adenceC

intowoods

the

Issue No. 2 | summer

b r o a da m b i t i o n. c o m

Let the beauty we love be what we do. There are hundreds of ways to kneel and kiss the ground.

—Rumi

4 b r o a da m b i t i o n. c o m

Each season holds a special place in my heart. Summer, though brief in Vermont,

offers up long days and is oh so sweet. Swims in the river, farmers markets,

BBQs, blueberries eaten straight from the bush, and camping, are just a few of

things I love to fill my days with.

It’s difficult to put words into why I enjoy it so much. Perhaps it’s because I re-

serve this time of year to eat ice cream sandwiches. There’s a magic I feel when I

see the clouds lifting their blankets off the mountains when I head out for a morn-

ing run, and a tranquility I gain by laying on the earth under the warm blue sky

with the simple goal of allowing my body to thaw, melt, breath, and relax.

In summer the cadence at which life moves is an easy breezy tempo: 3 minutes to

throw on shorts and a tee, grab a piece of fruit, and head outside with the expecta-

tion clothing will soon end up with badges of grass stains and dirt – awards given

by Mother Nature, or in my case the uncanny ability to trip over the smallest of

rocks.

Writing this, I know I am forgetting and neglecting to mention a myriad of other

pleasures…but the wind is whispering through the trees and gently making its

way through my window – and quite honestly, I just want to be outside and find

shapes in the clouds.

Warmly,

Jenn

bLiss.

6 b r o a da m b i t i o n. c o m

For our second Broad Next Door, we sat down with Kristin Fogdall. She’s a writer, poet, mom, and in her words, “surprised to find that [she’s] and entrepreneur.” For the past two decades or so, she’s gone from being a single mom barely getting by to happily-married and the owner of her own business. BA sat down with her at Thompson’s Bakery in Morrisville, VT to eat one of the best breakfast sandwiches in the Green Mountains and to learn from her journey.

BASo, did you check out the site (Broadambition.com)?

KFNo. I wanted to. Well, I checked it out a little. I looked at what I think was the first (Broad Next Door) article, but I don’t really remember what it was about.

BAYes, the writing is that good.

KFWait, I remember now. It sounded like she had a really fun job. Something in Marketing.

BAYup, she manages one of the digital marketing arms for a multi-billion dollar company. But you’re our first poet/entre-preneur/business owner.

KFHmmm, that doesn’t sound as fun.

BANo, no. This is a big deal. It will make us seem learned. So, I never knew what I wanted to be until about the age of 35. How does one discover they want to be a poet?

KFThere’s sort of two parts to that question in that there was wanting to be a writer first, and then drilling down into wanting to be a poet within that, but I would say that I knew I wanted to write as far back as I can remember. When I was four I used to go into my mom’s study and she had one of those old manual type writers, and I would just pound away at the keys and write these paragraphs of complete nonsense letters. You know, just ‘ftftftftrrrrrrrrrmmmm.’ And then I would make her read it out loud and I loved the fact that I could do this thing that was tactile and then hand it to some-one, and it would produce words from their mouth. I just

thought that was the coolest thing ever.

BA That could have been detrimental to your learning, handing an adult a bunch of gibberish and then they make it seem like actual words.

KFI hadn’t thought of that. Maybe that’s why I was held back in school a few times.

BAYou were?

KFNo. But when I did actually learn to read and write, I would give little poems to my Sunday school teacher, or my dad, or my mom…whomever. And I think for many poets, it starts out in a similar fashion where there’s a long period in adolescence where you spend a lot of time reading and filling your brain with the greats from Shakespeare and Homer and working your way up. And I did that, but at some point in my education, I became more interested in Math and Science. I still enjoyed writing, but it was mostly short stories, not poetry.

BAStill wanting to hold onto that idea that you could create a story in your head and share it with other people?

KFYeah. And the other thing that kept the writing spark alive was that when I was in eighth grade I started a journal that I would just write in all of the time. For me, writing became the way I processed the world and, you know…my whole in-ternal life, which for an introvert, can be a bit busy. [Laughs.]

BAWell, so much of life is the story we tell ourselves, right?

KFYeah. Think about what we do when we get together with friends and family. We share stories. And think about the stuff that you are able to remember. Nothing really makes it into your long-term memory unless your brain was able to construct a good story around an experience.

BADo you still have those journals?

8 b r o a da m b i t i o n. c o m

KFYup. At any given time I can go back and read something from my early life and go, “Why did I ever give a shit about that?” It’s good for the soul.

BAGoing back to that Math and Science thing you just men-tioned; I don’t think I’ve ever heard of someone starting out wanting to be a writer and then suddenly being sidetracked by Math and Science.

KFYou’re right. It is a bit different. But my father was a physi-cist. He worked for Boeing and did contract work for NASA. I remember he’d bring me into his lab and there would be tanks on hydrogen making hissing noises and lasers lasing things. It was incredibly cool for a kid.

BAI can see how lasers might beat out poetry. So you start out wanting to be writer, get hooked into the world of Science, but eventually wind up coming back to the Arts. Did you ever consider wanting to become a scientist? You could have really helped out with the whole “Girls aren’t that into Sci-ence” thing you know.

KFI did, I did. But as I got older what I learned is that what I really loved about science is the mysteries it can unveil to us. More to the point, I loved the field work involved in marine science, which had been my focus. I loved going out and documenting Nature and the behaviors and interactions of things found in the wild. What I didn’t like was spending 15 hours a day at an indoor lab.

BAYou loved the poetry found in Science.

KFThat’s exactly right.

BASo was there an actual moment when you discovered that you’d rather pursue poetry rather than science?

KFYes; after the birth of my daughter. I had already started to move away from the science path in college as I started to take more courses that had a writing component, and even

spent some time as a stage director for theater. I graduated, got married and after I had Caroline (daughter) I had a four-month maternity leave and I rediscovered my love of writing and specifically poetry.

After I had graduated, I wound up taking a job in fundrais-ing and had gotten so caught up in that career track that I let writing go. But now with four months on my hands, I had time. Granted I had a baby that was keeping me up at all hours of the night, but I fell down the rabbit hole of writing and started journaling again and all of a sudden I was writing poems, something that I hadn’t done in a decade.

BASo maternity leave ends, you’ve fallen back in love with writing, and now have to go back to your fundraising gig to help support your family. How did you reconcile the redis-covered love with a career track that wasn’t likely going to allow too much time for writing?

KFLife kind of reconciled it for me by dealing me an upheaval. A very difficult one. It was around that time that my husband and I decided that our marriage wasn’t going to make it. And in the process of doing that, it allowed me to think about where I was going to go with my life. In the end I decided to go for it and went back to school.

BASoooooo….. Newly-single mother going back to school. How did you make that work?

KFWell, once you move into the smallest apartment in the world and decide that you don’t mind being absolutely dirt poor for a few years, anything’s possible.

BAI suppose it is. Did you have a role model for that decision?

KFI grew up in a home where we were taught that everything is possible, and it made me into a very determined, focused person. It also gave me a bit of an indomitable will. And that’s been both a strength and a weakness because there will be times where I believe I can make something happen by sheer force of will. And that’s true in a lot of situations, but not true in a situation say, like trying to save a marriage.

They’re just some things that can’t be willed.

BAYeah…especially when it’s a team effort and 50% of the team…

KF….isn’t showing up. Yeah, it doesn’t work. At that point I had already started looking to go back to school before the marriage bomb dropped, but even when all hell was breaking loose, I kept moving toward the goal of becoming a writer and a poet, of pursuing this love I’d had all of my life. And I think it was that single mindedness that got me through the next few years because that dream came at a steep cost.

BAYou mean student-poets don’t make a lot of money?

KFJust a notch above zero. We (my daughter and I) were so poor during that time it was insane. We were living in Boston on grants, loans and student assistance. I’d make a bit teach-ing undergrad classes, but everything was so tight. On top of that, you have the added fun of knowing you have to pay back most of it.

BASo you know you’re going to be poor if you just hang out a shingle that says, ‘Kristin Fogdall, Poet.’ Plus, you’ve got a steep grad-school tab coming due. How did you blend the dream with reality?

KFWell remember the dream was two-fold: first came the love of writing and then finding the poetry within that. When I was in my last year of grad school, I started to ask myself what does it mean to support yourself as a writer, as a poet. The obvious path was academia; to get a job at a university where I could rely on a paycheck and still have time to focus on the poetry. But I knew from my time in grad school that there are a lot of bullshit politics that come with university jobs and I didn’t want to get involved with that. The other thing I realized that last year was the field of fund raising, of which I had worked in briefly, was morphing into the profession of Development Communications. And that was more than just beating the bushes for money, but required designing campaigns and learning people’s stories and telling those stories in creative ways. Plus, it appeared to pay well

so it seemed like the ideal job to finally blend all of the skills I had been developing over the previous dozen or so years of my life.

BAAnother elbow moment, so to speak, where you were headed in one direction and then started to bend in another.

KFExactly. So it being the age before the Internet, I started scouring the newspapers and one Sunday morning in the Boston Globe saw a posting for a development writer at a place called Philips Exeter Academy.

BAOoo. Private school gig.

KFYeah. I got an interview and they wound up offering me a job in their Development office. And the rest is history so to speak.

BAYeah, because it was that experience that ultimately led to you owning your own Development Communications firm.

KFExactly, and I never thought that would be my life.

BADo you regret it?

KFAbsolutely not. What I love is writing and all I ever wanted to do was to be able to support myself as a writer.

BAI was reading an article the other day about how women’s salaries, while not equal with men’s, have climbed from somewhere in the neighborhood of $.50 to the dollar to around $.80, but during that same time, woman are now reporting a decrease in personal satisfaction. Have you expe-rienced that now that you do own a successful business, that you’re not as satisfied?

KFYou know, I went to a women’s college and when you go through that experience, you come away with a certain vi-sion of the world that you just can’t take that shit (making

1 0 b r o a da m b i t i o n. c o m

less than a man). I remember early in my career having an argument with one of my bosses that had nothing to do with my salary directly, but over the course of a lunch he said flat out, “I would hire a woman because I can pay her less. That’s the market. That’s the beauty of the market. There’s nothing wrong with that.”

BAHe said that to you?

KFTo me and another colleague over lunch. Two young women just starting out who now are reading between the lines of the conversation figuring out that he hired two young women for what he could get for one guy. And we proceeded to have a hard and fast discussion of what is wrong with that.

BAThe “Market”?

KFYes. I just said to him how can you in good conscience….I mean who gives a shit about “the Market”? How can you live with yourself doing that? If that’s what you truly believe, how can you tolerate that moral position?

BAHow’d that work out?

KFHe said, “I don’t think about the moral position. The only thing that matters is my responsibility to the institution.” I think about knowing and working with that guy in the years after that conversation; he actually became a friend and a colleague, and how he’d never say those things now. But when I think back on it…

BAYou think he might think back on that and say, “Jesus, was I ever an asshole for saying that?”

KFI hope so.

BAHow did the women’s college graduate who just gotten this new job working for a guy who’s “just respecting the Mar-ket” resolve that sentiment?

KFCalling ‘Bullshit’ that day at lunch.

BAWhat did he think of you calling ‘Bullshit’?

KFWell, I remember waking up around 2am the following morning and thinking, “Ohhhh…I’m probably fired.” But the guy liked what I did for the school.

BASo no consequences?

KFThe consequences were speaking my mind, subsequently not being fired, and taking it on the chin to continue to work in that job. Not quitting that job and choking on what I knew. I can remember listening to him speak and feeling the anger building and actually believing that once I was done letting him know the error of his ways, that he would look at me and go, “You know what? You’re right; how could anyone ever think women should be paid less. Let’s start paying you as much as your male counterparts.”

BASo you got a raise?

KFMmmmm…not so much.

BABut not so much anymore, right? Fair market value is fair market value? Now that you own Kristin Fogdall Studio, would you say that you’ve “made it”? That you would not report a decrease in personal satisfaction?

KFI would not report a decrease in personal satisfaction. Now that I make my own schedule, it’s wonderful to be able to hit pause at any given time, within reason, and go on a hike with Chris (new husband), or go to an art showing, or a poetry reading, or whatever. It’s all flexibility. Even though I don’t necessarily have as much time as I necessarily want, there is flexibility within that time and that’s worth a lot. And the money’s there and it’s on par with what my talents bring to a client, regardless of gender.

BATime’s always at a premium, especially when you have a lot to juggle. Out of all of the hats you wear: woman, mother, business owner, spouse, which one do you wear the most, or which of those roles do you most identify with?

KFI wear all of my hats at once like some Dr. Seuss character. I have a home office so at any given moment I can be in any of those roles; from working on a campaign to going down to my husband’s music studio and listening to him play his guitar. It’s great. I have been surprised to discover that I am an entrepreneur. I didn’t know that I was entrepreneurial until I discovered what it took to set-up this business, and I’ve loved every minute of it. I’ve always had that indepen-dent streak, but didn’t know what it would translate to for creating a livelihood.

BADo you think you dodged the “less satisfaction” bullet be-cause you’ve carved your own path?

KFAbsolutely. I think studies like the one you mentioned reflect the multiple demands women feel. And they are very real demands that can create tremendous pressure. You asked which role I most identified with, and I think not identify-ing with any one in particular, realizing that I am all of those things, the sum of all of those identities, lends to peace of mind. Being 50 also helps because I’m afforded a great deal of hindsight, and having created my own business means I don’t have anyone other than myself telling me to stay late or work on the weekends and possibly missing out on some great family time. But even with the freedom that comes with having my own gig, I always want to give back to those around me.

BASomething to add to your daily To Do list: Make more family time.

KFThat sounds funny, but I have done just that, at least men-tally. If you don’t make time for both yourself and family, everything gets out of whack and that’s just not fun.

The Gihon River

Four ways out of the garden, and I chose you.

At night, I open the window for company.

Your voice sounds like wind, someone saying

the same words again and again,

a rhyme that only rhymes itself.

At the table, one lamp to turn on.

There we are, reflected in the glass.

You share my body, but keep moving past,

it’s not for you

to dwell in any single place.

I thought exile would change everything.

Maybe it does, where you are going.

For now, tell me one more time

about the rain, how it waters the tree of heaven,

how we’ll never go back.

Kristin Fogdall

1 2 b r o a da m b i t i o n. c o m

Everybody needs beauty as well as bread, places to play in and pray in, where nature may heal and give strength to body and soul.

—muiR

1 4 b r o a da m b i t i o n. c o m

P.O.I.point of interest

When I lived in Bend, OR it was considered a big deal to go

to the “Coast.” I don’t necessarily know why. It wasn’t as

if it was the 19th century and one had to make the 200-mile

journey on horseback. You got in your car and four hours

later you were staring at the Pacific. I think it had more to do

with the fact that Bend at the time was a small town with not

a ton going on because when you mentioned your impending

coastal trip to friends, you could feel the excited suggestions

before they were even shared.

“Oh, you’ve got to checkout this new restaurant”, or “I hear

___ is a great breakfast joint” and “Some of the bars in ___

town are open to 2 AM” were just some of the must-dos

that would come your way.

I was going to the Coast because my husband had proposed

to me there months earlier in a town called Yachats. We’d

rented a house for the weekend and in the four months that

followed, had planned the wedding for June. And now we

were back to visit the spot where it happened just before we

tied the knot.

We had no plan (one of my favorite destinations is Unknown)

and headed west on Route 20 out of Bend. Once we reached

Route 101, which parallels the Pacific Ocean, we headed

south. We meandered and I can’t quite remember anything

specific about the drive except that it was beautiful, and we

planned to camp somewhere. We just kept driving because

often when we do that, something nudges us in the right di-

rection and we end up somewhere unexpected and wonder-

ful.

And there she was on the side of the road fixing a gate. A

Park Service guide.

We pulled over and said hello. She was kind, but busy so we

got right to the question: “If you had only one night on the

Oregon Coast, where would you camp?”

She thought for a minute and a look came across her face

that I’d seen countless times: If I share this place, will it ruin

it? (I’m having the same thought as I write this piece.)

We looked at her with patient and hopeful eyes. She was

quiet a moment more. Then she said, “OK”. She turned her

back to us and pointed southwest.

“There’s a road,” she said, “It’s called Sparrow Park. It’s not

a nice road; it’s bumpy and seems like it is going nowhere.

When it seems like you should turn back, keep going. It’s a

few miles. There will be a small parking lot at the end. You’ll

walk the rest of the way, but it’s not a long walk. That’s where

secret spot, we’ll just say that the road to get to Sparrow

Beach is technically in the town of Gardiner, OR. If you’re

driving south on route 101 and actually make it to town,

you’ve gone too far. If you’re headed north on 101, go through

Gardiner, and start looking left.

WHEN: Go June-July. The water will be colder (though it’s

always cold), but the sun is in the sky for close to 16 hours a

day. Plus, it’s a bit chillier at night so it’s perfect for

sleeping next to a fire built from the driftwood that is plentiful

on the beach.

HOW MUCH: $0. You’re technically in the Siuslaw National

Forest, but not at a campground. You’re simply camping at

the end of a gravel road. There are no services. There is only

serenity.

DON’T FORGET: The aforemen-

tioned Crazy Creek chair. It rolls

up and is easy to carry between

your campsite and the shoreline

and can double as a bedroll if you

find the sand uncomfortable.

CRAzy CREEK HEx 2.0 ORiGiNAl CAMp CHAiR rei.com

I’d camp.”

We thanked her and hopped back in the car. She was right;

the road was sketchy. It was potholed and we had to take it

slowly...very slowly. It seemed like a road in a faraway land

that didn’t have road crews.

We parked and grabbed our gear. My husband saw it first

and made the “this is going to be so amazing” noise that

comes out as a low, drawn out “duuuuuude”. He is sparing

with exclamation so I picked up the pace to see what he saw.

Wow.

We were at the edge of the continent: Lewis and Clark shit. It

was stunningly beautiful.

The sun still hung in the sky because it was June and there

was nothing in the way of the sunset. We threw our stuff

down behind a dune and shimmied to the top. We sat in our

Crazy Creeks (remember those?) and watched with awe. We

were the only people there.

The beach was wide and all we could see in both directions

was sand and surf. We never saw another soul even though

we left the next day around noon. Heaven.

WHERE: Out of respect for that Park Ranger who shared her

1 6 b r o a da m b i t i o n. c o m

sweet crazy

CONTINUED FROM THE FALL/WINTER ISSUE OF CADENCE

Logan took a quick breath. “So, if it never goes away, does

that mean I hate cinnamon for the rest of my life? That’s really

going to suck. ”

Duke noticed some humor returning to his daughter’s voice.

“I mean, we’ve got your famous cinnamon French toast, the

cinnamon buns at Timbers Inn, the 100 days that Christmas

now seems to suck up…..”

Now a smile crossed Duke’s face, but he held onto the tail of

the trauma just shared.

“It doesn’t go away, but it rounds, if that makes sense.” He

pushed himself back from the edge of the cliff and stuck his

legs out in front of him in a stretching position. He tried to

touch his toes, but his hands barely made it past his knee-

caps. “Birthdays, holidays, goddamn sunsets…everything

that used to feel good, feel warm, felt like a spear being

driven into my gut. I remember one time, we had just moved

up here and I was walking back from town. Beautiful day.

Sunny, not a cloud to be had. And I just started crying. Full

snot stream…the works.”

Logan crossed her arms and stared at her dad as he stood

up.

“War is now a part of who you are, and you never get over it.

It never goes away. The trick is finding a place for it.”

She studied her dad’s face from behind the safety of her sun-

glasses. Logan had only seen this look a handful of times, the

first as a kid when he had brought her to the Wall in Wash-

ington, D.C. His face was hard, but his eyes shimmered with

forty years of sorrow beneath them.

“When you find that place, sunsets will start to feel warm

again. Joy will come back and share space with the pain.

And I can help whenever you need it.”

A soft smile crossed Logan’s lips. “And beer?”

Duke acknowledged the cue to wrap up of this part of their

conversation with a nod, and smiled back at his daughter.

He moved away from the cliff and toward the pool below the

falls. “Beer should already taste better. And it’s even sweeter

when you’re not the one buying it.”

He had reached the spot where Logan had slipped off her

trail runners, picked them up, and lobbed them onto the oppo-

site bank of the falls.

“Really?!” she asked as her dad turned and began to jog

back down the trail.

“Last one off this mountain is buying, and at my age I need all

of the help I can get,” he called back.

“Then I hope you brought your wallet,” she hollered before

jumping into the water.

chapter 2

“Contact right! Contact right! Fire’s coming from the north!”

But her shouts were too late. She knew this. Her team, what

was left of it, began returning fire to a rim of sandstone just

a whisper past the effective range of any weapon she knew

to be in the platoon. Except she knew every rifle, sidearm,

rocket...whatever....should be reaching that goddamn ridge.

Hell, they were close enough to see their beards. But even

as she squeezed the trigger on her own weapon, she could

see the rounds exiting the barrel and slowing to the speed of

mud.

“FUUUUUUUCCCK!” The scream sounded as if it came from

a grizzly bear, that is if a grizzly bear had the power of speech

and had one of its paws shredded by a grenade.

She turned in the direction of the howl to see Bailey stagger-

ing down the line of vehicles even as his curse seemed to

echo from the canyon walls. His left hand was gone. His right

hand was slung low to the ground clutching a collar, a mop of

1 8 b r o a da m b i t i o n. c o m

blonde hair dragging in the sand beneath it.

She knew how the rest of this went. A cloud of pink mist

appearing above the forehead of Gunnery Sargent Timothy

H Bailey. Timothy H Bailey of Villanova, PA twisting back-

wards. Timothy H Bailey, new father to Timothy H junior,

falling on the body he had been dragging. The blonde hair

parting to reveal the face of the comrade he still clutched

to. The Grateful Dead’s Eyes of the World drowning out the

weapons fire?? The low, sauntering guitar riff leading into,

“Right outsiiiiiiide this lazy summer morn….”

Logan sat up so quickly that she almost fell off the couch.

Her phone was vibrating its way to the edge of the coffee

table while simultaneously warbling a Dead tune. She let it

fall to the floor. Jerry Garcia stopped singing after another

second.

Her eyes swept the room. At her twelve o’clock, a stone

fireplace with four stacked logs. A wide and well-cracked

leather chair at two o’clock. To her left, a series of three

floor-to-ceiling windows. Her heart rate began to drop.

Home. She was in the house she grew up in.

Logan brought her palms up to her eyes and rubbed away

the residue of the dream, though she knew it would be

back. It always came back. She glanced behind her and

saw two empty bottles of Long Trail Ale sitting on the bar

that separated the living room from the kitchen. The day

came back into focus.

She had in fact caught up with, and passed, her dad on

the run back to the jeep. Driving through town Duke had

suggested the Den as the pub to pay up on his wager. Two

beers each and some ‘Welcome homes’ from the regulars

and they had left. The third round she was now clearing

from the granite bar was what had led to her impromptu

nap. Still in her damp running clothes, no less. At least she

had taken off her shoes. Those she could see through the

windows resting on a small pile of mud on the deck.

She walked around to the kitchen side of the bar, slid the

recycle bin from beneath the sink, and pitched the Long

Trails. A boing mixed with the clinking of the bottles. She

made a mental note to change that alert tone as she

shuffled her socked feet back into the living room. She re-

trieved her phone from just beneath the couch and looked

at the screen. No name on the display, just a number. But

she knew the number well. She tapped it. Two rings and

then, “Hey Logan.”

“Hi Mrs. Qui..Hi Nancy.”

“Sorry to cut to the chase, but can you get over here…

like now?” Nancy Quinn had always had a flare for the

dramatic, but there was an edge in her voice.

“Trish?” asked Logan.

“Yup. She’s got Cooper out in the yard and it’s not looking

too good for him. It would be really appreciated if you could

come over and maybe lend a hand.”

“Throwing my shoes on now. I’ll be there in two minutes.”

“I hope he lasts that long.”

Logan stepped on and then over the couch to the sliding

door that opened onto the deck. The late-day sun caused

her to squint, but she welcomed its warmth. She hadn’t

realized the chill that had slipped over her since waking.

She threw on her mud-caked Merrells and stuck her head

back in the house.

“Duke,” she hollered. “I’m running over to Trish’s. I should

be back in an hour or so.” Logan didn’t wait for a response

and bounded down the steps of the deck.

She moved across the gravel driveway picking up speed. A

trail cut through a meadow of blue Turtlehead and Monks-

hood that was the home’s backyard. A football-field later

Logan was running across a bridge over the river that

separated her land from that of her friend’s.

She emerged from a stand of trees to see Aldrik’s Peak

beginning to cast a looming afternoon shadow into the

valley. The wild beauty of the scene was enough to make

anyone stop and take in the view. What was happening in

the front yard of the Quinn house only added to it, the wild

part at least.

“Jesus Tricia. If you have a problem with me, don’t take it

out on Booze.” The plea came from a man with a bloody

nose sprawled incongruously in the yard just beneath the

home’s front porch.

Logan turned her gaze up the steps of the porch to see her

best friend from childhood. She was shuffling backwards,

hunched over, with a giant red dog locked in a half nelson.

The animal was clearly unamused and was attempting to

remedy the situation by sinking an incisor into Trish’s tat-

tooed bicep.

“Why? Why can’t you just leave him alone?” Cooper

huffed. “You know he doesn’t respond well to you let alone

having you get physical with him.” He accentuated his

point by spiking to the ground some grass that he pulled

from his hair.

At that moment the dog tried to win himself a piece of fore-

arm and Tricia Quinn executed a quick 180-degree pivot on

her boot heels. The snapping mass of fur and froth became

a hovercraft. He skimmed above the wooden deck until he

reached the edge of the steps, at which point he went fully

airborne. His legs and ears shot outward as centrifugal

force grabbed hold and he took on the appearance of a

90-pound starfish spinning through the air.

Booze hit the ground on all fours and instantly broke into a

manic sprint. Foamy saliva flew from his dangling tongue

spraying his supine owner. Cooper tried to shield his face

from the assault of canine slobber, but a small lake landed

on his forehead.

Trish stared at the dervish with a malignant grin. She

turned to her husband and the grin vanished. “Leave him

alone? What’s the point of having a pet that you can’t fuck-

ing pet! You see, Cooper, how it typically works is a dog

acts as a companion, not an assassin in waiting. I can’t

walk past that beast without it looking at me like I’m some

kind of smudge to be rubbed off the face of the planet. He’s

done. And so are you.”

Cooper ignored his wife’s lecture, rose and strode toward

his dog with as much alpha presence his aching face

would allow. “Come here, Booze,” he half pleaded. The dog

gave no indication of hearing the command and turned his

chaos towards a fading flowerbed.

“Hey Elkee.” The greeting came from the porch telling

Logan her friend had finally noticed her.

Logan Kallihan, or LK, had morphed into sounding like EL-

Kee during her first tour with the Lioness program.

“How’s it going, Trish?” Logan offered striding toward the

porch.

“Could be better, I suppose.”

Logan smiled to herself as she climbed the steps to her

friend. One of Trish’s most redeeming qualities was her

ability to understate things, especially when the shit was

hitting the fan. It had come in handy more than a few times

in Afghanistan.

The two friends hugged as Logan reached the top of the

steps.

“Out for another run,” Trish asked with a sideways look,

“….or did my mom become concerned for the structural

integrity of Cooper’s skeletal system?”

2 0 b r o a da m b i t i o n. c o m

“She wasn’t quite as, ah, scientific as that, but yeah, ol’

Nance dropped me a line; thought I might be able to help

out,” Logan replied while watching Cooper run Z patterns

around the yard chasing his demented dog. “And I didn’t

notice any crazy glider pilots out at Bear Creek this morn-

ing flying low enough to ID a face. What makes you think

I’ve already been out for a run?”

“No…no flying peepers today.” Trish had used some of the

talents she had acquired in the Marine Corps to become

a glider pilot. Soaring, as it was marketed, was popular

with the more adventurous leaf-peepers and Trish typi-

cally found herself airborne for six or seven hours a day

this time of year. “Hannigan’s working in the kitchen at the

Den these days. He saw you and Duke through the line and

called to see if I wanted to come down and join you guys

for beers. Said you were looking hot and sweaty. I gave

him the benefit of the doubt and figured he was using those

words in an exercise context.”

“Lovely,” Logan said flatly.

A yelp from the lawn caught their attention and they

turned. Cooper was in a ball on the ground, again, grabbing

at his ankle.

“Jesus Christ. How the fuck did I ever date that…man, let

alone marry him?” Trish groaned. “Hey tubby,” she barked

at her soon-to-be ex-husband. “It’s time to hit the gym

when your joints start giving out chasing a doggie.”

A middle finger extended from the ball.

“Chalk it up to PTSD,” Logan offered shrugging her

shoulders with a shadowy grin. “So why didn’t you come

down?”

“This,” Trish said pulling an envelope from her back

pocket. “It kind of put me in a dark, or should I say darker,

mood toward my husband. Nothing like following up an

affair with an extra helping of betrayal.”

Logan noticed the seal of the State of Vermont on the enve-

lope. “What is it?”

Trish turned her attention away from her writhing husband

and looked at her friend. “It’s a notice of permit approval.

It’s a permit to end all of this,” she fumed sweeping her arm

across their view of the Crazy Creek Valley.

“Let me see,” Logan said reaching for the document. She

tugged it from Trish’s clutch and read:

“Notice V-387 is intended to inform Cooper l. Dickson and

Gene R. Dalhausen (THE pARTiES) that the Environmental

Commission of District 5 of the State of Vermont’s Natu-

ral Resources Board has received and recognized their

Articles of incorporation for Hamlet in the Heavens (THE

COMpANy) and furthermore has granted full and final

approval to the company’s proposal to construct on VT

parcel 567Ay 284 lodging units, a 32,000-square foot activi-

ties center, and 80,000-square feet of commercial space

whose tenants are to be determined. The District 5 Court

also holds that the company may also….”

The three-page document devolved into a morass of legal-

ese, but Logan was beginning to understand her friend’s

mood. It was falling on her too.

Memories began to glow in Logan’s mind like the low set-

ting of a light bulb hooked to a rheostat dial. The Quinns

were fourth-generation Vermonters. At one point they’d

owned more than 100 acres in the valley and part of the

mountainside abutting what was now the Sweet Tree Ski

Resort. Logan’s parents had actually bought 10 acres from

Tricia’s parents when the Kallihans had moved to the Green

Mountains.

Logan began to remember the email exchanges she’d had

with Trish after her friend had left for home. How the valley

had changed in the years they’d been downrange. How

Sweet Tree’s expansion drove up land values. How her

mom had fallen behind on the real estate taxes.

Logan’s trip down memory lane picked up speed. She re-

called the “So I met this guy” email and how the guy turned

out to have a few million bucks after being part of some-

thing with a dotcom in the title. Five months after that cor-

respondence, the one with TIME TO BURN SOME LEAVE

as the subject line. He had proposed and Trish wanted her

best friend to come back and be her maid of honor.

Was she in love with him?, Trish had speculated in the

email. The answer to that specific question was hazy as he

had also offered to buy a majority of the Quinn land thus

relieving Nancy Quinn of an immense and untenable tax

burden. That, Trish had written, was something that she

definitely loved; money for her mom and the tax man off

her mom’s back. Plus he, Coop as Trish called him in her

writings, seemed so sincere and sweet, two adjectives that

didn’t necessarily fall in Love’s orbit, in Logan’s opinion.

Logan still felt guilty about missing the wedding even

though she knew she shouldn’t. She’d had one hell of an

excuse for not making the trip home.

“I don’t get what this is. It reads like jack-ass there is get-

ting into the development business,” Logan said nodding

down toward Cooper. “Sounds like something that belongs

up in Williston.”

“Nope,” Trish replied spitting out the ‘p’ in the word. “VT

Parcel 567AY is the 80 acres Cooper superman-ed in a

bought from my mom to save her from an avalanche of

taxes. It’s the land I thanked him so much for buying….

all of the land that you see around us now. And it’s the

land the little shit weasel apparently has partnered with

Douchehausen to build themselves some kind of magical

mountain village.”

“It’s Dalhausen,” spoke the ball.

Trish made a move down the porch steps and Logan put a

hand on her shoulder. “Whoa whoa whoa. Let the star run-

ning back recover from his ankle booboo. This is an easy

one. We’ll start rolling on a divorce tomorrow. That land’s

yours as well. We’ll work on getting it back and figure out

the tax thing.”

Trish pulled her hair back into a ponytail. “You know that’s

why I didn’t make it down to the Den. I found this letter

and after I was done shaking, sat in the kitchen and had

that same thought. Thought through a couple of scenarios

actually. Most of them involved an untimely and extremely

unpleasant death for Cooper L. Dickson. But in the end, I

arrived at the same outcome you just described.”

The sun was almost completely behind Aldrik’s Peak and

cold air was tiptoeing into the valley along with the dusk.

“From what I can make out of his nose, it looks like you an-

nounced your plan with an exclamation point,” said Logan.

“No. I was pretty dialed back when he came home. Told

him the sky was blue, the sun rises in the East and that the

next several hundred months of his life were going to be a

world of shit.”

“So the nose job isn’t your work?”

A baleful smirk came across Trish’s face. “After I delivered

my very eloquent, controlled soliloquy on his future, he pro-

duced a deed. Turns out he had originally used one of his

companies to purchase the land and that it had never been

jointly owned once we were married. And here’s the kicker:

Once he ‘sensed’ our marriage wasn’t going to make it, he

sold my family’s land to the fucking ski patroller he’s been

boffing. That’s when I delivered the nose job.”

Trish rolled her neck and it sounded like bubble wrap being

squeezed. “Know what the going rate is for 80 acres of

2 2 b r o a da m b i t i o n. c o m

fourth generation land? $100. That’s how much one Anya

Ingerson paid for my family’s land.”

Logan looked down at her friend. The sadness in Trish’s

eyes wasn’t from the loss of the land necessarily. Rather it

was the dejection that came from feeling like the world’s

biggest joke. That voice that began to whisper in your

sleep, telling you that all of your instincts had failed and

you deserved to be mocked for it.

“When your mom called, she asked if I’d come over and

lend a hand. She didn’t say anything about that hand being

gentle.”

Trish’s face seemed to brighten.

Logan stared at Cooper as he was attempting to stand on

his wrenched ankle.

“Let’s go have a chat with the wannabe Donald Trump.”

To bE conTinuEd…

the stuff we “need” to make any day a better day

2.

4.

3.

covet

1.

6.

1. ONE lOVE ORGANiC ESSENTiAlS TO GO TRAVEl KiT ahalife.com

2. RASH GUARDmadewell.com

3. THE FOREST FEAST COOKBOOKtheforestfeast.com

4. BUSHiDO sportiva.com

5. MUSClE RUB moonvalleyorganics.com

6. SUN SHOWER TRUCKERsaffronjames.com

5.