The Timberline Letter

Jewell sat in the back seat as we pulled away from her Chalk Hill, Texas home of more than thirty years. Her face never left the window as she silently watched her life flow away from her. That was the first mile of my mother-in-law’s last move on earth. As I watched her in my rearview mirror, I saw her as a deer, bounding higher up through the hills to avoid the rising waters from a long and heav...

I once sat in the elegant dining room of a lovely Orange County, California home, sharing a fine dinner with good-natured and hospitable people. I did not know our hosts, the Jostens; I was only there by the invitation of another guest. When someone inquired about our host’s profession, Walter Josten said he worked in the film industry. He spoke softly; he did not lead with his credits. “So, why d...

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Written by: Craig Dahlberg Narrated by: Kara Lea Kennedy I shuffle carefully, avoiding lizards drowsing on the warming cement sidewalk outside my front door. They repeat this ritual daily, eyes fixed, scarcely evading my shuffling feet. Eight months ago, I also searched for a warm landing place. Having lost my wife to cancer, I was newly inducted into the Widowers’ Club, a membership with no waiti...

Just as swallows return to Capistrano, salmon swim upstream, and turtles march to the sea, our family has, for decades, traveled to an annual reunion at the Chinn farm in Pratt County, Kansas. We can measure the pull of that migration by how many other family members we encounter at McDonalds, convenience stores, and ice cream parlors during the seven-hour trek from Colorado to the farm. It’s as i...

Written by: Ed Chinn Narrated by: Kara Lea Kennedy On the last day of our Kansas visit in 2019, I dropped by Mom’s assisted living room to tell her goodbye; we were driving back to Tennessee. Her move from her home to assisted living had not gone well, and she decided this was the time to let me have it. Of course it was. She knew this might be the last time we would see each other. As soon as I s...

No matter what you think of Los Angeles or San Francisco, the Sierra Nevada, the Central Coast, the Mojave Desert, and a few other places all carry a certain vibe—Kalifornia Kool. But in the broad sweep of the Central Valley, where two rivers meet, sits Sacramento, the state capital. There’s just not much Kool in Sacramento. Flat as a tortilla, Sacramento is intensely hot in summer. Wildfires thre...

Growing up under the wide Colorado sky, our family often watched the sun set behind the Rockies, casting pinks, oranges, and reds through our living room window. And every morning, the sunrise announced a new day to our castle. From our seats in that cosmic theater, we also watched storms roll from the west to east across our north horizon. Thunderclouds built and rumbled, taunting us with the pos...

I was a young lad when I first felt the rumble of a lion’s roar, heard an elephant’s shrill trumpeting, or felt the sudden plunge of a circus acrobat. Yet every day now, I see acrobats. A woman stands atop her own head. A soccer team competes against an identical, mirrored team. Four dogs chase four tails—or is it two dogs chasing two tails? Body parts float away. Walls disassemble like Lego brick...

I joined the ranchers, farmers, and town folks who slowly gathered on a quiet Sunday morning in Bastrop, Texas. For several years, that “house church” had met in Bob and Sue Long’s home. Although they invited me to speak, I quickly realized the real speaker that morning was Bob and Sue’s dog, “Whiskey.” As soon as everyone sat in a circle, Whiskey wandered in and plopped down in the loop of boots...

A tiny trespass onto a neighbor’s property can seem harmless. Nobody will notice. It is only a shortcut. But eventually, others follow that route. In time, a private intrusion becomes a well-worn path. Recently, my neighbor introduced an intrusion into my life. His newly installed security lights poured bucketfuls of lumens through my bedroom window each night. So, I quickly planted tall bushes to...

Written and Narrated by: Kara Lea Kennedy When my husband, David, was a pilot with the US Air Force, we had the privilege of moving to various airbases around the world. Back in 2016, we prepared for our move to an 800-square-foot apartment in South Korea. Naturally, we began whittling our belongings down to the necessities. During that time of downsizing at our Arizona home, my mom came for a vis...

Written by: Ed Chinn Narrated by: Kara Lea Kennedy In the early fifties, my parents and a few other young couples came together to form a new Pentecostal church in Pratt, Kansas. They bought an old one-room school building and moved it onto a corner lot in Pratt. Then Dad led the way through the design, renovation, excavation, and construction phases. When finished, we had suitable space for meeti...

In 1957 my dad lost his job on the Rock Island Railroad. So did half a million other rail workers across the US. Since everyone expected a call-back of rail employees within a year, Dad wrote and phoned old friends, including other World War 2 vets, to ask if they knew of any temporary jobs. One of Dad’s ship buddies invited Dad to move to the Monterey Bay area of California, where he was building...

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Written and Narrated by Kara Lea Kennedy Our family cautiously approached the battle-scarred property. Giant oaks leaned precariously close to the house. The forest of longleaf pines had been ripped apart and scattered like a box of toothpicks. But the awe I felt for Mother Nature paled in comparison to the fear I had for Ron, the owner of this house. I knew the towering Vietnam veteran would neve...

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Why would anyone write a note on paper, seal it in a bottle, and drop it into the ocean? Is it a romantic Hail Mary? A plea for rescue? A gesture of grief? Human ashes have been found in bottles washed up on distant shores. According to Guinness World Records, the oldest known message in a bottle drifted across the seas over 131 years before someone finally opened it.[1] In one way or another, the...

Written By: Darrell A. Harris Narrated By: Kara Lea Kennedy In my earliest days as a music industry executive, our contracts were four-finger, hunt-&-peck documents, hammered out on a primitive, portable typewriter. But that manual typewriter gave me a mystical quickening . . . Feeling the velocity of the keys as they traveled from machine to paper; the uneven rhythm of their sound was somehow dee...

Written By: John Sommers Narrated By: Kara Lea Kennedy When I was nine years old, I wanted a bicycle more than anything. If you had a bike, the world was yours. Anything was possible. But bikes were expensive, and you could outgrow one so quickly. In 1961, my parents bought me a J.C. Higgins 26” Flightliner Bicycle for Christmas. Sears’ top of the line bike was red with whitewall tires, dual headl...

Following our recent essay, A Place in the World , about the Chinn family farm, here is Part 2— Pratt, Kansas. There was something about the way Jack Chinn said “Pratt;” as crisp as a bite of celery. The very sound of the word carried expectancy. Pratt was Dad’s place in the world. It was also that for my brothers, Vernon and Carl, our mom, and for me. Our place was an anvil; there Heaven’s hammer...

Written and Narrated By: Kara Lea Kennedy I hoisted a waterlogged lily sideways onto the potting bench, compressing each side forcefully like a paramedic performing CPR. I threw a sharp trowel into the mass of roots, muscling them apart before plopping the divided plants into various pots. I was working for a pond nursery, a dream summer job. The heat and humidity of the greenhouses were a welcome...

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Written By: Amy McArthy Narrated By: Kara Lea Kennedy After years of foot problems, I found custom orthotics that became gold to me. I could slip them into any closed-heel shoe and wear them for hours without pain. Then, one day, they simply vanished. For months, I checked every pair of shoes I owned, multiple times. I cleaned out my closet. I looked under my bed. Finally, I resigned myself to wea...

I once heard the great preacher, Ern Baxter, talk about why we have such powerful language symbols. He said: “ God has ransacked all of nature, all of history, all events, all of creatures, relationships, and situations ... to come up with metaphors and similes and symbols and likenesses that He could use to communicate to us the various aspects of divine truth.” No wonder the Bible, Aesop’s Fable...