Home stretch

Hi everyone,

The pictures today have nothing to do with the subject. I ran across them yesterday when looking for something else and loved seeing them again. In 2013, my book, CAVE DETECTIVES, UNRAVELLING THE SECRETS OF AN ICE AGE CAVE, was selected to be included in a 100-year time capsule that was buried in Phelps Grove Park in Springfield, Missouri.

Today I’ll send three poems for 5th graders to Laura Robb so she and Tim Rasinski can do their work with them. Next I’ll work on three poems for 4th grade students and will try to get those done this week. After that I have a series of short texts (500 words each) on a variety of topics scattered over grades 3, 4, and 5. I don’t expect to get much done on them before the end of the year but I need to at choose my subjects and start reading and taking notes. That will help get me down the home stretch after the first of the year. My deadline is the end of January. I’d like to complete the book before then but will be content to finish on time.

As I’ve said, this has been the year dedicated solely to working on books for classroom teachers. I have so many trade book ideas stored up that I know I’ll be buried in them once I get back into the mode.

Phelps Grove Park, named for John Smith Phelps, is a 100-acre park in central Springfield and is more than a century old. In the beginning it had a zoo and a lake. The zoo was later relocated, expanded, and renamed Dickerson Park Zoo. It’s a serene place where my parents used to take me to play and picnic when I was little. Daddy would throw horseshoes with other men. Mommy and I would amuse ourselves with the swings and teeter-totters until it was time for our basket lunch spread on a cloth placed on one of the concrete tables on the grounds or in the pavilion. And now I have a book buried there. CAVE DETECTIVES is about Riverbluff Cave in Springfield. I love the ties of life.

Back to bear basics

Hi everyone,

Yesterday I drove out to Missouri Institute of Natural Science, which is located on Cox Road South, a few hundred yards from Riverbluff Cave. The cave was discovered September 11, 2001 and has yielded fossil evidence of dozens of extinct animals dating back 1.5 million years. I wrote a book about the cave and its discovery called CAVE DETECTIVES, UNRAVELING THE MYSTERY OF AN ICE AGE CAVE, and served on the board during the years when the Missouri Institute of Natural Science and museum were going from dream to reality.

I also loaned my own bear skull to the museum. It’s the skull I found with a boyfriend in a small cave in southeast Springfield when we were twelve or so. I’ve been told it’s a black bear skull but somewhat different from today’s species. I haven’t had anyone study it but suppose it could be a subspecies and perhaps even an extinct one.

My reason for driving out to retrieve the skull is that I’m featuring it and its discovery in a new story I’m developing and I needed to have it beside me so I can describe it better.

Now it’s resting on my desk with replicas of a short-faced bear (the largest bear of all time) and a saber-tooth cat. My bear is dwarfed by both of those ancient, extinct carnivores. I thought you might like to see the contrast.

The short-faced bear

Hi everyone,

Last weekend we drove south past Branson to the home of Big Cedar Lodge and The Wilderness Club, properties of Bass Pro Shops. A third attraction is called Top of the Rock. This was formerly the home of Graham Clark, first president of College of the Ozarks. The hilltop view of Tablerock Lake and the rolling Ozark country is unsurpassed in the region.

Later the site was turned into a restaurant. Nine years ago it burned and has only recently reopened after major expansions that include a golf course (recent host to the Legends of Golf Tournament), two restaurants, a gift store, a chapel, a wine tasting bar, an indoor/outdoor pub, and more.

One of the things that caught my eye coming in was a display of ice age animals including the short-faced bear, American lion, and woolly mammoth. A wall reference mentions Riverbluff Cave in Springfield, home to the oldest known ice age fossils found anywhere on the North American continent (the last I knew).

My book, CAVE DETECTIVES, is written about the discovery, preservation, early explorations, and mysteries uncovered in Riverbluff. Standing there before a replica of the enormous short-face bear, mounted as though emerging from a cave, brought back memories. Here is how my book begins.

“A short-faced bear moves along a stream. He is a giant compared to any other bear that will ever live. He is mostly a carnivore, a meat eater. Whether he brings down his own prey, steals from smaller predators, or chases buzzards off a carcass, he is always hungry for meat.

“The stream loops through scattered clusters of pine trees and crosses a clearing. It comes to the base of a hill and disappears into the mouth of a cave. The bear knows this cave. It is cool in summer, a good place to nap through cold winters, and a safe hideaway to nurture newborn cubs. Rolling his massive head, the bear enters the cave and vanishes into the darkness.

“Sometime later a band of peccaries pauses outside the cave. The peccaries are about the size of pigs; they look much like pigs, too. For a while the peccaries mill around the entrance, snorting indecisively. When the leader heads inside, the others follow. Snuffling and grunting, the peccaries jostle one another down the black tunnel.

“Somewhere beyond the light, the bear rises up from a deep pit. Without warning he strikes, his great claws slashing at the clay bank as he lunges toward the snuffling and grunting above him. Squealing peccaries flee in terror, but there is no escape. Even in the dark, the bear is deadly. He catches a peccary and bites off its foot. In a short time the killing ends. Silence returns to the darkness.”

I’m glad to say that CAVE DETECTIVES has recently been made available from Chronicle Books in digital form. Anyone interested can order it online.

And that’s how I spent part of my weekend!

David