2019 2020

Every now and again I hear a story about a conspiracy of events, where a person is in the right place at the right time, having just experienced a prepatory series of events that puts them in the right mind space to receive whatever opportunity. I always wonder if it's the human brain seeking to order events in retrospect into some sort of providence, or if it really is a stroke of the divine.



Yesterday I was up in the mountains of Blue Ridge. A friend was having a celebration, and I had been asked months previous if I would attend. It being so far removed, and the request being so vague, I agreed without giving it much thought. Had I had all the information ahead of time, my answer very likely would've been different. However, as I sit here delivered, having passed through the crucible safe and sound, I'm glad I went. "When they told me you were coming, I didn't believe it." That's what my friend, the guest of honor said. I couldn't refute the insinuation. I don't really get out, even less so as I get older.



But that was not the case yesterday. Not only did I get out, I got lost. Accessing the cabin required driving on roads that make a driver reconsider their confidence. Sharp, blind curves and signs that said "congested area" and the edge of hillsides that tumbled way, way down. And that was before the treacherous series of switch backs that immediately led to the cabin. I went up in the morning, and came down at night. I encountered the phrase "lost horizon," which is when you can no longer see the road beneath you, because of how steep a hill you're coming up over the top of.



Getting lost, though, driving those mountain passes, staring out into the green beyond was good. A book I completed this year has Blue Ridge as one of its setting pieces. I knew of the place, but now I can say that I've walked through it, looked up at it, driven around it. I understand better how the main highways sheepishly skirt the lower foothills before branching into courageous, narrow stretches that directly attack climbs up the sides. I understand better the difference between the long, long stretches of road with the safe little reflective panels lining the byways, and the careless passes further skyward that have no guard rails, no reflective surfaces, and the lights of the car in front of you dart in and out of view because of the angling stretches that claw across the ridge. I feel like I saw and experienced things I never would have otherwise without the inciting "yes."



In other news, there are a lot of steps to this scheme, putting the book out on certain platforms, at certain times, in certain order, cover size, image type, trim and dimensions and borders. I'm still a bit lost, but most of it is done. And the second cover is underway, at least the initial sketches and conversations. I don't know if the exhaustion I feel is because my time seems so limited, or because I keep throwing my free time up on the sides of mountains. I don't keep a calendar, except mentally, and squinting into the future, I don't know when it all ends.

I feel like I'm at risk any given moment of driving off the side of a cliff, never to be heard from again. But I've made it up, and I've made it down, so I know better what it looks like, what it will feel like, when I get it all home.  

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