Live Like the Mountain's Out

Do you compose New Year’s resolutions or goals for the coming year? I usually do. I enjoyed many lovely things in 2018, including getting to spend time with my dear Marissa, Kristy J. Manhattan (my wonderful critique partner), and other friends. But in many ways, it was a difficult year. Shifting family dynamics and an overly ambitious publishing schedule combined to sap my strength. For only the second time in 45 books, I missed a publication deadline.

I don’t like doing that.

So, in case some of you are coming off a difficult year, I wanted to share a saying we have here in the South Sound and my goal for 2019.

Live like the mountain’s out.

You see, many of us here live in the shadow of Mt. Rainier. She’s a majestic peak, breathtaking actually, at one of the tallest in the U.S. And she dominates the skyline above Puget Sound.

When she’s visible.

You would not think a 14,000-foot mountain could play hide-and-seek, but she does. When it’s raining (and yes, it rains frequently here), storm clouds mask her. Even on bright sunny days, there may be nothing on the southwest horizon. When my father came as a young airman to what is now Joint Base Lewis-McChord in the winter in the late 1950s, he spent weeks without catching a glimpse. Then one day, he went outside and stared.

“Who put that pile of snow at the end of the runway?” he demanded.

Mt. Rainier comes out of hiding on the best of days, when the sun is shining and the air is clear. When birds are singing a welcome, and you can smell the scent of fir and salt water on the breeze. On those days, people leave work early, go outside. We climb hills, skim waves. We gather around fires: in rustic pits in our backyards, in fir-shrouded campgrounds, on rocky beaches. We tell stories about our best memories, make new ones. We smile and laugh and enjoy each other’s company.

Live like the mountain’s out.

This year, I resolve to do that. I want to smile, I want to laugh. I want to enjoy the company of family and friends. I want to write stories that celebrate the best of the past and uplift, encourage, and make you dream of what might be. Dark times come to all. We can be the light.

Live like the mountain’s out.

I Hereby Resolve . . .

Did you make any resolutions as the New Year dawned?  A writer friend, Elena Greene , tells me she thinks more of plans than resolutions.  I have many plans for 2014--write the final two books in my Mercer Brides series for Love Inspired Historical, write Priscilla's story to continue the Lady Emily Capers that included the rewrite of La Petite Four this year, downsize to a smaller house, and work on rebuilding my physical strength, which has proven highly unreliable of late.  I found myself wondering, however, how those in nineteenth century England and America thought about such matters.  So, of course, I did a little research.  (Lovely, lovely research!)

The 1828 Boston literary magazine, The Bower of Taste, edited by Katherine Augusta Ware, had this to say about New Year's resolutions:

We began the year just passed away with prospects full as flattering, with friends as kind, with health as good, and mind as free as now.  We made resolutions at the commencement of the last year, which have, many of them, been long since forgotten.  We complained then, that the year had been too short for the consummation of all our wishes, and formed plans which would, if carried into execution, have essentially bettered our condition; but we forgot that the next was to be as short as the one we had just passed, and that our resolutions were now no better than before.

Guilty.  I always seem to dream up far more than I can possibly do in a year when those twelve months are stretching out before me.  Then again, I am a big believer in setting your sights high.

In 1895, R.G. Hazlett, General Secretary of the Good Templars of Toronto, exhorted all members of the society to be "more kind and patient and long-suffering with our Brothers and Sisters . . . even to those who are not as agreeable to us as some others."

Well said, Mr. Hazlett, especially the agreeable part. 

My favorite piece of lore concerning New Year's, however, dates from 1893, when eighteen-year old M. Henry of South Wales won a prize from a London literary magazine for the following poem:

"The old year now is dead and gone
And as we watched him dying
How many keen regrets arose
To give us cause for sighing!

And so we say that we will treat
The year that's coming better
Good resolutions make--and mean
To keep them to the letter.

But soon, alas! we shall find out
The reason why we make them--
They're made on New Year's Day, because
There's all the year to break them!"

Whatever your plans for 2014, I wish you the very best in fulfilling them all!