Our Collective Storybook
This is one of our favorite stories to tell at the Bird & Bear when people say “I love your book wall!” during a visit. Since next week we host the January kick-off for the bookclub, and yesterday we kicked off the Writers & Authors Meet-Up, and today we’ll gather for our new Ascend: Ignite & Inspire event which centers on stories, I thought it was time to reshare this post I wrote a few years ago about how the Bird & Bear’s signature book wall came to be.
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As you may know, we sure do love words here, and believe that it’s our stories that connect us. While imagining and shopping for the space in 2021, we were inspired by the book wall in the cafe at @theblessingbarn ~ and just knew we needed one here.
In the interest of budget and time, my hunt for books brought us to Facebook Marketplace, where I answered an add for a “bag of old hard and paper back books” being sold for $25. The hunt also brought us to the parking lot of a gas station on a snowy and freezing early January morning, to a seller who wanted cash only for a book deal, that kinda felt like some other kind of deal.
As soon as the books were in the backseat, the entire car smelled like a grandmother’s attic. I had no idea what I’d find in that old bag of books.
This is my favorite part of the story…
When I got back to the Bird and Bear and emptied the bag of old, faded and tattered books onto the floor, I couldn’t believe what was in that bag…
Each and every book in that bag was about bravery, adventure, the wilderness, education, family, home, love and becoming. There were childhood favorites like Big Red, Lassie, and Heidi. There books about fearless women like Mary Jane, Nurses Who Led the Way, The First Woman Doctor, A Tree Grows in Brooklyn and Year of the Dream.…and two of Erin’s favorite love stories, Jane Eyre and a 1945 copy of Jane Austen’s Pride & Prejudice.
I couldn’t believe it. And I still smile every time I tell this story.
That bag of old books that are now on display at the Bird & Bear were meant for us, you, and this space ~ a space built to share and hold our collective stories of adventure, family, love, bracing and becoming.
This is our collective storybook.
