Discoveries in the Pennsy Woods While in Search of the American Dream

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The Traveling Writer Finds Love, Family and Creativity

By Norma Jaeger Hopcraft

Dear friends of this blog,

I'm sorry to keep you waiting for a new post from me! I just want to remind you that I've gone to bi-weekly posts (every other Saturday). But I messed up around Christmas time. 

We're back on track! 

For Christmas I went to the Pennsylvania woods, staying in a rented house with my siblings and their significant others.

When my sister and I first opened the rental house and explored, we were totally lost for a couple of hours. The layout was so unusual and quite bewildering. For example, it had two full kitchens, within footsteps of each other. Hunh?

Our Christmas house was large, rambling, and organized around no floor plan that we could figure out. But I enjoyed the wall of windows in the breakfast nook that overlooked the woods.

The driveway to the house was 1/3 of a mile long (not unusual in this part of Bucks County). Parked halfway up the driveway was a sad scene, a sailboat that had been sitting there wrapped in plastic for what seems like a long time.

My brother rents a house near our Christmas house with a stream running alongside the property.

My family went for walks along the nearby Delaware Canal. Here's a footbridge, reflected in the water.

 Turns out we needed both refrigerators, however, so that worked well. Needless to say, we did our cooking in the kitchen that had the gas stovetop and the view out the windows to the woods. Even though it had less counterspace than the second kitchen, it had the view and the gas, whereas the second kitchen had no windows and an induction stovetop. I knew immediately that we'd end up in the kitchen with the view and gas, and it turned out that way. So my last prediction of 2018 turned out to be completely accurate!

My brother got married to a great woman, Adele, over the Christmas holidays, and that was a beautiful event. They got married by the mayor of Riegelsville, PA, on the Delaware River, right next to a bridge to New Jersey. The mayor did an excellent job and had us laughing and crying. We're so happy these two found each other! 

My brother and his new wife Adele, with the mayor of Riegelsville in the middle.

Here's my whole family, me in the center with the olive coat and red scarf, with the bridge to New Jersey in the background.

Here's the cutting of the cake, in a farmhouse the two are renovating.

They met while walking on Pennsylvania state game lands -- Adele with her three rescue dogs and my brother with his memories of his beloved hound, Beezer, who had passed on to the gamelands in the sky. 

They found out immediately that they both volunteered at Last Chance Ranch in Pennsylvania, and took care of rescued animals, everything from horses and pigs to cats. 

They stayed in touch, met once a week or so for dog walks, and continued on that basis for a long time. Their love for each other has blossomed and grown! It's a beautiful love story. 

I think I need to get a dog...

To prepare for the wedding, we went to The Novel Baker in Dublin, PA, to pick up Charles’s and Adele’s wedding cake. 

Walking in the door of this business was a treat. The shop was decorated in a whimsical style, so appealing. And the treats! Everywhere! 

Sugared cranberries. With that much sugar on it, a cranberry was delicious!

I loved the whimsy of the decorations.

Detail of a wedding cake.

The Vulcan Oven that the Novel Baker bakes in.

Snowflakes make of fondant, which is sugar with glycerin, which makes it pliable.

Here's the Novel Baker herself! She was funny and delightful to be with.

A chandelier.

Trays of treats awaiting delivery.

Cupcakes with fondant snowflakes on tops.

A behind-the-scenes look at the everyday supplies and tools of the Novel Baker.

This oven is a beast.

The macarons we bought for the wedding.

Fondant snowflakes.

The thought occurred to me that I’m a novel baker, too. I mix in my ingredients of story, characters, predicament, along with the engine of my burning question. This is an important ingredient. Jane Austen’s engine was “Will she marry well?” Short, pithy, and powerful, with lots and lots of miles in it.

My burning question has tended to be, “Will my life be a success?” I haven’t answered it with a yes yet. But over Christmas I read Madeleine L’Engle’s book Walking on Water: Reflections on Faith and Art. She wrote that for a Christian, success isn’t defined the way the world defines it, but as love. Well, I don’t feel totally successful with that definition either. I’m 62 years old and I still don’t want to do the dishes for my siblings. I still think it’s better to dodge them as much as possible, the way I tried to do when I was a kid. Disgraceful.

We went through many one-horse Pennsylvania towns: Ottsville, Ferndale, Upper Black Eddy, towns that consisted of a post office and a gas station. The rolling hills were so beautiful, the houses charming, the farms interesting, the woods restful....

I happen to need cities, however. I'm thinking of retiring to Rochester, New York, where my daughter, beloved son-in-law, and baby grandson are moving. With Eastman School of Music and University of Rochester there, I might be OK for artistic input. And Buffalo, for decades a dying city, is now a big arts scene; it's only a one-hour drive away.

I'd love to be involved in my grandchild's (children's?) lives. I guess I can suck it up and endure the winters there. Cleaning your car and your driveway off every morning isn't that big a deal, is it? Walking on ice everywhere for six months a year is not a problem, right? And just think, the new snow daily covers the old snow, so it's always a winter wonderland...winter is two months longer in Rochester than it is in NYC…and darker, cloudier. Yike. This is difficult.

I'm back in Brooklyn today. It's quite the shock after the quiet of the Pennsy woods. Sirens, horns honking, buses chugging along, breaks squealing...in Pennsylvania, I could hear the wind in the fir trees.

But for the foreseeable future, I'll live in Brooklyn, writing as best I can and doing research for my next novel, about a set designer in Brooklyn. I'm participating in theatrical productions in order to soak up the theatrical vibe. I’ve found theater people to be tremendously hard working, very kind, very appreciative of help—truly great.

They believe deeply in the power of theater to change human lives for the better. I guess I agree, but I believe even more deeply in the power of God to change human hearts for the better. I’ve still got my wounds, issues, and dark side, however, and my propensity to not want to do dishes for other people, and these things still send out tentacles that trip me up…sigh. But I’m very glad to have God’s love and light to aim for. Without it, I would be on the street, pawing over my plastic bags full of rags. Or in an insane asylum. Or long dead.

So here’s to life! In my case, a life powered by Higher Power, whom I call God, or Lord, or YHWH, or Emmanuel (Hebrew for “God with Us”), or Creator of the Universe. He makes creative power and wisdom available to all, believers and non-believers alike, cake-makers and novel-writers alike. But the better way by far is to walk and talk with Him daily, otherwise known as following Jesus. 

Here's some more pictures to help me endure over-peopled, over-vehicled, over-built Brooklyn.

This is the overflow from Lake Nockamixon. That's my sis in the left corner.

Some people started putting locks on the fence to prove their everlasting love for each other. I hope it works...

A beautiful fallen tree.

The highest falls in Bucks County (20 feet), at Ringing Rocks State Park.

Here's the falls again, with my brother in the lower left.

I happen to like lichen.

I like moss too.

The Long Distance Road Race of Making My American Dream Come True

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Recent Races in Manhattan and Brooklyn Illustrate My Quest

By Norma Jaeger Hopcraft

I look at anybody who runs with awe. 

I made a New York City marathon runner laugh after the race this year by saying, "A marathon is 26.2 miles, and you ran all of those miles. I can run about .2 miles. And by the end of that I want to die."

In another way, though, I've been a very long distance runner. 

This post is for anyone who has been working toward making their dream come true for a very long time. In my case, it's been a three-decade road race, and I still don't consider my dream to be realized.

Of course, I have a tendency to move the finish line. Or the finish line moves itself.

I've defined success as achieving critical and popular acclaim for my writing. 

I could not have made my road race any more difficult. I could not have set the bar any higher. Sheesh! 

And the second part is to get at least six books I've written onto my shelf before I die. That's how many novels Jane Austen finished, plus some miscellaneous writings, before she died in so untimely a way at the age of 41.

So many writers these days have dozens of books to their credit. I'm insanely jealous. They were blessed by early success that freed them to write fulltime. I craved that freedom too, from the very beginning of my novel-writing efforts three decades ago.

That didn't seem to be God's plan for me. I had two small children to raise on my own and to support, and I had to juggle a corporate communications job, a daily commute to NYC (1.5 hours each way), my desire to write, and the need to pour myself into loving my children to make up for the fact that their father and I were divorced. 

By the way, the list in the previous paragraph is not in order of my priority. The children were my first priority.

The juggling was tough. It's still tough. The only time I didn't have to juggle was July 2014 to July 2015. I had a small windfall and used it to give myself a creative writing sabbatical in Paris. How that came about is described in my blog here, in the July posts of my blog.

I'm beginning to receive the critical acclaim that makes up the first part of my dream. Writers Digest, a big magazine for writers, recently said The Paris Writers Circle (written during that sabbatical in Paris) was "Delightful!" and "Captivating!" They rated the story "Outstanding in plot, story appeal, character appeal, and character development."

This is very exciting to me. I can feel, even for a small while, before I resume the race, that I've been on the right course, that I've passed this test of endurance, at least so far.

I will have to wait to see if popular acclaim follows. The long, long road race is not over, not until the fat lady sings, I suppose.

There was no fat ladies in sight at the NYC marathon in early November, nor in Brooklyn on December 1, during a 5K race. Here are pics from those events:

Triumphant finisher, wrapped up.

Lots of finishers.

some people preferred these lighter wraps.

They didn't even look tired, these runners. They looked jolly good, like they can do another 26.2 miles.

segue to Brooklyn's Prospect Park and a 5K road race there.

Christmas was the theme.

Elfin green tutus.

Mr. and Mr.s Claus.

Lots of Santas.

I like her reindeer sunglasses. Most people also had bells on that jingled as they ran. How about you? Done a 5K lately? Comment below!

Prospect Park in Four Seasons

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In Search of the American Dream--Peace, Nature, Sanity

By Norma Jaeger Hopcraft

Prospect Park is the only way I can stay sane in overly-peopled Brooklyn. I’m in the park almost every day, in every season. Instead of catching the subway at the nearest station, I usually walk half a mile to the park, and then half a mile within the park, to catch the subway after a 20-minute walk.

During rush hour, the park isn’t too busy. I can take my eyes off the path, stop watching for oncoming foot traffic, and take time to look up into the canopy of leaves. I try to catch a beautiful image of nature, to imprint it on my mind before I head into the concrete, brick, steel, and glass of New York City. I look up at the leaves, the branches. They don’t expect anything of me. They ease my mind before I step out of the park and into the river of strangers, all bustling past me and wishing I would get out of their way. And vice versa.

Today I’m sharing some photographs from every season in the park. 

The birds I see and hear in the park are my only exposure to the huge range of creatures that share this planet with us. A heron, an ibis, swans raising their family, ducks, geese, the song of redwing blackbirds in summer. 

And turtles.That’s the extent of my exposure to wildlife in Brooklyn.

I have a friend who lives in the Great Swamp in New Jersey. She sees fox, bears, deer, groundhogs, rabbits, chipmunks, moles, voles…and turtles. I miss the biodiversity of my sub-rural home in New Jersey.

During the November 15th snowstorm, I walked at 4 p.m., in the dusk, in Prospect Park on my way home from the library, where I’d been working. As soon as I entered the park, I saw that I was just about the only person, and just about the only woman alone. I felt fearful – I do not want to undergo the anguish of a rape or other attack. I takes decades to begin to forgive. That's not how I want to spend my life.

But I also felt rebellious – why should I give up the beauty of the park just because there might be a criminal lurking? Women are trained from childhood to be afraid of this. Couldn’t I be free of the fear?

The park was beautiful in the snow. The problem with Prospect Park – with any park, for a woman – is that there’s always people around, so annoying, and then finally when you have it to yourself, you’re terrified of being attacked.

I decided to risk walking alone in the snow.

I said the same prayer that I said whenever I was scared on my bus journey around America:

I asked for two angels before, two on each side, and two behind me.

I couldn’t shake the fear, and I ran in order to shorten the amount of time I was alone in the park, and therefore reduce the risk.

And I left the park at the first opportunity. I would have liked to continue for another 20 minutes, to get closer to home. But it felt too risky.

So I left the beautiful, serene, empty park, where the snow was falling so quietly, so gently, and instead walked home outside the park, along a street clogged with traffic, with cars honking at each other and throwing up slush.

Two weeks later, in the morning before sunrise, a woman jogging on the edge of the park was repeatedly raped. 

WINTER

The park is beautiful and nearly empty in snowstorms. Blissful. But is that friend or foe approaching?

SPRING

SUMMER

FALL