A Paean to Outlander & Diana Gabaldon

Why this giddy sense of anticipation for the Outlander TV mini-series, scheduled to air in 2014 on STARZ? Familiar feelings, yes. I had them as a teen many years ago. We all look forward to events as a part of our pursuit of happiness - vacations, holidays. But this? My husband Jay, who has not read Diana Gabaldon's Outlander series, just shakes his head in wonder at me.

If you are not already a fan of the novels of the Outlander series - seven so far with the eighth due out in Septermber 2014 - then may I suggest you try the first book in the series, Outlander.

 Then you'll be ready when the series airs on STARZ. As I write it's being filmed in Scotland with fine actors and a lot of money behind the production.

I nearly bought Dragonfly in Amber (book #2) at a library book sale years ago, but a woman looking over my shoulder said, "That's the second in the series . . . don't read it until you've read the first book,  Outlander. They're really wonderful." I put it back on the shelf.  Finally, in the autumn of 2010 I began  Outlander (it was then free on Kindle). And I was hooked. I read the next six, one after the other, each longer and more complicated than the last. I finished them sometime in February, 2011. I can't think of a better way to spend a cold winter.

It all begins shortly after the end of World War II when Claire, a married English nurse, visits some standing stones in Scotland and is flung back to 1743, two years before the Battle of Culloden.

Caitriona Balfe as Claire Randall

 The fantasy in these novels is butter cream frosting on a superb dessert of historical fiction. Claire's forced marriage to Jamie Fraser, who epitomizes all the attributes you would want in a complicated male protagonist, begins one of the great romances in popular literature.

Sam Heughan as Jamie Fraser

 Each book is better than the last. Why?  Accurate historical renderings, complicated relationships, a lot of action -- and gentle humor.

Even if you aren't overwhelmed by Outlander, give the second book, Dragonfly in Amber, a chance.

 Claire and Jamie go to Paris in an attempt to stop Bonnie Prince Charlie from raising the highland clans in Scotland against the English crown, a rising that will end on the bloody field of Culloden. Gabaldon really hit her stride in that book - and hasn't stopped since. The series eventually takes Claire and Jamie to North Carolina prior to and during the American Revolution.

And if you become a fan, as I hope you will, you can watch with others as Karen Henry rounds up the latest on this fansite Outlandish Observations.

November Apples

In September and October these three varieties of apples were hard and bitter. I picked from other trees. What a difference a month makes.

Last year we allowed our neighbor Davy to feed his hogs apples from this tree.  Nights of frost, but not hard freezes, have allowed the apples to perfect themselves. The leaves have fallen and the apples ornament the trees like old-fashioned glass Christmas balls.

Even Pepper got involved, running off with an apple and digging a hole. Realizing it wasn't a bone, he walked off without burying it.

We'll see how the apples last during the winter in the garage. I"ll probably plug in a little oil radiator to try to keep them from freezing. As they deteriorate or, if we have a heavy snow, I'll feed them to the many whitetail deer that will come begging.

A Trip Over Moon Pass, Idaho

I'm writing a novel titled No Law South of Wallace and had wanted to experience the famous tote road that ran south out of Wallace, Idaho, across Moon Pass and into the St. Joe Valley to Avery, an area where much of my story takes place in the logging camps during World War I. The Indian summer has been perfect and off we went. We arrived in  Wallace, once a great mining town and still a fine town, and then  headed south on Forest Road 456. In earlier days pack mules carried supplies over the mountains. It had been especially crucial during the great forest fire of 1910 until Wallace itself partially burned. Along the road through a valley we saw remnants of what we thought had been great cedars that died during that conflagration, their hulks still standing. They're called the Silent Sentinels and the valley is listed on the National Register of Historic Places.

The tamaracks and foliage were glorious.

Jay's Brittany Pepper came along, as usual -- he insists on the car windows rolled down so he can poke out his snout -- but because we drove slowly and it was warm, I didn't complain.

There were sparkling streams, low at this time of year.

Over the mountains and down the other side, the Forest Service road enters the old Milwaukee Road railroad bed, now a part of the Hiawatha Rail-Trail for hikers, and cyclists (and autos). The Chicago, Milwaukee and Puget Sound Railroad was laid over The Bitterroots out of Montana, through the St. Joe Valley, and on to Puget Sound, completed  in 1909. Below is the Kyle Tunnel, one of the few totally rock-faced tunnel portals on the Milwaukee.

And so we came out at Avery and then followed the highway down the Shadowy St. Joe River, the highest navigable river in the U.S., to St. Maries and then home again.

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