Nature’s Healing Spirit
American Fiction Vol. 14
About Diane
Diane Byington is the author of the award-winning novel, Who She Is. Diane has been a tenured college professor, yoga teacher, psychotherapist, and executive coach. Also, she raised goats for fiber and once took a job cooking hot dogs for a NASCAR event. She still enjoys spinning and weaving, but she hasn’t eaten a hot dog or watched a car race since.
Besides reading and writing, Diane loves to hike, kayak, and photograph sunsets. She and her husband divide their time between Boulder, Colorado, and the small Central Florida town they discovered while doing research for her novel.
get in touch
Diane Byington website: www.dianebyington.com
Facebook author page: https://www.facebook.com/dianebyingtonauthor/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/dianebyington
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/dianebbyington/
Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/38084780-who-she-is
A Muse-ing Christmas
Ms. Parker Teaches Santa—Shakespeare Style
by Kelley Kaye
Leslie Parker teaches high school English (and this year Science Fiction!) at Thomas Jefferson High School in Pinewood, Colorado. She is sassy and snarky with a good, gold heart stuffed in her Louboutin stilettos. She is best friends with a newer teacher, Emma, whom she considers her protegee. She is obsessed with Shakespeare, quoting him as commentary for any situation. Over the past few years, she’s been quoting more from the tragedies, because between classes, she and Emma have had to solve murders. For the holiday, the focus is not on murder, but sonnets. And teaching.
This Chimney’s Getting Too Damn Tight
a poem
by Maisie Duchovny—
no relation to that X-files actor, David.
I wish!
I remember back in the day.
I’d slide down like a greased hog,
and land lightly like a fog
that sits on a swamp.
No more.
It takes an ugh
and a tug of those paunchy regions
squirming and writhing,
twitching and wriggling,
and
oh crap—did I just tear my coat?
When were these logs here before?
They fly out from under my feet
like those barrels
that circus people walk over,
only I can’t stay on.
Too fat.
At least they’re not on fire, like at the Anderson’s house.
What are people thinking, anyway?
Cookies, milk, and spontaneous combustion?
A caloric, lactose-intolerant coal-walker.
Maybe a little bit like Ghandi
plus a few hundred pounds.
Oof, I’m in.
Checking my list–Ms. Lovett, Ms. Parker, Mr. Wells, even Mr. Dixon.
Damn.
No good kids here anyway.
Maisie’s poem is delightful, but I wanted her to experiment more along the lines of creativity within constraints, so we learned the two formats for a sonnet: Petrarchan 14 lines 10 syllables per line, iambic pentameter with an abbaabba cdecde octet/sestet rhyme scheme, or Shakespearean abab cdcd efef gg four quatrains and a heroic couplet rhyme scheme. Since her poem naturally ended with a solution to Santa’s problem (plus, she just liked that it’s called HEROIC), we went with the Shakespearean format. Oh, and it was invented by Shakespeare, AmIRight? Of course I am.
Lamentings from the Smokestack Space
A sonnet of the Shakespearean form
by Ms. Parker and Maisie
On reminiscent, trembling years of youth-
I’d navigate with ease the chimney’s neck.
But now I’m forced to reckon with the truth.
My girth is too expansive: What The Heck?!
My wriggle down the op’ning seems a trick
Performed by slender, almost wraithlike types.
The logs to build the fire now prove slick,
For beings of a more athletic stripe.
Much struggling for purchase tears my coat
Frustration levels mounting to a peak
A growling, snarling anger fills my throat
There aren’t even cookies here to sneak!
On noticing this list of girls and boys
No single one deserving of my toys!
Whew.
(Maisie argued with me about the extra syllable at the end, but I claimed poetic license. Plus, I’m the teacher. “From his cradle/He was a scholar, and a ripe and good one/Exceeding wise, fair-spoken, and persuading.” Henry VIII. Yeah.)
Books by Kelley
Death by Diploma,
Book 1 in the Chalkboard Outlines Cozy Mystery Series,
written under the pseudonym Kelley Kaye.
Poison by Punctuation,
Book 2 in the Chalkboard Outlnes Cozy Mystery Series,
written under the pseudonym Kelley Kaye.
Down in the Belly of the Whale,
a Young Adult Paranormal Novel,
written under the pseudonym Kelley Kay Bowles.,
About Kelley
Kelley (Kelley Kaye, Kelley Kay Bowles, Kelley Gusich) taught High School English and Drama for twenty years in Colorado and California, but her love for storytelling dates back to creating captions for her high school yearbook. Maybe back to the tales she created around her Barbie and Ken.
A 1994 MS diagnosis has (circuitously) brought Kelley, finally, to the life of writer and mother, both of which she adores. Death by Diploma, released by Red Adept Publishing in February 2016 and #1 for cozy mystery on Amazon in August that same year, is her debut cozy mystery, first in the Chalkboard Outlines® series. Book 2, Poison by Punctuation, was released April 24, 2018. Her debut Young Adult Paranormal, Down in the Belly of the Whale, received the 2017 Indie Book of the Year from Aionios Books, who published the book May 5, 2018.
Get In Touch
[email protected]
https://www.kelleykaybowles.com
https://www.facebook.com/authorkelleykaye/
https://www.bookbub.com/authors/kelley-kaye
https://www.goodreads.com/author/dashboard
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCVlte3qfP3gTpHOwjNjqDqg/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3-Is8SGcAWg
Building Cairns
by Darren Leo
She sat on the porch, in an Adirondack chair made from sawed up skis, and watched sparrows dance on the edge of a bird bath. They splashed then shook and created tiny, instant rainbows. Her long braid, a loose mess of grey hair, hung down one side of her neck. The young people said she looked like Katniss, but she didn’t know who the hell that was.
A group of hikers were at the picnic table under the big elm and drinking beer. They were young and, almost halfway through their hike, very fit and brash. She didn’t mind the through hiker bros. After twelve hundred miles of walking, they had earned some bravado. She preferred the other hikers that wandered into their little outfitter shop and hostel, and one was trudging up the road now.
At first she thought he was old because of the silver hair. As he neared, she saw that he was perhaps in his early forties. His pack and boots were top quality and not very old. She could see from his slumping shoulders that the pack was poorly fitted and carried way too much.
“Is this the hostel?” he asked with the wheezing voice of someone over exerting and under hydrating.
“Honey, if you can’t tell that it is, I ought to make you hike right back to the woods,” she said.
“So that’s a yes?”
She studied him. In a li
fe a long time ago, she held a doctorate of psychology. It came in handy in her official duties as hostel keeper and unofficial duties as tribe mother. There were many types of hikers who wandered into her home. The gap years, bucket listers and experience junkies were the most common. The spiritual pilgrims annoyed the shit out of her. The refugees always had the most interesting stories.
“Drop your pack and pull up a chair.”
He actually dropped the pack where he stood and collapsed into a chair. It was a beautiful, cool day, and Indian summer was lingering even as Christmas came around the bend, but he had sweated completely through his clothes.
“I’m Frog. Welcome,” she said.
“Atlas,” he replied and gulped from his water bottle.
Anyone who spent enough time on the trail adopted, or was given, a trail name. She was intrigued by his.
“Holding up the weight of the world?” she asked.
“As in Titan. I obviously don’t know much about Greek mythology.” He said it with a smile but no joy.
“Where’d you start?” she asked.
“Harper’s Ferry.”
That was about a hundred pretty easy trail miles south. A fit hiker would do it in four or five days.
“How long you been out?” she asked.
“Two weeks.”
She had seen the midlife escapees plodding into a world they were not prepared for, but they had determination and a desire for adventure. All she saw in him was resignation. She thought again that the refugees had the most interesting stories.
“So, you’re NoBo?” she asked.
He looked at her blankly and drank more water.
“Northbound, as opposed to SoBo, southbound.”
“Sure.”
They watched golden leaves fluttering until he stopped gasping, and she showed him around, where to pitch his tent, the outdoor shower, and the washing machine.
“Sometimes I cook and share. Sometimes I don’t. Don’t ask me. I’ll tell you.” This was part of her routine, but he didn’t strike her as one who would come with entitlement.
“Thank you,” he said and began setting up his camp, and she watched. He was efficient. Everything went in its place. He was not one who would discover he left his water purifier nine miles back.
That evening, after the pffft of camp stoves being shut off and the quick inhalation of food that all distance hikers practiced, the group sat on her porch.
Frog sat down by Atlas who was a little away from the main group. The alpha hikers discussed the distance they’d cover the next day and when they were starting.
“Hey Atlas. You’re a section hiker right?” One asked. Frog knew it was an insult more than a question. Section hikers did some portion of the trail as opposed to its entirety.
“Yes,” he replied without looking up.
“So are you,” Frog said and looked over her glasses at the young man.
“I’m a through hiker, MEGA,” he replied. His hiker beard was carefully trimmed and cleaned and Frog hadn’t liked him as soon as he arrived.
“Until you stand on Katahdin and Springer, you’re not a through hiker,” she replied, and that sent the young bucks to bed.
Frog and Atlas watched fireflies skip about on the edge of the irrigation ditch. The breeze carried notes of a fire somewhere. She enjoyed how long the autumn lingered in her little nook of the world.
“What’s MEGA?” Atlas asked.
“Maine to Georgia. GAME is Georgia to Maine, or NoBo. You should probably learn these terms.”
He shrugged, but she caught a hint of an actual smile in the lantern light.
The next morning she felt slightly bad for putting the bucks in their place so she made blueberry pancakes and bacon. They devoured it like starved wolves. There was a reason that there were no all you can eat buffets near the Appalachian trail. They were long up the trail before Atlas wandered onto her porch.
“You missed breakfast,” she called from a flower bed where she was on her knees in the dirt yanking weeds.
“I’m sorry.”
“I saved you some bacon and pancakes in the kitchen. Probably need to be microwaved.”
He returned some time later with a hint of blueberry on his lips, kneeled in the dirt near her, and began pulling weeds.
“Thank you for the breakfast.”
“You don’t have to pull weeds to be fed.”
“I kind of enjoy it. If you don’t mind. Reminds me of being a boy.”
They clawed at the dirt, and the cool sun reached up behind them. He told her of spending summers in upstate New York, at his grandparents’ orchard, working in the earth and dirt.
“Is it okay if I spend another night here?” he asked.
“Taking a zero?” she asked. He stared at her.
“A zero is a zero mileage day. No hiking.”
They continued to grab and pull at the invasive plants, and she was carefully plucking weeds from a stack of rocks.
“It’s a cairn,” she said before he asked.
“A what?”
“Have you ever hiked or backpacked?”
“Before I spent my first night on the trail, no.”
She explained that cairns were stacks of rocks used to mark a trail above treeline or in deserts. They were symbolic of finding one’s way. Hers was perhaps two feet tall, made up of rounded river rocks.
“When,” she paused, “if, you make it to the White mountains you’ll see cairns.”
“Why do you have this one?”
“It’s a memorial.” She didn’t expound, and he didn’t ask.
He helped her drag kayaks to the barn, nail a loose shutter, and clean out the hiker shower. Three Miles always cautioned her about taking in strays, as he called it, but he did it too, and her husband was off hiking for a month. That thought reminded her that he’d be home soon with a bunch of the tribe in tow for the holidays. She’d have to get to baking and decorating.
A new batch of hikers began to arrive in the afternoon. Frog and Atlas sat on the porch, and she described each hiker as they neared. Two women were a mother and daughter. The father had recently passed away, and they were spending a week on the trail to commemorate him. An early twenties hiker with thick framed glasses had just graduated college and was doing the AT before beginning grad school. She continued on. In conversations later with the hikers, Atlas found her to be highly accurate.
Later, making her rounds to ensure each hiker was settled in, she found him in front of his tent looking at photos.
“May I?” she asked, and he handed her the pictures. All were of Atlas and an attractive woman in her mid to late thirties. They smiled at Niagara falls. She held up the leaning tower of Pisa. Holding hands, they leaped off a pier in Aruba. She held a teacup, with her pinky out, at tea in London. They weren’t the sort of pictures to pine over after a break up. They were memorial photos. Put them in a pile, and they’d be a cairn.
“My condolences. It is so hard to lose a loved one.” she said as she handed the memories back to him. He wiped a tear away from his cheek.
She sat beside him and dug her flask out of a cargo pocket. She sipped and passed it to him. He took a long pull of the cheap bourbon and sobbed.
“I was a trader on Wall street. I was a good trader. Big apartment on the upper east side, summer place in the Hamptons, traveled all over the world. Master of the universe,” he paused and his voice broke, “a titan.”
A groundhog waddled near, rising on its hind legs to scan the air for food or predators. Frog listened and looked at the clover around her feet.
“How did she pass?” she asked.
“Cancer. It spread quickly. I took her to Boston. We went to the Mayo clinic. I found the best doctors on the planet, convinced that effort and money c
ould beat it.
He took another drink. She waited. She knew the ending of the story, but he should have the right to tell it.
“Five months later she was dead. Master of the universe.” He said it with self-hatred. “Master of nothing.”
“And so now you’re on the trail seeking refuge.” The refugees always had the most interesting stories. By definition, they were never happy ones.
The moon, bloated and full poked over the trees, and the world became black and white and shades of grey.
“Master of nothing.”
“That’s a shitty trail name. Some find their peace in the trees. Some don’t. I hope you find yours.” She shrugged. Platitudes provided no benefit so she didn’t offer them.
Winter decided to arrive the next morning. The air was cold, and her songbirds squawked their displeasure from the comfort of their nests. Atlas trudged up the road with his pack and the weight of the world on his bowed shoulders. She finished nailing a string of Christmas lights over the porch and went to the garden.
She pulled a smooth, flat oval of a rock from her coat. She’d fished it from the river last summer. She sought out the refugees and their stories. In her mind she liked to think maybe she could absorb some of the weight they carried just by knowing the story. With care and both hands, she balanced the stone on the cairn. Each story killed her just a little.
Books by Darren
The Trees Beneath Us
About Darren
Darren R. Leo grew up in Utah skiing more than he went to school. He received a BA from the University of Utah in English where the writing bug first bit him. He kept it latent and endured a successful and award winning career in the hotel industry. He returned to school and earned his MFA in Fiction from Southern New Hampshire University in 2013.
His novel, The Trees Beneath Us was published by Stark House Press in 2015. His short stories have appeared in Crack the Spine, The Atticus Review, The Blue Lake Review, and several other literary journals and anthologies.
Tangled Lights and Silent Nights Page 12