Jennifer Bohnhoff's Blog, page 4

Doomed World - Again

 If you read the papers or listen to the news, but becomes clear that the world is doomed. We are destroying our air. The seas are rising. The ice caps are melting. We are doomed. 

This isn't the first time we've teetered on the edge of total destruction. There's a reason our folklore, our myths, and our movies are filled with apocalyptical stories. In Atlas of a Lost World, writer Craig Childs tells of another time the world as we knew it was ending. It happened a long time ago. Before we could shoot a movie about it, or write a book.. There aren't even clay tablets telling about how the world was changing in catastrophic ways. The records are written, not by man, but by nature, in the rocks that geologists and anthropologists study.The time I'm talking about was at the end of the last Ice Age. Like today, temperatures were rising. Ice caps were melting. Places that had been habitable, like the Doggerland, north of Britain, half of Florida, and the Beringia, the 500 mile land bridge that linked Alaska to Siberia, were sinking under the rising seas. And that wasn't the worst of it. About 13,000 years ago, a glacier dam in Montana broke. The deluge it released took out half of Washington State, and some of Oregon and Idaho. Everything but the highest buttes and mountains were flooded and large portions of the landscape were washed away. Points and projectiles buried in the piles of debris left from this debacle indicate that people might have been there to watch the devastation. Those who survived would have been standing on tall buttes as the water thundered by. They might have felt like Noah standing on the bridge of the ark - like the entire world was being erased by water. After it was over, they would have climbed down into a world of mud and chaos to begin their lives anew.At about the same time, volcanos in central Mexico were going through a series of eruptions. They filled the air with smoke and cinders, darkening the sky and making breathing difficult. Scientists have found mammoth bones entombed in the igneous ash, the flesh cooked away in the intense heat.. They've also found human artifacts that show that people were there to witness this hellish environment.Although not all scientists agree, a comet might have exploded high up in the atmosphere over North America at about the same time. No impact site has been found, but archaeologists and geologists have detected a layer of soil that dates from about this period containing pellets of silica that might be the remnants of this explosion. The sonic boom as this explosion produced must have sounded like the trumpet to end all time, the rain of molten silica terrifying and, for some, deadly.The worst catastrophe of the time might actually have been recorded. A carved stone pillar in Gobekli, Turkey seems to record the core collapse of a super nova. about 12,830 years before the present. Such an event would have pelted the earth with doses of UV that would have been deadly to marine life and plants. The sudden brightening, then disappearance of a star would have been disturbing, even if the consequences were not understood by the ancient peoples who witnessed and recorded the event.   Add these events to the thousands of years of epic flooding and rise of sea level brought on by the end of the Ice Age, and it is clear that those who lived at this time might have thought that their world was ending. For the megafauna who lived then - the mammoths and giant ground sloth to name a few, it really was the end.

Book Review: Miya's Mountain

Fifteen-year-old Miya Skippingbird knows that she's let the family down. Her impulsiveness and lack of attention to detail has frustrated her father so much that he no longer trusts her to do what she's promised. She convinces him to give her one last chance, and he agrees to let her lead a cocky city slicker and his son on a trail ride and fishing expedition into the mountains. If she's successful, she'll prove that she can be trusted, and she's help relieve the burden on her financially strapped parents. 
But once the party is in the mountains, a massive rockslide traps them and one of the party becomes seriously ill. Miya is the only one who can cross the treacherous summit and go for help, but she must overcome her all-consuming anxiety and her paralyzing fear of heights to do so, and even her best friend, Jake Runningdeer can't help her. 
When things are at their worst, she does get help -- from a grizzly bear! No, this isn't fantasy. What happens is very believable, but you'll have to read it to understand. 
 This middle grade adventure novel is perfectly paced and kept me turning pages long after I was supposed to set the book aside. I really felt for the characters and wanted to know how things would turn out.


  About the author 
 Cathy Ringler is a storyteller, cowgirl, and retired teacher. She lives at the foot of the beautiful Beartooth Mountains and rides in them as often as her busy schedule will allow. Her experience in the saddle and around horses really shines through in Miya's Mountain. Her details about saddling and watching the body language of horses will ring true to anyone who's been around horses.
There are discussion questions in the back of the book which make this a perfect read aloud for 4th-7th grade classes, and would make a great choice for book clubs in elementary and middle schools.
If you'd like Jennifer Bohnhoff's gently used copy of Miya's Mountain, leave a comment below. I'll pick on commenter to mail the book to. 

Belying the Bells and Whistles

Everyone wants all the bells and whistles.  We want the latest and greatest and most state-of-the-art thingy available, and we want it as soon as it's available.

This yearning for the new is very apparent in my students.  I teach middle school.  Very few of my students have no cell phone.  Most not only have a cell phone, but they have a state-of-the-art model.  They are proud to show you that theirs is the latest and the greatest.  It has all the bells and whistles.


This isn't always to their advantage.  For many, their phones are more of a distraction than an aide to their education.  I've often been asked if they could use an ap to look up word definitions or spellings, only to find my students distracted by games or texts from their friends.


Last week in my advisory class we talked about good academic habits.  Among those habits was treating one's body well: eating good food, getting enough exercise, and getting enough sleep.  When I mentioned that one way to ensure a good night's sleep is to turn off one's cell phones, a number of my students errupted into protests.  How could they be expected to turn their phones off?  Their phones were their alarm clocks!  I suggested they might turn them to 'alarm only.'


"I can't do that," one girl said, despair dripping from her voice.  "I might miss something."


And so I've come to realize that many of my students are not getting enough sleep at night because they are afraid of missing something, afraid of missing the next big thing.  They have becomes slaves to their bells and whistles.


When I published my first novel, I published it as an ebook.  Even though I'd never read an ebook and didn't own a kindle or a nook, I'd read plenty of experts who said that ebooks were the next big thing, the state-of-the-art, bell and whistle way to read.  Ebooks were going to revolutionize the way books were marketed and the way books were read.  If this was the wave of the future, I wanted to catch it.


One of the big arguments for technology was that it would make information more accessible for more people.  E-readers would make even remote villages in third world countries would have access to huge stores of information.  Specialized software was going to make the written word accessible to people with handicaps that made reading impossible.  The promises were exciting indeed.


But the wave of the future hasn't been the Banzai pipeline to fame and fortune that I was given to believe.  While I've had some success with ebooks, I've had much more luck with my paperback editions.  Many of my readers tell me they like the feel of real paper in their hands.  They like the smell of it.  The heft of it.  They like turning the page.  Somehow, in spite all the expert opinions, the tried and true has won out over the state-of-the-art. 


So maybe the latest and the greatest has some value.  Perhaps from those bells and whistles we will develop new ways of reading that will help those who cannot read right now.  We will develop audio books and books that scan and scale to help those with disabilities. We will be able to distribute more books to people who live hundreds of miles from libraries, and put whole libraries into the hands of those who've never owned even one book.


Let us make sure that we control those bells and whistles instead of letting them control us.

Remembering

 

Today we remember the four terrorist attacks that were launched on America by the terrorist group al-Qaeda thirteen years ago.


Or we don't.


The 2001 attacks on New York City and Washington D.C. killed almost 3,000 people and left millions with long term respiratory and immune system problems.  It caused at least $10 billion in property and infrastructure damage and disrupted business and travel for weeks.  And it changed the American psyche, as we realized that we, too, were vulnerable to the violence and mayhem that has characterized the Middle East for a long time. 


The American people vowed that we would never forget.  We taught about 9/11 in our classrooms.  We observed moments of silence and produced special inserts in the papers, programs on TV, movies and books.  We constructed memorials, including the National September 11 Memorial and Museum in New York, the Pentagon Memorial in Washington, and the Flight 93 National Memorial in Shanksville, Pennsylvania.  


But for many, the events of 9/11 faded into the past.  Our own personal lives, filled with tiny triumphs and defeats took precedence.


It is not surprising that the significance of 9/11 has faded for many people in our nation.  This, after all, is not the first event that we vowed to never forget.
Remember Pearl Harbor?  Remember the Maine?  Few of my students could tell you anything about either of these unforgettable events.


This is one compelling reason for reading historical fiction. Historical fiction reminds us of who we once were and what we went through in our past.  It personalizes bygone eras so that we can enter into them and see them through fresh eyes.  Through these eyes we remember not only the huge events of history, but the tiny triumphs and defeats of other, long ago personal lives.  We realize that we are a part of that long, hopeful line that stretches back through countless generations, each with a story to tell.


And we remember.

The Lindenmeier Site

 The Soapstone Prairie Natural Area is in central Colorado, just south of the Wyoming border. It has within it an archeological site that few know about, even though it is very important to our understanding of man in the Americas. The Lindenmeier Folsom Site is one of the hidden gems of American Prehistory.

point from the Lindenmeier Site, 1934​Folsom Man is the name given to a group of Paleo-Indian nomadic hunters who roamed throughout Central North America between approximately 9,000 BC and 4,000 BC. They are identified by their stone points, which have a distinct concavity on one side.

​Folsom Man is named after the small town of Folsom, New Mexico, In 1908, a devastating flood unearthed bison bones that were exceedingly large. It wasn’t until 1925, when scientists finally investigated the site, that stone points were found with the bones. The bones were determined to be those of bison antiquus, an ancestor of the modern bison that had died out approximately 10,000 years ago. Bison Antiquus. They were 25-30% larger than present day bison. Prior to the investigation of the Folsom Site, scientists believed that man had only been in North America for approximately 5,000 years. 

​The Folsom Site is just a kill site. It contains bones and stone points, but there is no evidence of habitation, no campfires, no other tools or implements. Although it proved that man was in the Americas much earlier than previously supposed, it shed little light on who these people were. ​ Working at the site with horses 1936
In 1924, three amateur archaeologists, A. Lynn Coffin, his father, Judge Claude C. Coffin, and their friend, C. K. Collins were wandering through a ranch owned by William Lindenmeier, Jr.. They were walking through an arroyo when they discovered some fluted points that were very different from the more abundant and smaller arrow points they usually found. The points were some fifteen feet below the surface. That depth suggested that they were very old. They called in the Judge’s brother, Major Roy G. Coffin, who persuaded Dr. Frank Roberts of the Smithsonian Institution to visit in 1934. The Smithsonian Institution, supported by the Colorado Museum of Natural History, excavated the site between 1935 and 1940. The Coffin brothers also did some excavating of their own. ​ The Coffins at the site 1935
The well-preserved site is buried under twelve to fifteen feet of sediment and covered by layers of silts and clays slowly deposited by floods and windstorms over thousands of years. It contains clusters of stone and bone debris, strewn over at least a half-mile. These clusters represent work areas, where Folsom peoples manufactured projectile points, repaired or discarded broken tools, cooked their food, cleaned and transformed animal hides into leather, and manufactured clothing.Some archaeologists suggest that the clusters represent a single large camp simultaneously occupied by several large Folsom groups, each with twenty to forty members. These groups may have come together for a rendezvous or trade fair. Other archaeologists believe the clusters were laid down by a single group that returned year after year, generation after generation. Either way, the Lindemeier Site is the largest Folsom site yet found. It is still being excavated, and its secrets revealed. 
While the original Folsom site provided no tools except points, the Lindenmeier site shows that the  Paleo-indians referred to as Folsom People created many types and shapes of tools. In addition to spearheads, archaeologists found wedge shaped scrapers and other tools made for chopping, slicing and skinning the hides of the bison. They also found scored pieces of hematite which were used to extract red ochre, believed to be used to paint for their faces or for ceremonial purposes. Highly polished 1-2”discs inscribed with designs were found at the site and are the oldest artwork found in Colorado.
​
The site is listed on the National Register of Historic Places and is designated a National Historic Landmark. Artifacts from the site are held by the Smithsonian Institution, the Denver Museum of Nature and Science, the Fort Collins Museum of Discovery, and in private collections.  There is not much to see at the Lindenmeier Site. A short paved trail leads to a covered overlook where visitors look out over the arroyo in which the excavations have occurred, but they are either hidden from view or so carefully reburied that they are not visible. The weather was cooler and wetter during the period when the Folsom men inhabited it, but it is still easy to look over the vastness of the rolling hills and envision what life might have been like so many millennia ago. 
Soapstone Prairie has multiple trails for hiking, biking and horseback riding and is open for visitation from March 1 until November 30 each year. It is a habitat for bison, black-footed ferrets, pronghorn antelopes, and other native species.
 
https://fortcollinsimages.wordpress.com/2017/04/02/lindenmeier-a-folsom-man-site/
https://www.fcgov.com/naturalareas/finder/soapstone​ In the Shadow of Sunrise is an historical novel set during the Folsom Period. The characters in the novel shelter every winter in the San Luis Valley, but during the summers they go on long migrations, following the herds and collecting suitable rocks for making spear points and other tools. While these characters do not visit the Linenmeier Site in my story, they would have done so in other years, and some of the people who lived at this site would have met my characters at other sites that they visited. The information available about this site did a lot to inform how I structured my story. Jennifer Bohnhoff is a former middle school and high school history and language arts teacher. She lives in the mountains of central New Mexico and write historical and contemporary fiction for middle grade through adult readers. She is available to lecture on the history behind her stories.
 The booklink in the above blog is for  Bookshop.org, an online bookseller that gives 75% of its profits to independent bookstores, authors, and reviewers. If you click through my book lists and make a purchase on Bookshop.org, I will receive a commission, and Bookshop.org will give a matching commission to independent booksellers. But if you’re not looking to buy, ask your local library for a copy, and request that they buy one if they haven't already.

The Lindenmeier Site

​The Soapstone Prairie Natural Area is in central Colorado, just south of the Wyoming border. It has within it an archeological site that few know about, even though it is very important to our understanding of man in the Americas. The Lindenmeier Folsom Site is one of the hidden gems of American Prehistory. point from the Lindenmeier Site, 1934 ​Folsom Man is the name given to a group of Paleo-Indian nomadic hunters who roamed throughout Central North America between approximately 9,000 BC and 4,000 BC. They are identified by their stone points, which have a distinct concavity on one side.

​Folsom Man is named after the small town of Folsom, New Mexico, In 1908, a devastating flood unearthed bison bones that were exceedingly large. It wasn’t until 1925, when scientists finally investigated the site, that stone points were found with the bones. The bones were determined to be those of bison antiquus, an ancestor of the modern bison that had died out approximately 10,000 years ago. Bison Antiquus. They were 25-30% larger than present day bison.  Prior to the investigation of the Folsom Site, scientists believed that man had only been in North America for approximately 5,000 years. 

​The Folsom Site is just a kill site. It contains bones and stone points, but there is no evidence of habitation, no campfires, no other tools or implements. Although it proved that man was in the Americas much earlier than previously supposed, it shed little light on who these people were. ​ In 1924, three amateur archaeologists, A. Lynn Coffin, his father, Judge Claude C. Coffin, and their friend, C. K. Collins were wandering through a ranch owned by William Lindenmeier, Jr.. They were walking through an arroyo when they discovered some fluted points that were very different from the more abundant and smaller arrow points they usually found. The points were some fifteen feet below the surface. That depth suggested that they were very old. They called in the Judge’s brother, Major Roy G. Coffin, who persuaded Dr. Frank Roberts of the Smithsonian Institution to visit in 1934. The Smithsonian Institution, supported by the Colorado Museum of Natural History, excavated the site between 1935 and 1940. The Coffin brothers also did some excavating of their own. ​ ​The well-preserved site is buried under twelve to fifteen feet of sediment and covered by layers of silts and clays slowly deposited by floods and windstorms over thousands of years. It contains clusters of stone and bone debris, strewn over at least a half-mile. These clusters represent work areas, where Folsom peoples manufactured projectile points, repaired or discarded broken tools, cooked their food, cleaned and transformed animal hides into leather, and manufactured clothing. Some archaeologists suggest that the clusters represent a single large camp simultaneously occupied by several large Folsom groups, each with twenty to forty members. These groups may have come together for a rendezvous or trade fair. Other archaeologists believe the clusters were laid down by a single group that returned year after year, generation after generation. Either way, the Lindemeier Site is the largest Folsom site yet found. It is still being excavated, and its secrets revealed. 
While the original Folsom site provided no tools except points, the Lindenmeier site shows that the  Paleo-indians referred to as Folsom People created many types and shapes of tools. In addition to spearheads, archaeologists found wedge shaped scrapers and other tools made for chopping, slicing and skinning the hides of the bison. They also found scored pieces of hematite which were used to extract red ochre, believed to be used to paint for their faces or for ceremonial purposes. Highly polished 1-2”discs inscribed with designs were found at the site and are the oldest artwork found in Colorado.
​
The site is listed on the National Register of Historic Places and is designated a National Historic Landmark. Artifacts from the site are held by the Smithsonian Institution, the Denver Museum of Nature and Science, the Fort Collins Museum of Discovery, and in private collections.  There is not much to see at the Lindenmeier Site. A short paved trail leads to a covered overlook where visitors look out over the arroyo in which the excavations have occurred, but they are either hidden from view or so carefully reburied that they are not visible. The weather was cooler and wetter during the period when the Folsom men inhabited it, but it is still easy to look over the vastness of the rolling hills and envision what life might have been like so many millennia ago. 
Soapstone Prairie has multiple trails for hiking, biking and horseback riding and is open for visitation from March 1 until November 30 each year. It is a habitat for bison, black-footed ferrets, pronghorn antelopes, and other native species.
 
https://fortcollinsimages.wordpress.com/2017/04/02/lindenmeier-a-folsom-man-site/
https://www.fcgov.com/naturalareas/finder/soapstone​ In the Shadow of Sunrise is an historical novel set during the Folsom Period. The characters in the novel shelter every winter in the San Luis Valley, but during the summers they go on long migrations, following the herds and collecting suitable rocks for making spear points and other tools. While these characters do not visit the Linenmeier Site in my story, they would have done so in other years, and some of the people who lived at this site would have met my characters at other sites that they visited. The information available about this site did a lot to inform how I structured my story.  Jennifer Bohnhoff is a former middle school and high school history and language arts teacher. She lives in the mountains of central New Mexico and write historical and contemporary fiction for middle grade through adult readers. She is available to lecture on the history behind her stories.
 The booklink in the above blog is for  Bookshop.org, an online bookseller that gives 75% of its profits to independent bookstores, authors, and reviewers. If you click through my book lists and make a purchase on Bookshop.org, I will receive a commission, and Bookshop.org will give a matching commission to independent booksellers. But if you’re not looking to buy, ask your local library for a copy, and request that they buy one if they haven't already.

The Long Road from Kid to President

 

One of the first books I read this year was Doris Kearns Goodwin's The Leadership Journey: How Four Kids Became President. In this, her first book written specifically for juvenile readers, Goodwin analyzes how the childhoods of four men: Abraham Lincoln, Teddy and Franklin Roosevelt, and Lyndon Johnson, shaped their presidencies.
Doris Kearns Goodwin is a brilliant woman and an engaging writer who has spent considerable time researching these four men. Her first book was Lyndon Johnson and the American Dream.  After that, she published the Pulitzer Prize–winning No Ordinary Time: Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt: The Homefront in World War II. She earned the Lincoln Prize for  Team of Rivals ,  which became the basis for Steven Spielberg’s film Lincoln, and the Carnegie Medal for  The Bully Pulpit , about the friendship between Theodore Roosevelt and William Howard Taft. Goodwin looked at all four men in her bestselling book Leadership: In Turbulent Times, which she went on to produce when it became a History Channel docuseries on Abraham Lincoln, Theodore Roosevelt, and Franklin Roosevelt. There is no question that she is well qualified to introduce these four famous men to younger readers. She knows these men intimately, including all the small stories that make them human and understandable.
The subtitle of this books is How Four Kids Became President, and I think this book would have been more satisfying for its intended audience if Goodwin had stopped right there. However, Goodwin continues on through each presidency, and the result is a book that is rather lengthy for middle grade readers. At 360 pages, it’d be quite a slog for most kids ages 8-12. To me, this is more a good overview for high school libraries or middle schools who do biography projects about political figures, or for adults who want an easy-to-read overview.Would you like to have my gently used copy? It's an ARC, and does not have the fully complete illustrations. I will be giving it away in early February, and if you'd like to be considered, please leave a comment on this blog.

Ancient Footprints Provide a Look at Life Long Ago

 

White Sands National Monument, in southern of New Mexico hasgiven scientists a unique view into the lives of people living long ago. Here,amid the pristine, white gypsum sand dunes that surrounded an ancient lake, scientistshave discovered the footprints of a woman and child who were crossing thesands. They have also found footprints from a hunt involving ancient humanbeings and a large prehistoric sloth. Both discoveries are extremely rare and couldchange our understanding of how long ago people were in the area and how they interactedwith large animals.

The footprints of the woman and child are part of what isconsidered the longest preserved "trace" of a person's fossilizedfootprints. Found on the plateau of a dried-up untouched lake bed, they extendfor almost a full mile. The area also has hundreds of thousands of footprintsof various ice age animals, including Columbian mammoths, giant sloths,sabertoothed cats, dire wolves, and giant bison.

The reason researchers believe that the person who crossedthe plateau was a woman is because of the size of her feet. A second set ofmuch smaller footprints amble about, sometimes disappearing and reappearingsome distance away. This indicates that the woman was traveling with a smallchild who sometimes walked and sometimes was carried.

The woman seems to have been in a hurry to get somewhere. Scientistscame to this conclusion based on the distance between the prints. The womanseems to have been walking at 1.7 meters per second, which is much faster than theaverage relaxed walking speed of between 1.2 and 1.5 meters per second. Hertracks, unlike the meandering smaller tracks, follow a straight line, indicatingthat she was traveling to a specific place, and that she knew where she wasgoing. Scientists say that a second set of tracks moving in the oppositedirection are also hers, indicating that hours later, she returned the sameway, but without the child.

A second set of tracks tells an even more interesting story,with more graphic details. Researchers have found more than 100 footprintsdating back between 11,000 and 15,000 years ago that seem to show humansfollowing, and perhaps hunting, a giant ground sloth. The animals, which disappearedabout 11,000 years ago, could reach the size of an elephant. Although thedistance between steps for a giant sloth is greater than that of a human step,the footprints show that the human hunters were following the sloth, sometimes walkingdirectly in the giant beast’s footsteps.

In some places, the human footprints appear close to thesloth’s markings, and one human appears to have gotten up on tip-toe very closeto the animal. The sloth, then, appears to have suddenly changed direction, andresearchers suggest that it stood up on its back legs and flailed about withits front legs in order to defend itself.

Matthew Bennett, the lead writer of a recent report on thediscovery that appeared in the scientific publication Science Advances saysthat hunting such a large animal "would have come with huge amounts ofrisk." The geology professor from Bournemouth University in England hasstudied these tracks and others, and speculates that they can help prove whetheror not early men played a role in the eradication of mega fauna at the end ofthe last Ice Age.

 

My novel, In the Shadow of Sunrise, tells the story of EarthShadow, a handicapped boy who goes on his first Walk Around, where he has thechance to prove his manhood. By the time that Earth Shadow walked along LakeLucero, a thousand years had passed, and with it, most of the megafauna thatroamed the plains of North America. Earth Shadow is a member of the Folsomculture, and the only large beasts left are the Bison Antiquus, an early, andmuch larger form of the American Bison that continues to live on the greatplains. Earth Shadow recognizes that the footprints he sees are old, but hedoesn’t know how old. He must rely on the stories of his people.

Recently, scientists found seeds from the aquatic plant Ruppiacirrhosa in the same levels of sand as the human footprints and subjectedthem to radiocarbon dating. The procedures produced dates between 23,000 and21,000 years ago.  Although these ages mighthave been skewed by potentially old carbon reservoirs, it might indicate thathumans inhabited North America far longer than has been previously supposed.

Jennifer Bohnhoff left teaching English and History at the middle school level to become a full time teacher. Her latest book, In the Shadow of Sunrise, tells the story of a handicapped boy on the cusp of adulthood and is based on extensive research into the Folsom Period in what is now Colorado, New Mexico, and Texas. It will be published by Kinkajou Press, a division of Artemesia Publishing in April of 2025 and is currently available as a preorder through Amazon, Bookshop, and other online booksellers, as well as directly from the author. 

Telescoping Distance and Time

 

If you’ve lived in a place with sweeping, wide vistas, you understand that objects can appear much closer than they actually are. Here in New Mexico, where the air is thin and dry, it’s not uncommon to see mountain peaks that are well over a hundred miles distant. From my living room, South Mountain looks like an easy walk, when it is really a good twenty miles away. 

Charles Dickens experienced this when he visited the Alps in September of 1846. The individual mountain peaks were so large that they fooled the eye into believing they were much closer than they actually were. In his novel Little Dorrit, he begins Chapter 1 of Book 2 by describing this phenomena: 

In the autumn of the year, Darkness and Night were creeping up to the highest ridges of the Alps. . . . The air had been warm and transparent through the whole of the bright day. Shining metal spires and church-roofs, distant and rarely seen, had sparkled in the view; and the snowy mountain-tops had been so clear that unaccustomed eyes, cancelling the intervening country, and slighting their rugged height for something fabulous, would have measured them as within a few hours’ easy reach. Mountain-peaks of great celebrity in the valleys, whence no trace of their existence was visible sometimes for months together, had been since morning plain and near in the blue sky. And now, when it was dark below, though they seemed solemnly to recede, like specters who were going to vanish, as the red dye of the sunset faded out of them and left them coldly white, they were yet distinctly defined in their loneliness, above the mists and shadows. 

I think reading historical fiction can do the same thing for events long distant. As we read what it was like in long ago times, the events draw nearer to us, the people more real. We live and breathe the experience as if it were in our own time, and we realize that we are much closer to these ancient peoples than we believed. 

Jennifer Bohnhoff is a former middle school and high school history and language arts teacher. She lives in the mountains of central New Mexico and write historical and contemporary fiction for middle grade through adult readers. She is available to lecture on the history behind her stories.  

Telescoping Distance and Time

If you’ve lived in a place with sweeping, wide vistas, you understand that objects can appear much closer than they actually are. Here in New Mexico, where the air is thin and dry, it’s not uncommon to see mountain peaks that are well over a hundred miles distant. From my living room, South Mountain looks like an easy walk, when it is really a good twenty miles away.  Charles Dickens experienced this when he visited the Alps in September of 1846. The individual mountain peaks were so large that they fooled the eye into believing they were much closer than they actually were. In his novel Little Dorrit, he begins Chapter 1 of Book 2 by describing this phenomena: 

In the autumn of the year, Darkness and Night were creeping up to the highest ridges of the Alps. . . . The air had been warm and transparent through the whole of the bright day. Shining metal spires and church-roofs, distant and rarely seen, had sparkled in the view; and the snowy mountain-tops had been so clear that unaccustomed eyes, cancelling the intervening country, and slighting their rugged height for something fabulous, would have measured them as within a few hours’ easy reach. Mountain-peaks of great celebrity in the valleys, whence no trace of their existence was visible sometimes for months together, had been since morning plain and near in the blue sky. And now, when it was dark below, though they seemed solemnly to recede, like specters who were going to vanish, as the red dye of the sunset faded out of them and left them coldly white, they were yet distinctly defined in their loneliness, above the mists and shadows. 

I think reading historical fiction can do the same thing for events long distant. As we read what it was like in long ago times, the events draw nearer to us, the people more real. We live and breathe the experience as if it were in our own time, and we realize that we are much closer to these ancient peoples than we believed. 
Jennifer Bohnhoff is a former middle school and high school history and language arts teacher. She lives in the mountains of central New Mexico and write historical and contemporary fiction for middle grade through adult readers. She is available to lecture on the history behind her stories.