The Traveling Writer: Discoveries in the Pennsy Woods While in Search of the American Dream

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?

The Traveling Writer in Search of the American Dream

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.