It's Thanksgiving weekend. The family has been in and out, children and grandchildren everywhere and my "cup runneth o'er." We celebrated Josie's birthday yesterday and our numbers made a rousing chorus of "happy birthday." Our family has been blessed by music. There is a song of gratitude in our collective heart. We know we have been given much and we all acknowledge and praise the "giver."      Being with people you love, expressing diverse opinions in a lively discussion, and at the same time knowing you all share a common goal and belief, that is a Mink Creek kind of day.
  I've got to go. Breakfast needs to be fixed before some of the cousins set out to cut a Christmas tree.
Happy Thanksgiving to all of you!

   Blanding, Utah is as hot as Hades and twice as dusty. It's down by Lake Powell, in the middle of nowhere and hot and dusty.
   Wynn had a security guard friend, Dennis Gutke, who worked with him on Temple Square who also wanted to build a log house. Dennis had an acre in Blanding and was willing to pay Wynn $3,000 to help him build the shell of his house. The deal was made. The logs were purchased and off went Wynn with all his tools loaded in his 1949 Dodge pickup with the canvass "Deseret Water Bag" slung over the hood ornament. The truck looked like it had been painted with a brush. It had a wooden bed and started with a screwdriver. It was a hand-me-down from Aunt Rochelle and became a memorable addition to the Costley parade of cars. He also bought a used 125 cc Kawasaki  orange motorcycle, so he could drive back and forth cheaper.
  He'd been in Blanding for about a week when I got a call. "I need your help," he said. "I need somebody to help peel all of these logs."
  Oh, sweet ignorance. I was eager to help. He came home to get me. We bought a silver tear-drop shaped trailer from Uncle Landon and off the kids and I went to Hell, of course we didn't know it, but very few people who start down that trail know what the final destination is going to be like. I now have a vivid memory but like all horrible experiences, once it is over you can kind of wear it like a badge, like you have a certificate that says you graduated from the fiery furnace.
   I stood at one end of the log pile with my draw knife in hand and my mouth just fell open. The logs were 60 feet long and about 15 inches in diameter. For those of you who have never peeled a log, I will explain the methodology. First, you lift the log up off the ground about six inches and brace it so it doesn't roll. This enables you to reach around the sides. You straddle the log at one end and take a seat. Now, lean forward, reaching out your arm's length and draw the big knife towards you. This peels a long ribbon of curly, pine gummy bark right toward your crotch. Ok, I'll tone it down. Pockets of sap open up as you draw your knife, and you get pine sap everywhere, in your mouth, on your arms and face, in your hair, everywhere. Bugs and slugs hide in the bark and you smash and cut them up as you go. Your back starts to ache and you get blisters. You reach around the log making these broad cuts until there is a smooth yellow naked log surface in front of you and then you scoot backwards another arms length and do it again, and again, and again.
   At the end of the log, you try to stand up but your twenty-five year old body feels seventy-five. Your thighs get stuck together by pine gum. Your arms are killing you but you manage to lift one up because your eye itches. Bad mistake! Now, you're blind, because you forgot you had pine sap on your fingers. You manage to use your remaining good eye to admire your handiwork and then realize you will turn that log three times before it is finished, and there are 50 more just like it waiting for your attention.
  Add to the log-peeling duties trying to take care of three little girls, in a small silver oven on an acre with no trees or water. I don't know how we did it. When you're having a Mink Creek kind of day, you look at a problem like it's a challenge and you just start at one end and work through it. Somewhere along the way you find yourself smiling at your accomplishments and the work becomes part of you and its rewarding. I wish for you to feel the joy of your hard work.

    I'm reaching way back in my "detail/factual" memory. It isn't ever as clear and accurate as my "feeling/picture" memory. I may have some written material that would corroborate or annul what I remember, but it is somewhere in the chaos of my journals and records and at the moment I don't think the hard facts are necessary.
   It was 1979 when we met Lynn Nelson and signed a contract to purchase our Mink Creek home. Lynn was willing to carry the contract himself, so we were able to avoid banks and the big down payment they would have required. The deal was quite simple. We would build Lynn a one-bedroom log cabin in trade for the house. The rest of the property, which was around 40 acres would be paid for in monthly payments.
   So, I'm backing up in time to 1977. We were still living in Salt Lake on Roosevelt Avenue in the one bedroom apartment. Wynn, had graduated from the University of Utah with a bachelor's degree in Psychology, and was still working as a security guard on Temple Square. I was a stay-at- home mom with three daughters. Hannah was born in 1975, Kate in 76 and Josie in November of 77.
    My sister, Mesia, had married a fellow named Greg Simonds, and Greg was helping a friend build a log home at Red Fish Lake in Idaho. Wynn and I went to see their work, and Wynn fell in love with logs and carpentry and construction. He wanted to build a log home. During the late summer, he worked with Greg building a big log porch onto the old hunting cabin at Deseret Land and Livestock and was feeling quite confident with his own abilities. That is why we had stopped to look at the cabin in Mink Creek and why he had offered to build Lynn Nelson a log home.
   I had lived in a log home when I was young, a home my father had built from a Boise Cascade kit, so I wasn't adverse to the idea, and I knew Wynn was capable of doing anything he set his mind on, and so it began. Books on log construction started coming through the mail. And like dominoes other subjects started falling into place as well. Mother Earth News had a regular place on our table as did Reader's Digest Do-It-Yourself books. They were followed by more intense reading like Fine Woodworking, Rough Hewn, and Timber Trusses of the Middle Ages. Companion subjects with titles like Wind Power Generation, Root Cellars and Roughing It Easy were accumulating on the bookshelf. Sometimes, I was sure there was some bizarre reproduction taking place on that shelf. Wynn was a voracious reader and he learned many skills from this literature.
   I didn't know what kind of journey I was headed for, but I was ready to go. My little apartment had become a tiny box, and I was climbing those city walls. The house in Mink Creek was waiting for me. It was run down and primitive, but it was mine. I wanted to tell Henry David Thoreau to move over. I was going back to the woods, and I was going to do it with three kids. I had heard my "different drummer" and was ready to march. Little did I know, that my experience was going to make Thoreau's Walden look like a walk in the park. But not yet, We still weren't ready. Wynn needed a teaching degree, Blanding, Hyrum, Layton, and Millville were interim steps we would take before we could get home. So hold on, it takes a lot of work to have a Mink Creek kind of day.

It's 5:15 a.m. on Sunday morning. I love the early morning. I like to sit in the pre-dawn dark and watch the hills gradually appear and the blacks and greys give way to subtle color. In Mink Creek, just before dawn, the birds and the insects are as loud as everyone in the foyer at church on Sunday morning greeting each other, asking what is new, how their week went, how the kids are, just a cacophony of cheery voices sharing snatches of their lives. But it's November and the birds are gone and the insects are dying in my kitchen windows. It's a peaceful quiet time, and I want to tell you the last two things that were needed before our dream could come true. These two principles are separate and powerful in their own right but when they are added together, the miraculous can happen. First, is the acknowledgement that there is a God and he knows and cares about you. He has a plan, you are part of it, but His timing isn't always your timing. Remember, the woman who told me the "secret" said "to keep looking but be patient." There is a scriptural equivalent for that advice and it is "Be still, and know that I am God." Being "still" is one of the hardest things for people to do. We want to think we can control things, fix things, hurry things. Waiting on the Lord is divine. It takes self-control and faith, but there is a rhythm in the universe and when we are in tune with it, the melody is extraordinary. During our waiting period, we learned the final secret, the principle that turns a dream into divine reality. We had been able to put away just a little bit of money each month for a down payment. It wasn't much. I honestly can't remember the amount, but that isn't important. It was less than $2,000, a paltry sum, as far as the banking community was concerned, but for us it was everything, our "widow's mite."
   One evening the bishop came to our apartment. He was a bit hesitant, but he said, "I have been asked to visit every home in the ward and give people an opportunity to donate some money to help build the Jordan River temple." He continued, "I know you kids haven't got much and I didn't want to ask you for anything, but if you think you can spare something, no matter how little, it would be appreciated. You take your time and think about it together and get back to me."
   We thought about it. Wynn suggested we decide separately and then discuss it. A couple of days passed and then, at night when we were driving home in our red Datsun station wagon and the kids had fallen asleep in the back seat, he asked me, "Well, what do you want to donate to the temple fund?" I looked over at him, trying to read his face in the dark. "All of it," I answered. "Oh good," he said, "me too."
   We took our donation to the bishop. "Are you sure?" he asked. We nodded, and I said, "I think if we help the Lord build his house then he will help us build ours."
    And that was the moment, the act that caused the cosmic scale to tip in our favor, when divine help was procured. Faith coupled with action causes things to happen, but when faith is coupled with active sacrifice, miracles happen. My sacrifices had gone from the desperate to the divine. It is in our extremities, when we let go, (it isn't giving up) and trust the Lord to take over that we experience his power and love in our lives.
   Jim Elsmore, a realtor, met me in Logan and drove me across the Idaho border and into the small farming community of Mink Creek. He showed me a couple of places. I was interested enough to bring Wynn on an excursion. He wasn't thrilled about the places, but he liked the area and suggested we drive up the highway further. "You're going about this all wrong," he said. "You should get in an area you like and then stop and ask a farmer if he has any land to sell."
   We stopped to look at an old log house by the side of the road. It had mortise and tenon joints at the corners. It also had "no trespassing" signs all over the fence, and Wynn wanted to get closer. I was trying to restrain him when we heard the approaching sound of a motor and our farmer came up over the hill on a tractor and drove right down to meet us. His name was Lynn Nelson, he actually lived in Smithfield and was just up for the day doing a little plowing. In the course of our twenty-minute conversation across the fence, Lynn Nelson changed our lives. When Wynn expressed an interest in looking at the house because he was a "log builder," Lynn's interest was peaked and he allowed us to crawl through the fence and look. When we told him we were up looking for a piece of property, he said he owned the piece across the street. "You go look at it," he said, "and maybe we could make a trade. You build me a log house and I'll give you the old house." When Wynn asked him what kind of work there was to do in Preston, Lynn said, "You'd make a good school teacher and they are always hiring school teachers." Twenty minutes and we had more direction given to us than we had received in the past six years.
   We made a u-turn and drove slowly back down the road to the old house. As we pulled down the two-track driveway, Wynn stopped by the creek and asked, "Do you feel like you're coming home?"
I was overcome. It was the most peaceful natural flood of feelings. I knew this place. It was familiar to me. "Oh yes," I said. "Oh yes!" And for the first time in my life, I was having a Mink Creek kind of day.

   I've told the story of how we found Mink Creek so many times that it is a reverent recitation. There I was this poor, desperate housewife in a one-bedroom apartment with three children and a husband that seemed to be quite content or could have been if it hadn't been for his moaning wife. I wanted a home, but all we heard from the parents was "you can't afford to buy a home," and all I heard from the realtors was "Let us look at your finances. We will pre-qualify you for a loan and find you a home you can afford."
   A stylish female realtor drove up to the duplex in her nice car one day and cringed when I walked out with the children and a diaper bag full of crackers, drinks and diapers. She was a trooper. The 3 girls and I rode around with her for months, and  the only thing we accomplished was making sure that poor business woman never wanted children of her own.
   The paper work showed that the Costleys only qualified to purchase a shack in inner-city Salt Lake or an abandoned flat next to the railroad tracks or under a freeway overpass. The housing industry called them "starter homes," which meant they were places you could only stand to stay in until you'd built up enough equity that you could afford to go into more debt for something slightly better, and remember, you had to be lucky enough to re-sell the piece of junk. I didn't understand it. I wouldn't buy a dress I didn't like for $20 why would I buy a house I hated for $60,000? I wanted a home, a beloved place where we could raise our children.
   I was explaining my woes to a woman in our church one Sunday and she said, "I have a secret to share. Let me come over this afternoon and tell you about it." Her secret was this, "Decide and define exactly what you want. Write it down! Keep looking, but be patient, and it will find you."
  So, Wynn and I sat down that evening and wrote down our desires. He'd been working with the teenage boy scouts at church, and he was amazed that the boys had no work to do, no responsibilities except maybe to keep their bedrooms clean. They were always out roaming around the neighborhood and jumping over garbage cans for entertainment, so at the top of our wish list was to be out in the country where the children could have some chores to do and siblings would have to be their own best friends. Yes, that's what we wanted, a home in the country with some wide opens fields, a hill to climb (I'd had that in Boise) a creek to play in, (I'd had the canal in Boise). Wynn had also enjoyed these things in his boyhood. We found that what we wanted for our children was our own childhood. But, a few things had also changed socially, the future seemed a little more uncertain and we found that self-reliance was important to us, so things were added to the list like; an independent water supply, room for a big garden, no more than an hour away from a university and at the maximum no more than 3 hours away from our extended families. And last, but certainly not least, we had to be able to pay for it with something other than money, because we didn't have hardly any. We were dreaming BIG. It was written down and we were willing to wait. Two more things were needed before our dream would come true, but I'm out of time again so the rest of the story will have to wait until tomorrow. Until then here's wishing you a day of dreaming, a Mink Creek kind of day.

   You know things haven't always been rosy, and sometimes I've had moments when I've found it difficult to be optimistic. I can hear all of my children deliberating whether or not they would ever call me optimistic. I suppose what I am and always have been is pragmatic to the hilt and sometimes my mega sensible self comes off as critical or negative or even insensitive. I can assure you, I am really so sensitive and so caring that I put up my guard to not show it, or bend over in very strange and often misunderstood contortions to try and please everybody while, of course, still getting what must be done when it must be done.
   Ok, after the preamble what I want to tell you about is one of my moments of desperation that led to an epiphany and a life defining philosophy.
   I had to get out of that one bedroom apartment! It was absolutely essential to my sanity and the well-being of my family, and Wynn seemed to be totally oblivious to my pain. For him, everything was working just fine. He was gone nearly every waking moment, out getting an education, working 40 hours a week, talking with interesting people, making money, enjoying the changing scenes of his outside world, and I was stuck in four tiny walls with 3 little people who couldn't say much more than "I want this, I need this, and give me that."
   If I wanted to get out, say to somewhere absolutely essential like the grocery store, it was a major effort. No meditative, solitary, peaceful walks in the park for me, no siree, I was the mom. I had made my bed so to speak and now I had to sleep in it. Well, I was determined I wasn't going to sleep in it in a one bedroom apartment for much longer.
    I know I have jumped ahead of the chronological story, but I have to strike while the iron is hot and today is the day for this confession. This desperation happened after we found Mink Creek which maybe made it all the worse because I knew that my dream was waiting for me, and I seemed to be making no headway against the winds of adversity that were keeping me from it. I promise to jump back onto the proper timeline tomorrow and talk about finding Mink Creek but for now we're at the pity party.
   While Wynn was in Blanding helping his friend build a log house, I got fed up and made my move. We had talked about Wynn going back to school and Utah State University had been discussed, so I decided on my own that if I found a place to rent in Logan, he would be willing to move. It started out as a harmless idea. I drove myself and the three girls to Logan and looked around all day at potential apartments, but apartments that were big enough were more money than we had, and he was going to be jobless again until he could find a job that would work around a school schedule. As darkness fell and the three girls were getting tired and whiny and I was facing returning to Salt Lake with no hope of escape, I decided to look at one last place. It was an old house in Hyrum. I went to the address in the ad and a woman came to the door. She looked me over and took a look at the three little faces staring out of the car windows. "It's not a really great family place," she said. "It's too cold."
  "Can I look at it anyway," I asked.
  "Sure," she said, "but it's really cold and I haven't got the electricity on."
   We carried flashlights and she took me around the corner to her ancient childhood home. It was a two-story house, with a bedroom downstairs and two more upstairs. From what I could see in the beam of my flashlight, it didn't look that bad. In fact, it was a mansion of space and certainly it would be warmer once the electricity was back on and it had a family living in it. Empty houses are always cold.
   I rented it there and then, in the dim light of a battery powered torch, I signed the papers. Without my husband's knowledge, consent or even reluctant agreement, I committed us to moving to Hyrum.
Like our bibilical ancestress, Eve, I made a life-changing decision without consulting my better half and then I had to live with the monumental consequences.
  Utah State would not accept Wynn's degree from the University of Utah. They wanted him to take more psychology classes, before they would let him enter the education department. So, the school idea was a bust. The Hyrum house really was the coldest house on the planet, bar none. You could freeze your hiny onto the toilet seat if you sat down on it. Wynn and I slept in our down sleeping bags. I put the kids to bed with hats and gloves on. I sewed up the bottom of some over-sized bathrobes and put those on over their pyjamas, and they still woke up red and swollen and chafed. Wind blew right through the place. It blew the candles out on little Josie's birthday cake before she even had a chance to exhale.
   We did have one of the prettiest Christmas trees ever in that house. We didn't have any money and we had waited until Christmas Eve to even look for a tree. The man at the tree lot, looked at our little family and pulled a big beautiful tree up out of the snow where it had been lying.  "Why don't you take this big one for free," he said, "and Merry Christmas!" His generosity warmed our hearts (which were the only warm parts of our anatomies that Christmas). We put that majestic tree up in the living room with the snow still on it and it never melted. The ice crystals on the pine needles twinkled with the lights and never dripped.
   We moved out the day after Christmas and moved in with Wynn's folks down in Ogden. I went from a one-bedroom duplex of my own to the basement of my in-laws house. I got exactly what I deserved. But, Mink Creek was waiting for me and someday I'd be ready for it.
 

 

During those early years we were always trying something crazy. I think we were just trying to discover or invent ourselves. I hope you young ones will realize you don't have to lock yourselves into anything. Life is the most fun when it is continually changing and morphing into something different even if that different is uncertain or rocky. And I hope us old ones will realize that we are never to old to try something new, learn something different or even just change a long-held idea. I'll bet we were the only duplex in Salt Lake City with bunny poop spread all over our yard, and I'm sure the neighbors were not happy. Boy, did it ever stink and it was ugly and hairy and kind of a sick grey green color.
Why, you might ask, did you have bunny beans on your front lawn? Because, we had heard that a big SLC entrepreneur was going to open up a rabbit meat processing plant and was going to need rabbits. We made an investment in 60 New Zealand White breeding does. They were beautiful big, meaty bunnies and they reproduced like, well like rabbits. We had cages and rented a big shed and developed a watering system and the rabbits were happily multiplying and then the guy died.
   "How could he!" I exclaimed. Wynn shrugged, and said something to the effect that apparently he wasn't considering our needs. All that work, all the money we really couldn't afford to lose. Oh well.
    Now you should ask, "What does someone do with 60 +++ white rabbits.?" The answer is one sells them to whoever will take them off your hands for whatever price they are willing to pay. And how does an even poorer young married couple transport all those furry bunnies to the buyer in Ogden? Answer: Loose and as quickly as possible in the trunk of the Toyota. I was praying so hard that a policeman wouldn't pull us over and ask to look in the trunk.
Would I do it again? Sure. It was a good idea. We had done our research. We had set up shop, logically and methodically and that's a Mink Creek kind of thing to do even if it was in Salt Lake.

    Let's talk about pickles. It was rumored around the neighborhood that Grandma Nelda O'brien made the best home made sweet pickles in the entire world, but being a dill pickle connoisseur I was at first a reluctant doubting Thomas. (I always hate to use his name because it seems unfair to have your name forever linked with something like doubt), but like Thomas I became a true convert and can bear testimony that her sweet pickles were simply divine, and I wanted to learn how to make them.
   "Start with the finest baby pickling cukes," she said and told us about a Japanese man who sold them out of a warehouse on Saturdays. Wynn, who was eager for his wife to learn all of the culinary arts as quickly as possible, offered to go purchase the cukes. I was about to learn something I didn't know about Wynn. (Newly weds are always discovering unique quirks about their spouses.) When something is a good deal, he goes overboard. He came home with what must have been two bushels of the most darling prickly baby cucumbers I'd ever seen.  "I've got the cukes," I announced to Nelda over the phone. "What's the next step?" "Cover them with brine water immediately," she said, "and in a couple of days you will add the vinegar and then the sugar a little bit at a time over the next two weeks." "I can't just dump all the sugar in at once?" I asked. "Oh no, no, no," she said. "They would shrivel up."
    The cucumbers were in boxes. I didn't have any buckets. I didn't have any money to buy buckets. I didn't have any room for pickles to sit around in the kitchen for two weeks. I guess these are things I should have researched first before I had 2 bushels of the finest baby cucumbers staring me in the face.
   Wynn and I looked at each other, shrugged our shoulders and filled up the bathtub, adding "enough salt to float an egg." Those little babies were so cute floating around in our tub in their salty bath, but you will be relieved to know that by the end of their second day in the tub, and our second day out of the tub, we had rounded up some buckets and put the pickles down in the scary cellar where I dutifully daily scraped off some sickening scum and added cupful after cupful after cupful of sugar for the next two weeks. That was the first and the last time I ever made sweet pickles. Forty years ago and pickle-making is a lost art I never intend to resurrect. Vlassic and Nalleys hold a special place in my heart, but Nelda O'brien and cucumbers are a fine golden ray of light in my Mink Creek kind of day.

It's -9 degrees this morning, and sometimes that is a Mink Creek kind of day, a challenging day with some opposition, but one thing I've learned over all of these years is that you never have to face your challenges alone. There will always be someone able and willing to lend a hand or give advice and an encouraging word. You just have to be willing to listen and accept. Back in that one bedroom apartment we found our "helping hands" in "Grandma O'brien and Papa Don," (these names were given to them by our little Hannah who was 2 at the time). The O'brien's were a retired couple who lived directly across the street from us on Roosevelt Avenue. I'm sure they watched the newly weds with jovial interest. Papa Don was a retired Chrysler mechanic and Nelda was an expert in all of the domestic arts and they were more than happy to take us under their wings and teach us some important skills.
For example; Papa Don diagnosed that the U-joints were bad in our car. "They're easy to replace," he said. "You take the drive line down and they just slip out." It was cold outside so Wynn brought the greasy parts in on the living room rug. The U joints did not just "slip out." Wynn worked on it all day long and by nightfall, my persistent sweetheart was swinging a borrowed sledge hammer in the living room. I clapped my hands over my ears to block out the deafening ringing and took cover in the bedroom from the flying shrapnel. The next morning I found Wynn asleep on the couch with a smile on his face and the shiny new U-joints right where they were supposed to be. That was the first of a long line of car repairs that would stand as milestones in our marriage. One success led to another. I had lunch everyday for weeks with the carburettor on the kitchen table and even after it was back in the car there were some stray screws to keep me company. But, Wynn wasn't the only one being tutored. Nelda O'brien had many things to teach me, and I was an eager, though klutzy, student. I'll save that for tomorrow. Remember, if your eyes are open and you're willing; there is something to learn and someone willing to teach it to you and that makes for my kind of a day.

Maybe having a Mink Creek kind of day starts with dreaming. I think it is concentrating on a mental picture of everything you want to come true. For me, it started back in 1977, when I was a young mother of 3 little girls living in a one bedroom apartment in Salt Lake City. Wynn, my husband, was going to school at the University of Utah and holding down a full-time all night security guard job on Temple Square while I was going crazy at home. The children and all of their paraphernalia were housed in the bedroom. Our king size bed filled the dining room wall-to-wall and was raised about four and half feet off of the ground in order to store things underneath it. In that squozen condition, (I know it isn't really a word, but it is perfect for the occasion. It connotes frozen in a tight squeeze), I dared to dream. I dreamed of a place with wide open space, mountains to climb and a creek to play in. I dreamed of a husband with a 9-5 adequate income job and time to play with his wife and children. I dreamed of a home with bedrooms and closets as well as being affordable, a place we created ourselves.  And that is what I want to leave you with today. Dare to dream. Spiritually create what you want in your mind. That should be the first rule of living. So, today, dream beautiful things and have a Mink Creek kind of day.

     I just joined Facebook, and I feel like I just had the mark of the beast placed in my forehead.  As one of the older generation, it was a big step for me. I tried it once before and wasn't a fan. It makes me feel very exposed. Now, I'm taking another bold step and starting a blog. I must admit that I have also tried this once before. I started one in China so the family could read what we were doing. I haven't kept it up, but maybe China did something to me. The censorship of communism has made me want to open my mouth and spout my opinions. Spouting takes absolutely no talent and very few brains and having lived with myself for 60 years I know I am capable of this type of communication. However, I would hope to have some substance in what I write, so bear with me as I find my way into this new digital world.
    There is great significance in the title of this blog, and I plan on sharing with you just what a Mink Creek kind of day is in the days to come.