Weoka Creek Chronicles
For most of us, if we are asked to tell about our life, we will almost surely tell something about our early life. Growing up, and where we do it, forms a huge foundation to the rest of our life. I suppose that’s why the period is called the “formative years”.
Well, my formative years centered around life on my grandparents’ farm of about a thousand acres in central Alabama. Weoka Creek meanders like a snake through that part of Elmore and Coosa counties. Our farm was cradled comfortably in a large somewhat horseshoe shaped portion of the creek where it crossed from Elmore County into Coosa County and then back.
I didn’t know it at the time, but I was living through some pretty good stories. The people, places and events that touched my life during that time not only formed me into who I am today. They also have provided me with stories to that I enjoy telling. I call them Weoka Creek Chronicles.
Sag River Stories
During those years in the cradle of Weoka Creek, I learned to love to read. Fiction or nonfiction, it didn’t matter much which it was. I liked to read. One thing that I read a lot about was geography. I loved to read about and then imagine traveling to all the far flung parts of our world.
I became enthralled with the idea of traveling to Antarctica. Part of it was that it was so truly exotic and part of it was that so few people had actually been there. Just imagine walking around on over a mile of ice, at temperatures approaching minus one hundred degrees. Where the sun shines for six months on end, and then doesn’t shine for six months.
Later in life I fulfilled that fascination by living in Alaska. I know, wrong direction, but it worked for me. I got just about everything except the mile thick ice, and I got plenty of ice anyway.
Much of that time was spent working on the North Slope, that great coastal plain between the Brooks Range, running east to west from Canada to the Bering Sea, and the Arctic Ocean. Meandering wildly from the slopes of the Brooks Range northward to the ocean was the Sagavanirktok River. Everyone just calls it Sag River.
Along this river, starting at Prudhoe Bay, the Trans-Alaska Oil Pipeline was built. It continued over the mountains to the south and on to Valdez about eight hundred miles south. Those years provided me with another collection of stories to tell. I call them Sag River Stories.
San Diego Sagas
As I said, in Alaska I got plenty of ice and snow. Paula, my wife, and I finally just got tired of it and wandered southward (well, northward, then southward, but that’s another story) and found ourselves in San Diego for the past several years. What’s not to like about San Diego?
We first move to Julian, up in the mountains about forty miles east of the city of San Diego. Julian and the surrounding countryside isn’t what most people think of when they think of southern California. Up there we got snow and ice in the wintertime and hundred-plus temperatures in the summertime. Most of the time, though, it has a pretty comfortable climate.
And now, we actually live in the city. Granted, we’re up in the northern fringes of San Diego, but still in the city.
Julian and San Diego each make their own kind of stories. The characters of the towns meld the foundation of the stories that come from them. Still, they all have a common southern California context. I call them San Diego Sagas.
Miscellaneous Meanderings
Every story I tell can’t be about my life. Sometimes, a story is just a story. I’ve told a few of those, too.
It might be a story about something that I’ve read about. As I said above, I like to read. Whether it is fiction or non-fiction, I enjoy many genres of reading. I like to think that helps fire my imagination. In turn, I’ve been able to tell a few stories derived from what I have read. Those are my Miscellaneous Meanderings.
