer deep down. Even makes him wonder whether it’s worth it.

I’ve never been able to explain to you how it’s more than just a story. I’ve known it was more, even if but from a feeling deep down inside my soul that couldn’t be explained. The words describing it wouldn’t come out. But I knew it was more.

And so there was always a nagging void between the writer and the reader. To be completely honest, I felt a bit inadequate in the vortex of that void, and struggled daily because the story I’ve been telling you wasn’t, well, whole.

We are about to clear all that up.

***

There was not a day that passed from the time I was 5 years old until the day my father died from natural causes in 2011 when I did not believe that would be the day we found him in a roadside ditch, his head blown off with a shotgun. 

Every summer morning in 1981 as the temperatures exceeded 100 degrees for 23

Dr. Mike Rosman, clinical psychologist, and perhaps the nation’s leading expert in the behavioral study of farmers.

consecutive days, I watched dad force down a cup of coffee, then he’d go to the bathroom and vomit for ten minutes. We literally watched a crop burn up that year. It happened to small farmers everywhere. Interest rates skyrocketed the next year, and the banks came after our land. They didn’t care if we had to sleep in a ditch. They just wanted their money. I never believed my father would survive the pressure.

He died twenty years later, hundreds of thousands of dollars in debt.

Earlier this week I randomly came across a 2018 article in The Guardian about suicide rates in rural America. Its title: Why Are American Farmers Killing Themselves? The story quoted two academic researchers who had dedicated their life to counseling small farmers in rural America. And their research specialized on the 1980s.

The weather, the markets, the interest rates, the stress. It was the “wrecking ball” that became the beginning of the end of the small farmer on the American landscape, they said.

A “wrecking ball.”

These guys were telling the part of the story that I didn’t know how to tell. The view from twenty-thousand feet. The big picture.

Finishing the long story, I put my head into my hands and cried. I tracked down those researchers and called them, and we talked, and I cried some more. I told them my story. They said they’d heard it a million times. And so they let me cry some more.

“But farm families are proud, and we just don’t talk about it a lot,” the said. “…and yes, we’d be happy to help you with your book. Whatever you need. Anything.”

The thing is, everyone’s normal is relative. We are products of that place from which we come. Without and understanding of something else, the only thing we know is our normal. But there was something that just kept telling me my normal was different. I witnessed too much stress, too much pain, too much struggle. Surely that wasn’t normal.

And so even though I didn’t really know what to call it, I had a deep, down desire to tell you about it and share it with you. It seemed a story that needed told.

And now I get it. It WAS something.

It was a wrecking ball that tore through the landscape I called home.

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10 Things I Learned to Love About Home Again

 

As we wrap up the finishing text for The King of Highbanks Road, I reflect on so many things from the experience of putting it all on paper – and how the place I will always know as home has impacted me all over again.

• The art of loafing and sitting around a coffee table with a group of men just shooting the bull, telling tall tales, even a few lies.

•Massive Crock Pot gatherings after church where the food is so good it makes you want to melt, but the older ladies say, “It must notta been fit to eat. They barely touched a thing.” This, although every last crumb was scraped from the bowl.

•The smell of fall. For cotton farmers, this is distinct, unique, and like nothing else in the world.

•Four-wheel drive pickup trucks so tall you need a step side to get in one … and the bird dogs and retrievers that ride in back of them. I recently got one of those trucks for myself.

•Watching the fall migration of Canadas, Snow geese, and mallard ducks navigate the Mississippi River Flyway.

•The sudden power jerk when a 2-pound crappie hits a 12-foot pole, and the battle that follows in the seconds afterward.

•Going out of my way to see the senior members of community families who raised me.

•Listening to the satisfying, nostalgic, mechanical hum of a distant cotton picker in a field miles away as it tries to beat the rain.

•The smell inside the old church where I was raised.

•All those small-town stories, and people, especially the local farmers who for better or worse, shaped me into the man I am today.

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Stop the Presses! But Go to 500!

After eighteen months of writing, and a half-year of (ongoing) editing, we’ve set Saturday, October 3 as the release date for The King of Highbanks Road.

There is much to to share. The book’s foreword is set to be authored by a New York

Our hardback and paperback cover.

Times best-selling author at the top of his game. We’ll have some commemorative ceremonies, but more about those things later.

Today, I’m happy to tell you that KOHBR will release as a traditional limited-edition hardback with a 500-volume numbered press run. That means you can get a “one and only.”

So I hope you’ll make plans to buy one one of these signed, limited-edition books now. They will be released for sale in two phases: first at a ceremony in the King’s hometown of Monette, AR; the second phase a few hours later via online order. Hardback copies will sell for $24 each, plus shipping. #1 goes to my mom. #2 goes to my wife. #3 through #500 are up for grabs.

Both unnumbered hardbacks, and paperbacks will also be available via Amazon. The paperback will sell in the $15 range.

I’m also pleased to report there will be an audio version of KOHBR, narrated by yours truly. More to come on that as well.

Stay tuned for future announcements. We’re not finished yet!

Which number will be on your bookshelf???

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Ten Inspiring People I Met on the Internet and Now Call Friends

Keith Richardson

Some time around 2014 my phone rang and showed an unknown number. The caller identified himself at Keith Richardson and said he’d found a blog site where I mostly wrote about our adventures building a house and living part-time in Ecuador. He wondered if I had time for a few questions. I said, sure.

Six years later, Keith and I are close friends. He is a man I admire. Smart as a whip. Moral. A learner. Compassionate for those less fortunate. A giver. Both a lawyer and a minister by profession. We communicate frequently as friends and consider ourselves traveling companions. We’ve spent a week together in Ecuador, and last year logged about four thousand miles together on a round-trip, road trip to Nova Scotia. I consider Keith a part of my inner circle.

Beth Jusino

Beth’s name began popping up in my social media feed during my 2015 pilgrimage on the Way of St. James. She and her husband had walked just months earlier and she re-lived her experience through me, though it was quite different from hers.

Writers pay attention to how others write, even on social media. I immediately

With Beth in Asheville, NC.

recognized her as a skilled and thoughtful writer, one of the best around. That alone drew me to her as a friend. Little did either of us know we’d both spend the next couple of years writing about the walking experience. Her book is Walking to the End of the World. Our friendship also became a professional relationship. I’ve consulted with Beth on several writing projects, and she is the lead editor for The King of Highbanks Road. Beth blogs at caminotimestwo.com and bethjusino.com. She is one of those people whose opinion is important.

Annie O’Neil

Annie introduced herself to me the same as Beth. Social media comments here and there during pilgrimage. Because the pilgrim population is a tight-knit group, I knew of Annie’s work on a developing documentary called Phil’s Camino. It was an honor having Annie in the conversation.

I’d actually first seen Annie in her own documentary, Walking the Camino: Six Ways to Santiago. The film captured Annie’s physical pain with several miles yet to go. She was

The one, the only, Annie O’Neil.

genuine, authentic and raw in that film, and I knew I’d like her immediately.

We became close enough friends, and Annie identifies with my writing enough, that I asked her to write the foreword for Pilgrim Strong. She was the perfect person in that moment. Our names are forever intertwined in that relationship.

We get to hang out occasionally. We spent a day together at the Hot Springs Film Festival and watched the total eclipse together near Kansas City in 2018. Annie is an incredible artistic talent.

Phil Volker

He is the rock star of the pilgrim community.

Phil Volker is the focus of Annie’s film, Phil’s Camino, the story of a man who overcame all odds to walk the Way. Phil, too, followed along as I walked in 2015.

He is one of the most inspiring men you’ll ever meet. My favorite Phil Volker quote:

“There is a difference in being cured and being healed. At this point in life I’m focusing on the healing which means all the important things in life are reconciled like my relationships with my family and with God.”

It was one of my greatest pleasures walking with Phil on his camino in 2018, and I’ll see him later this year at a gathering now known as Philstock. Yes, he has his own annual gathering. That’s how much people love him.

Susan & Kym Gardner

Another Camino connection. Susan and I were first connected until I met both her and her husband, Kym at the Gathering of Pilgrims in Asheville last year. This North Carolina-based couple is kind and generous, and have found a way to use their resources for the greater good.

For the last two years, they’ve organized groups that are part of a long-term project to carry a young man named Gabriel across the Way. Physical limitations confine Gabriel to a wheelchair. The experiences they’ve shared as part of Gabriel’s camino are amazing.

Brien Crothers

Some people are just extraordinary. Brien Crothers is one.

All-round good man, and endurance athlete Brien Crothers.

Though we connected through pilgrimage, I am most impressed with Brien’s adventures as an endurance athlete. He’s run several ultra marathons across several deserts on several continents. He’s complete the Western States 100 on multiple occasions, and he’s just a super nice guy. He allowed me to tag along last year, observing an aid station around mile 70 of this spectacular event.

Brien and his wife, Kathey, opened their home to me in 2019 during a book tour through California. We have the same eccentric qualities with an interest in many things and Brien is steadily working on his writing craft.

Roni Kay

I never realized how many friends I’ve developed just because of pilgrimage. Roni is another.

Her comments on my social media thread in 2015 struck me much in the same way Beth’s did. Roni was clearly educated, thoughtful, and articulate. I eventually learned she was closing in on her doctoral degree in communication and was studying how the use of technology impacted pilgrimage with people who used it. I was the perfect mouse in the maze to observe on that topic.

She’s since completed that degree, frequently demonstrates an amazing flair for photography across rural Oklahoma and the world, and she travels. Roni’s headed back to Camino in just a few weeks.

Suzan Haskins

The only person on this list I’ve not met personally.

Suzan and her husband’s work in travel writing first caught my attention back around 2010. They were writing a lot for a publication known as International Living, and Ecuador was a frequent topic. Their writing piqued our curiosity enough that Dana and I made a 3-week exploratory trip to Ecuador in 2012. It’s a long story after that, but Latin America has since become a big part of our lives.

I was on a train to Pamplona when Suzan wrote and asked if I’d consider writing a story about pilgrimage for International Living.

I ultimately learned Suzan has considerable roots in Arkansas and an impressive list of writing credentials. She is one of those folks with a solid world view based on real experience.

Thomas  Wynne

If you have a wooden sign in your home about your pilgrimage experience chances are this Minnesota man made it. Tom has a great Etsy business making commemorative camino signs and he’s one of the kindest men you’ll ever know. After reading Pilgrim Strong, Tom sent me several pieces of his work as “thanks” for the book.

When Tom passed though Arkansas last year, he and his wife spent a night with us. We made him an honorary citizen of Wynne, AR, just forty miles south of here.

James Rubart

It was my first literary gathering – The Blue Ridge Christian Writers Conference in Asheville, NC. A particular book in the bookstore drew me toward it and I began flipping through. The voice from behind is one I’ll never forget.

“My mother just LOVES that book,” the voice said. And I wondered who this strange man was, and why he was talking to me.

He was the author! What an honor!

I followed Jim’s career from that moment. A New York Times best selling author, he’s achieved the highest awards in the world of Christian fiction. And he’s an amazing person.

I attended his Rubart Academy last year just so I could get to know Jim better. It was time and money well spent. I’m hopeful I’ll get to say more about working with Jim in the next few weeks.

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Giving Tranquility Base Some Breathing Room

 

 

Lot 5 was our original purchase on January 2. The Lot 4 addition doubles the property for our Tranquility Base Writer Retreat Center Development.

Its legal description is Roundbottom Pool Estates, an approximate 50-acre land tract developed in a spectacular river valley near Mountain View, AR in 2007. When a one-hundred-year flood passed through a year later, it derailed plans for everything. Today it is the site for about seven homes, most of them vacation homes for people living full-time elsewhere. It is also the home of our Tranquility Base Writer’s Retreat Center. Outside the trickle of the White River and an occasional eagle, you can hear a pin drop there.

From Mountain View, you travel about five miles southeast and downward following the White River to reach Roundbottom. Not uncommon along the drive are deer, turkey,  and all kinds of wildlife, not to mention the occasional hillbilly. The Herpelites (those hillbillies living along Herpel Road) are the biggest challenge as they fly around blind corners in beat up pickup trucks (think Deliverance) with no regard to possible oncoming traffic. A Herpelite can kill you in a heartbeat. Watch out, and drive defensively for Herpelites.

The conclusion of the five-mile drive down into the valley on our River Valley Road is take-your-breath-away beautiful.

Last Monday, Dana and I spent an hour researching real estate records at the Stone County Courthouse. After some digging, we identified the lot owners immediately west of our 1.2 acre property. The kind clerk gave me directions to the owner’s house and we drove there. The owners kindly invited us in to their amazing mountain cabin overlooking our valley and I asked about his willingness to sell his property adjacent to tranquility base.

“I’d love to sell it,” he said. My heart jumped.

After a couple of days of negotiations, I’m happy to say we’re purchasing another 1.2 acres that will double the size of our sanctuary, providing room for more wildlife habitat, a walking trail and lots of breathing room. It also brings our river frontage to just more than 200 feet.

We’re hopeful that construction will begin on March 1.

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