Friday Night and It's Really Dark Outside

It's 10 p.m. on Friday night and it is REALLY dark outside. Well, duh, you say? Let me explain.

My husband, Don and I live just outside of Florissant, Colorado on top of a hill in a rural subdivision called Druid Hills. And when it gets dark here....it gets really dark. Nightfall has been the most interesting time of day here for me. Not only is it dark, but all the four-legged creatures come out after dark. We have five deer, two does, two fawns (one male, one female) and a big strapping buck who call our yard their home. They live somewhere at the bottom of our hill during the day, but at night they grace us with their presence. One of the doe, which I have fondly named Molly, has a huge hole in her left ear. Looks like she was tagged by the Forestry Service or whatever to follow her roaming patterns and the gadget fell out or something. The other doe is WAY too friendly for my own good! She waltzes right up to me everyday wanting something to eat. She wants me to pet her, rub her chin, whatever...but it kind of creeps me out. Every one around here refers to me as the Deer Whisperer, because all the deer just gravitate to me, but this one kind of creeps me out. She's cute! She's funny! But I think she'd come right on in the house, if I let her. Uh....no!

The other visiters we get are the occasional black bear who likes our garbage. But the ones I really don't like and who scare the beegeebers out of me are the 5 or 5 coyotes who visit my front yard about every other night...sometimes twice in one night...and have choir practice. It is the lonesomest, weirdest, disturbing sounds I have ever heard. All of them join in at once. All five or six of them and it is so high-pitched it is truly a sound only dogs should hear.

A few months ago I decided to put some of my imaginings down on paper. I have a vivid imagination, so while I was knitting my eBay orders (I knit special orders for people from all over), I would think up dialogue and what I came up with astounded even me...the one who has lived with this creative mind for 54 years. I started writing. Sometimes I would write for five minutes....other times a couple of hours. Now I'm a couple hundred pages into a story that has morphed into a great story of a nonfictional mining community with fictional characters...all set in 1934, right smack dab in the middle of the Great Depression. We are dealing with rheumatic fever, mining accidents, gossips, mystery and romance. Sounds like a soap opera, doesn't it? I'm very excited. Whether or not someone picks up the book to publish wasn't exactly my goal, but it would be fantastic should that happen.

We call this The Miner's Cut. The term Miner's Cut is an old term having to do with the cut of a diamond in the 1800s, but we are using it as a play on words. My own engagement ring was bought in this Colorado town, Ouray, and is a miner's cut. It is over a hundred years old and we bought it in an antique store and have had it appraised. Don and I wanted to write this story and it is growing into our brainchild.

The main characters are twin sisters, Hattie and Mattie Wright, who live in a beautiful Queen Anne home left to them by their miner father. Their story is one that not too many people talked about in those days. Mr. Wright's mother was Cherokee and walked the Trail of Tears as a child and lived on the reservation in Oklahoma. The girls' father, Mr. Wright became interested in mining when visiting Colorado Springs and befriending some successful miners who helped him get started. He married, moved the family to Ouray and made his fortune there, leaving it all to the girls in his Will. The family was ostracized because of their Native American roots, often being the butt of jokes and what we now call hate crimes. Neither married...and now are living together, wealthy middle-aged women who are seen as gossipers, but are really do-gooders. Except someone is out to get them and sends letters threatening them and signs the letters "The Miner's Cut".

Their faith sustains them; however, there are moments when they are petrified with fear. It will be fun to see how they go about their day-to-day activities all the while believing someone, an anonymous crazy person, if following and watching their every move, just waiting for the opportune moment to strike.