Beth Caldwell – The View From Here

Never in a million years did I think I would call an outhouse with a roof and walls “deluxe.” But having sat on a makeshift “box” out in the open in the middle of the bush on a very cold fall day, where anything with eyes can see me “do […]

There is an old story about a writer who goes to his teacher and says, “Teacher, all the stories have already been told. There is no need for me to write. “Everything that needs to be said has already been written.” “It’s true that there are no new stories,” the […]

I have boat legs and the keyboard is sliding across the desk. I’ve just stepped off the “Morning Dove” after four glorious days of sailing on good old Rainy Lake during the annual fall cruise with the Rendezvous Yacht Club. And I cannot imagine a better way to welcome the […]

How is it possible that seven weeks have zipped by since I last made notes in this column space? I have, in fact, been gunning to sit down and tell you for the past three weeks all about what’s been happening in my neck of the woods. Yet somehow the […]

I’ve become a “sleep geek.” In fact, most of the time I get enough good sleep (seven-eight hours most nights) that I can wake up on my own at a predetermined hour without an alarm clock going off first. Of course, that is if I’m not stirred from my biorhythmic […]

Here’s the thing. I could tell you the fact that I don’t write a column every week is because I’ve been so busy with other things that I have no time for plunking out my chronicles on a keyboard. But if I took that stance, my nose would grow like […]

When I was a little kid, I wanted to be an animal keeper when I grew up and have an animal farm. That was going to be my life’s work—taking care of animals. Maybe that dream was a spin-off of the “animal hospital” my mother always talked about. She said […]

I wish I had more courage. To paraphrase my favourite author, Melody Beattie: “I may not be a great warrior. I might not lead explorations to the North Pole or climb Mount Everest, but I still need courage.” I need courage daily, it seems, and most certainly almost every time […]

He’d been hinting at it for about a week; edging ever closer to what I’d hoped would be the ultimate question and result in the day I’ve been waiting for since the smooth-talking outdoorsman first put a minnow on my fishing hook. “I was thinking about going trout fishing this […]

Just when I decided I had nothing to write about this week, a chipmunk got into my basement. I stood in the doorway of the porch in my housecoat, with my coffee cup in hand, and scowled at the rain pitching down on my soon-to-be growing too fast lawn. I […]

My day starts around 5:30 every morning with the first of three cups of “Caldwell” coffee, along with a small red-foiled square of “Dove” chocolate (maybe two), while curled up in my reading chair with my self-help books (and I still need a lot of help!) Oh, and a novel—a […]

The glee was stacked as high as the pancakes and syrup they poked in around my table that morning before the hunt began. Goals were shared about egg collection; theories on where to look cooked up like the crispy pieces of bacon that followed the forks full of pancake down […]