Sample of Quiet People in a Noisy World. Along with a sample of the writing, I’ve included the table of contents to give you an outline of what is in the book. This sample is an HTML file. If you purchase the complete book in the file supported by your reader, it will be formatted for your reader.

 

54 of the essays in this collection have been published in Back Home Magazine, The Christian Science Monitor, The Denver Post, Home Educator’s Family Times, Men’s Fitness magazine, and Summit Magazine.

 

Table of Contents

Book One: In the Beginning

 

Soaking Wet in the Sierras

A Unique, Light Grey Cowboy Hat

Miss Molasses, She Goes Slowly Rolling

Zinnias for Laura and Juniper

Twelve Miles on Foot at 24 Below

The Mail at Whitney 3

Driving Flies

Storms Along the Pete Mann Ditch

Dragonfly in the Water

Lessons Learned in a Dusty Corral

The Largest Playhouse in Oregon

My Friend, the Wind

Wild Mushrooms and New Boots

Harvesting Ice from the River

Airborne

Woodsheds that Never Were

Shuffling Cards, Feeding Fire

What If

Skunked

 

Book Two: Central Oregon

 

A Waterfall in Our Backyard

With the Wind at Our Backs

Ouzels on Tumalo Mountain

Wildflower Fire Watch

Bat and Seek

A Bridge over Tumalo Creek

Essays From a Family of Four

Winter Guests

When the Alarm Went off at Midnight

 

Book Three: Colorado: Tomahawk Ranch

 

Country Boy in City Traffic

Images Captured Without a Camera

A Man Called Grandma

A Hot and Snowy Day in Summer

Rocky Mountain Cattle Drive

Weeding Strawberries, Eating Carrots

Largest Birdhouse in the Rockies

My Guitar, but Our Music

Wintering Animals in the Rockies

Get Up, Shiloh

 

Book Four: Colorado: Magic Sky Ranch

 

Family Cohesion on the Ranch

Between Storms, a Garden

Growing Lettuce, Essays, and Reverence

Journey to the Ridge of Spiral-Grained Trees

Over the Edge

Owls Trade Observation for Observation

Working around House Wrens

A Reverberant Woodpecker Sounds My Chimney

In the Midst of Lightning and Thunder

Intimations of Spring in Winter

The First Year on the Big Yellow Bus

Lyrics and Lemonade

All the Winter’s Interruptions

Walking in a Winter Wonderland

Taking the Untaken, Exploring the Unexplored

Amanda’s Effective Education

Driving the Crumpled Car

Finding My Way Around Campus (After 25 Years)

Catching the Copper

Fast English

A Garden of Memories

Trimming Material Possessions

Poems for Your Suppers

Housework by Gender

How to Become Water, Early in the Day

Climbing the Granite Overlook

 

Book Five: Before and After

 

Getting Clean in the Great Outdoors

Wild Music from the Mountains

Autumn on the Mountain

Sprouting Memories

Raindancer

Sourdough

Quiet People in a Noisy World

Culture Shock

Owl Magic by Amanda Rose Remmerde

Thunder by Amanda Rose Remmerde

Response to my Aunt upon Being Asked to Shut the Door by Juniper C. Remmerde

 

 

Book One: In the Beginning

Soaking Wet in the Sierras

 

Laura and I lived in Toadtown, in the foothills of the Sierras, west of the Sacramento Valley, before we had children, a car, or many material possessions. We did own an aluminum-frame, nylon backpack that carried groceries and laundry well.

Now, because of dangerous experiences, I won’t hitchhike. Then, however, we did hitchhike, because it was the only way we had to travel distances beyond what we could walk. Early that day, we hitched a ride down the mountain, visited friends, bought essential groceries, and laundered at the laundromat. When we headed back up the road, dusk descended, hastened by heavy clouds gathered close against the mountain.

With our thumbs in the air, we hiked about three miles of a necessary ten, and rain began to pour down. We didn’t own rain clothes, but the rain was bearably warm, and we kept walking. Our clothes soon soaked through. Water ran off our hair, noses, and fingertips and into our shoes. Laura said, “Why won’t anyone give us a ride?”

“We’re soaking wet. We would get their upholstery wet. Besides that, anyone who would walk in a downpour like this has to be crazy, and people shouldn’t pick up crazy hitchhikers.”

The rain began to erode Laura’s spirit. I realized I could easily become discouraged. Then we would be two wet, discouraged walkers with a long way to go in a rainstorm. I sang songs I already knew, and songs I never heard before but pulled out of the dark rainstorm around us. I sang upbeat, even crazy songs. I danced. I blessed the rain and praised the clouds. I found reservoirs of energy that fired me with warm enthusiasm.

Laura’s beginning descent of spirit stopped, then reversed. She kept walking. She cheered up. She laughed and realized good still surrounded us. I couldn’t think of anything I’d rather do than walk with a heavy pack on my back, Laura by my side, singing in pouring rain as cars sped by, spraying water from their tires and soaking us more, if we could be more soaked.

Laura said, “All those people are in their warm, dry cars, with the windows rolled up.”

“I know. Think of what they’re missing. All the great outdoors. This wonderful rain. What do they have? A tiny, isolated little place, rolling along too fast, cut off from everything real. They’re missing out on this once-in-a-lifetime experience. Think of how boring their lives must be.”

Years later, tonight in fact, Laura told me I rekindled her energy and helped her appreciate the rain, the clouds above us, the water running off us, and the earth running with water under our feet, but she wondered if I was crazier than she had ever realized and if the dark, wet night might never end.

I thought her descent into discouragement might begin again, and I said, “We’ll get home in good shape, in good time, and we’ll look back on our rainstorm hike with appreciation.” The time had come, in her book, for that promise to develop.

A pickup passed us, and the brake lights came on. The pickup stopped on the shoulder of the road. A voice floated through the dark rain, “Jon, Laura, is that you?” and since it was us, and the driver was Pike and his passenger was Shirley, and they were our neighbors in Toadtown, we ran, put the pack in the back and crowded in front with them, because they said they didn’t mind if we were wet. They delivered us right to our front door.

We built a roaring fire in the stove. We discovered the backpack was, as advertised, waterproof, and while our clothes weren’t, our skin was, and our hair soon dried. We had carried home freshly laundered clothing, and we put some of it on after we hung what we had been wearing to dry.

I peeled and sliced apples while Laura made a pie crust, and the odor of baking apples and cinnamon soon filled the small cabin, already full of the sound of rain drumming hard on the tin roof and the sound of Laura singing of the joy of rainstorms and the joy of living.

 

 

A Unique, Light Grey Cowboy Hat

 

Someone who studied that hat might have concluded that it was a product of a hat factory and the Mad Hatter combining efforts. That was close enough to truth to qualify.

I camped out on Coalpit Mountain the summer I bought the hat, almost 25 years ago. I learned to walk again after having been hit by a drunk driver. I needed a hat. Sunshine at 5,000 feet in the clean air of eastern Oregon is intense, and a wide-brimmed hat would shade my face and neck and provide some shelter from eastern Oregon’s sudden cloudbursts. ……… (to read the rest of this essay and all the essays after it, please return to the home page and buy the book Quiet People in a Noisy World.)

 

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