Spirited Woman Blogger Team

Guest Blogger - Annie Vanderbilt - Out of the Ashes

The afternoon I learned from my agents that Penguin was going to make an offer on my novel, The Secret Papers of Madame Olivetti, was a day of fire. No first-time author can forget that phone call or letter or email with the amazing news that a publisher wants your book! You remember where you were and what you were doing. In my case, the air was gray with smoke, as if the world was coming to an end, and ashes rained down on the driveway.

The Castle Rock Fire had been burning for ten days in the hills around Ketchum, Idaho. Over 2,000 people had evacuated their homes while crews from all over the country had been called in to fight the wildfire. On August 28th, 2007, flames shot up over the crest of Bald Mountain, famous for Sun Valley’s ski slopes. It looked as if a volcano had erupted with dark smoke billowing out of the mountain’s summit.

My husband, Bill, and I had already loaded our truck with all our belongings, which were few since two years earlier our house in Ketchum, where we had lived for twenty-three years, had burned to the ground. Fire is no stranger to our lives, with the ironic touch of the only surviving manuscript of my first novel, written thirty years earlier, going up in smoke along with our house and its contents.

The day the Castle Rock Fire reached the top of Baldy I had my computer and a hard copy of Madame Olivetti in the truck. We were ready to evacuate in case the fire could not be contained and jumped the slopes into Ketchum. It was difficult to breathe in the smoke; our eyes stung and lungs hurt. At three p.m. I walked out of the house and was just locking the front door when the telephone rang. “I’ll get it,” I said to Bill, and ran back into the darkened house. My literary agent was on the phone, her words imprinted forever on my mind: Ellen Edwards, executive editor of National American Library, Penguin Books, is going to make an offer on your book tomorrow.

Guest Blogger - Annie Vanderbilt - Locks of Love

Sometimes I get so caught up in my writing that I lose track of the bigger picture. A few summers ago a small act of generosity on the part of two Peruvian American girls whom I think of as my granddaughters put my career in perspective. Wendy and Jackelyn, aged eleven and eight, decided to cut their hair, which cascaded to their waists, and donate two ponytails each to the charitable foundation, Locks of Love, to make wigs for children who had lost their own hair through cancer treatments.

They debated. Their hair was not only thick and glossy, but everyone complimented them on its length and beauty. Their mother braided and wove it in stunning creations held back with butterfly clips and flowers when the girls performed traditional Peruvian dances. Peruvian women wear their hair long. Wendy and Jackelyn’s hair was a sign of their heritage. Finally the girls made their decision and rushed to tell me, “We’re going to cut our hair and give it to Locks of Love!” They looked both thrilled about and terrified by their decision.

A friend who is a hairdresser in Ketchum, Idaho, offered to cut their hair. The sisters had never been to a professional salon before - that was excitement in itself. Jackelyn, the younger of the two, went first. My friend Sharon separated Jackelyn’s hair into two ponytails held by elastics at shoulder level and then cut them off while Jackelyn, close to tears, tried to look brave. Then Sharon shaped Jackelyn’s hair in a bob that swung below her ears and the transformation was complete. Jackelyn beamed; she looked winsome and chic.

Wendy’s turn was next. She stood barely breathing, with a similar grimace as her sister when she heard the snip of the scissors on her hair. And then she, too, took on the look of a girl with a swishy summertime haircut.

Guest Blogger - Annie Vanderbilt - The Voluptuous Side of Living

One of the great pleasures of writing your first published novel when you are in your fifties is that you have more perspective on life and can let the voluptuous side of living and loving take center stage. Some of us spend the first half of our lives trying to fit into a mold we have fashioned for ourselves from false expectations. What a relief to shed that mold at last. It never fit in the first place.

Take Lily Crisp, the protagonist of my novel, The Secret Papers of Madame Olivetti. She has gone to France with her portable typewriter to reassess her life, to step back and see herself clearly. She is weary of secrets. But her husband, Paul, who has recently died of a heart attack, has left her holding an overfull plate of unfinished business. Lily is fifty-two, a delicious age for recapitulation, for investigating one’s doubts and regrets and doing away with them. When Lily was younger, if she made mistakes, she locked them inside, where guilt and remorse could grow and fester—not a healthy brew. But Lily, as she’s aged, has gained perspective by maintaining a sense of humor (without which none of us can keep our integrity, our grit, and our spirit) and by forgiving herself—not an easy task but ultimately doable.

At some point, we all drag out our whips and chastise ourselves for what we said last week, the friend we forgot to call, the husband or lover we treated unkindly. We are not perfect. Ah ha! It’s okay. This is nothing new. That’s what Lily realizes. Sure, she’s raked herself over the coals for a couple of sexual peccadilloes she would sooner forget, but they are part of her history. Now that she’s solidly into her fifties, she can admit to being a sexual creature and celebrate that gift rather than rue it. She can admit to never discussing the issues that tore into her heart, and maybe Paul’s. She can admit to wishing she’d behaved differently. But she loved wholeheartedly. If she stinted with the truth, she was generous with her time and love and, in this respect, acted honestly.

Guest Blogger - Annie Vanderbilt - Six Invincible Women on an Unforgettable Canoe Trip

In 1986, four years after I fell off a cliff and was still walking with a cane, I captained a paddle raft on a white water river—the Middle Fork of the Salmon, in central Idaho. We were a group of six enthusiastic, spirited women in our early forties. After the first rapid, which we negotiated without honor or skill, bouncing off every rock in our path, we honed our talents—or lack thereof—on a stretch of flat water.

I called out commands: right turn, left turn, forward, back paddle, rest. My untried crew paddled backward when I shouted forward and spun left when I called right. Paddles clacked; we were out of sync. We toppled sideways onto the thwarts, weak with laughter. But we gathered our forces, tried again, and again, and in the spirit of solidarity, not to mention survival, were eventually twirling, speeding forward, reversing and stopping in unison.

We aced Velvet Falls. A quick, strong rudder action set us up at the perfect angle as we cut in behind a boulder near the left bank. Then a muscular forward charge shot our raft down the tongue of the rapid past a huge, almost river-wide hole, where the current dove down to the riverbed. (Had we flipped in the falls, we'd have had a dangerous swim through cold, rock-strewn water.) Ecstatic, we sped onward. There were shouts of triumph. We were hot!

Guest Blogger - Annie Vanderbilt - A Sherpa For Tony

For the past fourteen years I have been blessed with the perfect excuse to go adventuring: working as a so-called Sherpa for my long-time friend and Spirited Man extraordinaire, the British artist Tony Foster. Tony paints watercolor diaries of wilderness journeys and has done so for 25 years. He needs help schlepping supplies into backcountry camps and enjoys having company at the end of long days of painting in wind, rain, snow, blowing sand and biting insects, to name a few of the discomforts with which Tony copes while painting outdoors. As one of his support team, I see Tony off after breakfast and welcome him back when it is too dark or downright miserable to paint anymore. My days are spent in what I call wilderness puttering - a satisfying agglomeration of physical labor, philosophical reflection, and a level of cleanliness that includes dirt.

At times I've had doubts about being a Sherpa.

Honduras, 2001 (taken from an essay I wrote in Tony's beautiful new book, Painting at the Edge of the World,:  "For 12 hours we slog, slip and slide through creeks and up and over ridges through the rain forest, mud up to our knees, or if we fall, mud up to our noses. A pig farm with no crossing but the thick slurry of muck and pig exhaust that we wade through, wondering what tropical skin disorder or insect larvae deposited under our skin will come out of this thrash through a lake of mud. Then, three river crossings as dusk is falling, a swift current, slippery rocks, Tony's feet are swept out from under him - my husband, Bill, grabs Tony's arm before "el pintor" jets downstream into the darkened jungle. Camp is a clearing hacked with machetes out of the underbrush. Stalks of sharp-cut plants and bushes threaten to impale our tent, so, in the rain and muddy leaves, we slither under the nylon floor to push down the lethal dagger arrangement. Back in our tent our clothes are sopping and coated in mud, our bodies no different,

"What are we doing here?" I whisper to Bill.

The next morning—and each morning thereafter, for the 17 days we raft the Rio Platano—we pull on the same sodden, odiferous shirts and pants we have hung on a clothesline the night before in hopes that somehow, in the rain, they will detoxify and dry.   

While Tony paints wilderness views of heart-stopping drama or reflective calm, all fresh and immediate because he is out there in the elements, working with a paint box that fits in the palm of his hand, a few brushes, and his watercolor paper rolled up in an aluminum tube, I count myself fortunate, no matter the downsides. If I'm wet, mud-covered and exhausted, I take a lesson from Tony. Positive energy may not be the whole enchilada, but it's the fire in the salsa.

Annie will be posting through the week. Click here to read more of Annie's posts. 

- Annie Vanderbilt, www.annievanderbilt.com

Annie Vanderbilt recently published her hit debut novel, "The Secret Papers of Madame Olivetti," while in her 50's. A graduate of Radcliffe College, she met her husband, Bill Vanderbilt, at Harvard. Together they've  gone on wilderness adventures worldwide - hiking, rafting, and biking - for the past 40 years. Annie's worked as a carpenter, woodcarver, led backcountry programs, and run a ski touring business. She divides her time between Idaho and Sanibel, Florida.

Guest Blogger - Annie Vanderbilt - Honors Flo's Girls & The Meaning of Love

My mom was depressed and embittered and in the early stages of dementia when my father died. She was 87. My sister and I sold the family home in Milwaukee, Wisconsin and bought a little bungalow for her on an island off Seattle where my sister lived. Here began a story of flowers and birds and the Tennessee Waltz, of a mother who had lost her joy in living and found it again, even as her memory failed her.

Of the talented women who took care of our mother for the eight years until she died, there was a book artist, a potter, a dance instructor, a writer, a poet, a nurse, two or three painters, and several women who could do just about anything, from fix a leaky faucet to build a staircase. They all supported themselves through part-time caregiving, and after mom broke her hip we needed round-the-clock care.

This team of extraordinary women - we called them Flo's girls - cooked organic foods grown on the island, baked luscious cookies, kept mom's room filled with freshly cut flowers from the gardens my sister had planted, played music for Flo, from the Brazilian beat of Cesare Evora to arias sung by Pavarotti. One of Flo's girls loved to sew and had mom sorting buttons. This same woman, while humming the Tennessee Waltz, danced mom around the living room. I remember my mother's face tilted up as she twirled, safe in Jacqui's capable arms. She could have been 16, enchanted, intoxicated, in love. And she was in love, with her girls, with these women who came to love her in return.

In a lucid moment - her eyes sparkling - she might even remember a caregiver's name - she would say to her companion of that evening, "Sweetheart, you are so beautiful."

Guest Blogger - Annie Vanderbilt - Her Hike, THE Fall, A Changed Life in an Instant

When I was thirty-five and still thought I was invulnerable, I fell off a cliff in southeastern Utah. I was hiking with my husband, Bill, climbing out of a canyon when a slab of rock peeled off a cliff and knocked me over backwards. As I fell I remember thinking, “So this is it,” before I slammed into the ground. Miraculously, my back and neck didn’t break, and my front teeth, where the rock hit, were still in place. But my right anklebone was sheered in two. My leg bone jutted from the top of my boot.

Life changes in an instant. What had been a lark - two wilderness instructors doing what they loved best, scrambling cross-country - suddenly became a survival epic. It was a rugged two-day hike to our truck, so Bill chose to follow the route we’d been exploring. If it went, he could reach the road end by dark. Neither of us thought I would survive until morning. The multiple injuries, the bleeding, and the pain were too severe. We said good-bye, keeping our emotions in check. Tears were not going to get him out to our truck or me through the night.

Before this hike, I had just finished writing my first novel and had invested all my feelings of self-worth in its publication. But that night in the desert when I thought I might die, all that mattered were the people I loved. My husband and my family. Period. On that longest of nights I narrowed my thoughts to coping with the pain, remaining calm, and surviving. I screamed often to release the agony in my foot. It’s amazing the strength that we, as women, don’t know we have until the need arises. When, long after dark, Bill reached Escalante, the sheriff told him, “We can’t leave a woman out there alone. A man might make it, but a woman will never survive.” A medical helicopter rescued me the following morning. When I heard the whop-whop of the blades growing closer I finally let down and cried. Above me they were crying, too: the pilot, the nurse, and Bill.