The Timberline Letter

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...

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit timberlineletter.substack.com/subscribe

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...

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit timberlineletter.substack.com/subscribe

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...

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit timberlineletter.substack.com/subscribe

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...

Written and Narrated by Kara Lea Kennedy This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit timberlineletter.substack.com/subscribe

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit timberlineletter.substack.com/subscribe

I don’t spend a lot of time stumbling around in my past. Land mines lie scattered just below the surface, threatening to blow up my psyche if triggered. But I’m smart enough to know I wouldn’t be here had I not first been there . The giants who helped shape, mold, sand, and color my being over the past three quarters of a century include characters whose stamp left an indelible imprint. One of tho...

For more than a decade, I’ve had the growing sense that we’re all missing something. Not a policy or a program, but a social coherence; a warm, metaphysical essence that is quietly being displaced by something colder, more rigid, something unforgiving. I’m not suggesting we need to do something. It’s not that simple. The usual suspects in this conversation—politics, gender, religion, technology, A...

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit timberlineletter.substack.com/subscribe

John Goldsberry, my maternal grandfather, expected little from life and received less. But he did all he could to feed his wife and their seven children in southwest Missouri during the Great Depression. He farmed, worked odd jobs, and made moonshine—a long path of futility that marked much of his life. In 1936, he worked as part of a road gang blacktopping roads around Buffalo, Missouri. He was p...

Written and Narrated By: Kara Lea Kennedy The hospital lights were dimmed to create a “peaceful” atmosphere, but the chaos of pain I was experiencing sucked all serenity from the room. I yelled in the disoriented agony that can only come from childbirth. Thirty minutes earlier, I could breathe and talk through each contraction, loudly telling myself I could do this. Now, the jaws of pain clamped a...

Imagine you’re riding a passenger train as it rolls across rural America. You stare out your window at the blur of gravel, grass, roads, and rails. Although your view takes in billions of bits of information, it’s all just a streak, a smudge of colors and shapes. It moves too swiftly to give a perspective on what you see. In order to get a better viewpoint, you would have to walk to the rear of th...

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit timberlineletter.substack.com/subscribe

Written By: Beverly Oxley Narrated By: Kara Lea Kennedy When I walked into Mrs. Sauer’s classroom midway through 5th grade, it was the third one I had attended so far that year. I didn’t expect to stay long, so I didn’t even try to make new friends. Because I entered so many schools, I was the perpetual “new kid.” Adapting quickly was essential. As the merry-go-round spun, I had to just run in, gr...

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit timberlineletter.substack.com/subscribe