PODCAST

High Country Commentary

Narrated by Kara Lea Kennedy

Articles, essays, reviews, and views from the High Country. timberlineletter.substack.com

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3:58

Fighting for Blessings

High Country Commentary ·

2025/04/24

As a sophomore in high school, a friend once told me I had not landed the role I so desperately wanted in the school play. But my mom refused to believe it. She had seen my work, heard the lines, and even witnessed a miraculous answer to prayer when I could not eke out a New Yorker accent for days. After asking God for help, I woke up speaking with a voice that would make Barbra Streisand proud. Mom just knew I had the part. So, she drove us to the school to look at the list ourselves.She was right

4:02

The Way of a Tree

High Country Commentary ·

2025/04/17

Written By: Ed ChinnNarrated By: Kara Lea KennedyLouis, an old Basque shepherd, wrote of the night he and Baptista, another shepherd, moved over 200 sheep through a high mountain pass. Suddenly, “…a mountain lion sprung lazily, and likely without threat, across the trail ahead.”That mere sighting of a lion caused most of the sheep to silently plunge off a 300-foot cliff. “Splitting their bellies, breaking legs and backs … Baptista had to clamber down and cut their throats…”[1]People often inflict

5:28

Friendship Afloat

High Country Commentary ·

2025/04/10

Written By: Craig DahlbergNarrated By: Kara Lea KennedyThe fight was on. Rick’s fists grazed my head as a giant, feather-engorged pillow collided with my face. Feathers exploded into the air, drifting throughout the cabin. When our pillows finally ran out of feathers, we called a time-out. It was 1958; we had just met aboard the USS United States.Steam billowed from the four turbine engines as we cruised east across the Atlantic. Ford Motor Company was transferring our fathers and moving our

3:48

Mother Antonia’s Great Adventure

High Country Commentary ·

2025/04/03

Written By: Ed ChinnNarrated By: Kara Lea KennedyMy grandma Chinn probably had Alzheimer’s. But we didn’t have a name for it in those days. Her quirks were just… “Grandma.” We knew her, not a disease. By the time her son, my dad, was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s a decade later, we knew a lot about it. In fact, I grew to despise my knowledge of that disease. I found it too easy to relate to Alzheimer’s, not to Dad.The Bible says that knowledge “puffs up.” Sure does. Knowledge is like vodka; a little of

5:02

Springing to Life

High Country Commentary ·

2025/03/27

A springtime haze has settled across our property, a mixture of pollen and dust kicked into the atmosphere by my trusty rototiller. The air is alive with birdsong and bees buzzing past me as I sit atop my Massey Ferguson. It’s been several months since I’ve felt the desire to accomplish anything. I’m pregnant. But, in sweet mercy, the morning sickness has faded just as the peak planting season has come into full focus.Last year, my overalls, boots, and ball cap had me dressed like an old man. Now, I

4:53

What I Learned at the Movies

High Country Commentary ·

2025/03/20

Written By: Darrell HarrisNarrated By: Kara Lea KennedyMy love affair with movies began in 1955. I was six years old, looking up at James Dean on the big screen in East of Eden. I watched his brooding character Cal come to terms with the soiled dove that was his mother, while also destroying the ice that could transport his father’s lettuce crop to market. As the film concludes, we see Cal caring for this aging, ailing, self-righteous patriarch.A six-year-old could not possibly unpack the complexity

6:24

A Timberline Life

High Country Commentary ·

2025/03/13

Once, in a race against famine in Mexico, and having no tractors or oxen, agronomist Norman Borlaug and his associates made harnesses for themselves in order to pull cultivators. They pulled them many miles, knowing they were racing against time to save a nation.Borlaug was not rich, entertaining, or charismatic. So, how did he become one of the most significant people in world history?Because of wheat. Most of the world’s wheat today comes from the disease-resistant, high-yield varieties that

5:12

Smoke and Heart

High Country Commentary ·

2025/03/06

The smoke pits are the beating heart of Terry Black’s Barbecue Restaurant. The aroma, thick enough to chew, drifts up over the pits like a fog bank.After dinner, my natural curiosity pulled me to the smoke pits. I stood in the shadows, watching the pit-master, half-concealed by the smoky clouds, systematically lift the heavy pit lids, stoke the orange coals, and meticulously arrange the various meats. Like a conductor, he knew each subtle maneuver to bring each cut to perfection.Fearing I was

4:49

The Taste of Silence

High Country Commentary ·

2025/02/27

In 1988, Bieke Vandekerckhove, a 19-year-old university student in her native Belgium, was diagnosed with ALS (Lou Gehrig’s disease). At that time, the average life span with ALS after diagnoses was two to five years. She lived 27 years with it.Her only book, The Taste of Silence (English translation from Liturgical Press, 2015), is a beautiful, candid, sometimes searing, but wise view of her journey into ALS. Like so many others in history, she found a vast and pure view...in prison. But for Bieke,

4:46

Photoshop Your Disappointments

High Country Commentary ·

2025/02/20

In my childhood home, it was common to hear my dad laugh until he cried. He inherited that laugh from my grandma. I remember my friend’s face lighting up as my dad’s laughter shook the house. “I love your daddy’s laugh,” she told me. I treasured this effect his joy had on others. I was proud of him, not only for the things he had accomplished, but also for the humor he carried with him. I still am proud of him, for the same reason.Please understand, we didn’t laugh all the time. I remember the

5:35

Sailors

High Country Commentary ·

2025/02/13

In the summer of 1992, while driving a dirt road near his Pratt, Kansas home, my dad saw a tractor—driverless—rolling across a field, pulling a land leveler.Dad felt a chill. He owned that equipment. His brother Harold had borrowed it and would have been driving it down that very road about that time. Dad soon found Harold lying beside the road. He was fully conscious, but Dad could see he was facing the worst day of his life.Harold’s death brought a hard freeze to our family landscape. But it blew

4:38

The Fullness of Time

High Country Commentary ·

2025/02/06

When I was nine years old, I wanted a bicycle more than anything. If you had a bike, the world was yours. Anything was possible. But bikes were expensive, and you could outgrow one so quickly.In 1961, my parents bought me a J.C. Higgins 26” Flightliner Bicycle for Christmas. Sears’ top of the line bike was red with whitewall tires, dual headlights, rear luggage rack, and chrome fenders. It was one of the most impressive things I had ever seen.The problem was that even with the seat set in its lowest

5:44

Through the Firestorm

High Country Commentary ·

2025/01/30

My neurosurgeon declared my back a disaster zone. “You’ve got major problems in every part of your back, all the way down.” My MRI agreed; weird twists, turns and dead ends. Doc said it best, “Your back looks like a pack mule’s path down into the mine.”As the Los Angeles firestorm raged a few miles from my hospital room, needles had invaded veins in both my hands in preparation for my back surgery. Pain clawed my brain. The world around me—my body, other hospital patients, caregivers, and all those

2:47

You Can Only Keep What You Give Away

High Country Commentary ·

2025/01/23

As young Christian leaders, Bruce and Lenore Mitchell took God, life, their marriage, and faith seriously. But then something strange happened. Bruce began to feel they should give their possessions away. Furniture. Appliances. Even wedding gifts. Everything.After a few days, he cautiously shared his feelings with Lenore, only to discover she felt the same thing. She had been struggling with how to tell him! Confident that God was directing them, they began giving things away.Within a few days,

5:06

All I Can Do

High Country Commentary ·

2025/01/16

In 2011, my husband and I had just moved to Japan when the Tohoku earthquake—a 9.1 on the Richter scale—violently jolted the continent. Though we were four hours north of the epicenter, I thought a semi had slammed into our townhome. Doors slammed shut and open during the 6-minute terror. Had our shipment of household goods not been delayed, the earthquake would have thrown our dishes from the cabinets, toppled the TV, and sent picture frames crashing to the floor. Thankfully, our house was nearly

4:21

Living Life in all the Ways It Might Come

High Country Commentary ·

2025/01/09

A dear friend’s wife struggled with multiple sclerosis for over forty years. Then, during emergency surgery, she suffered a heart attack. When that same surgery revealed extensive cancer, they knew the end was near.To read my friend’s email about that grueling trial is to stand at the edge of a deep, wide, and humbling canyon. Yet, he summed it up so simply:“Life has to be lived in all the ways it might come to us.”Those simple words could only roll out of humility, brokenness, and grace. They

5:05

Riding the Rollercoaster Together

High Country Commentary ·

2024/12/19

In 2015, I was cast as Annelle (the Daryl Hannah role) in “Steel Magnolias” at a small Phoenix theater. The theater was located in the corner of a strip mall, but it felt like I was on Broadway. He, my Great Uncle Wiley, was in the audience!Wiley was a giant of a man. A hunter, fisherman, golfer, business leader, and world-class uncle. As a little girl, growing up near them in Colorado, I was far more familiar with Aunt Alberta, his wife. My mom and I regularly went to their house to help her with

3:40

Christmas 1954

High Country Commentary ·

2024/12/12

Christmas of 1954 came ten years after my dad’s ship, the USS Princeton, was destroyed in the World War II Battle of Leyte Gulf. That hurled Dad into a long struggle with a psychological python. It also pulled him into wrestling with God; he prayed long and loud in our little house. Dad and his God scared me.That’s why my brothers and I grew up in the shadow of The Princeton. Also In 1954, Dad and Mom bought a home on nine acres at the edge of town. The morning after the closing, Dad hated the

5:14

Still Together

High Country Commentary ·

2024/12/05

As I turned into the military cemetery, I was happy to know that Wes Dahlberg, my dad, and my mother, Dee, would finally rest together.Their cremated remains sat side-by-side in my car’s back seat. Dad’s brass and mother- of-pearl cremation urn gleamed like a new sculpture. My mother’s identical urn showed nine years of tarnish as it awaited my father’s remains. All was now ready for their burials.Inside the glass welcoming room, the muted military décor celebrated the service of those buried here

5:51

How Can We Be So Sure?

High Country Commentary ·

2024/11/21

Astronomers believe the universe is about 93 billion light years in diameter, and that it holds about ten trillion galaxies. That number is likely a big underestimation, but it doesn’t matter. My head cannot grasp that information. In fact, look into any detail, direction, or dimension of anything; the only thing we know is that we don’t know. We don’t even know what we think we know. Apart from certain matters of faith and the heart, we don’t know much about anything.Yet, the great cultural mold of

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High Country Commentary

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