Never trust a mountain to keep a secret

    On the way to a family reunion in North Carolina, I diverted to Colfax to pick up some riders. (By the way, if you are not from Colfax, you are likely misprouncing it. Locals say Call-fax, not Cole-fax.)

    I arrived at my niece's house and was soon on the road again with eight-months-pregnant Layne riding shotgun and her young son in the back seat. Layne and I live in different states and have few chances for face-to-face interactions, so we planned to take full advantage of this jaunt from her house to the top of a mountain.

    The dialogue from that day is gone like the wind, but I imagine that as soon as I put the car in drive, we dove into something akin to transforming our marriages into perfect ones, strategizing relationships at work, or figuring out God, once and for all. I do remember that as the wheels of my car rolled over I-40, the wheels of our minds were turning just as fast. We lost ourselves in deep conversation, and we would soon find out we were lost in more ways than one.

From Chaos to Connection

 

    My niece announced on social media that she wrote and published a book. When I read the post, I reacted with quiet jealously. I coiled inside myself like nine-year-old me when my friend stepped onto the school bus wearing the prettiest dress I had ever seen -- clumps of purple grapes and green leaves splashed against an off-white fabric.

    I am not proud of those reactions. For now, I will skip over the childhood longings and move on to my niece's exciting, shattering news. Before my readers flail me with a big stick, please know that I congratulated Lori, and that I created my own social media post touting her accomplishment, so my friends could see. 

    Nevertheless, I felt a twinge of despair, and this is why:

The saddest words ever written or said? It's a matter of perception.

 

    Out of the blue, I needed to read some poetry, which is weird, because I rarely read poetry, nor do I write poetry. I have penned a few verses mostly in song, but I am not a poet. Nevertheless, when an inner voice commands, I comply. So, I searched for a book I bought in my twenties, back in the day when I belonged to a mail-order book club. 

    After scanning several of my bookshelves, I held in my hands The Treasury of American Poetry, selected by Nancy Sullivan. I laid it atop the tall stack of books on my nightstand. 

    That night, I turned the pages to find few lines that held my attention. Undeterred, I plowed through the murk, knowing that in those eight-hundred and thirty-eight pages, I would find, well, I don't know what I expected to find, but when I found it, I would know. Over the next couple of weeks, I touched the poems of Anne Bradstreet, Ralph Waldo Emerson, and Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, only to wonder if I could possibly continue on this curious mission. 

    Then, I hit pay dirt.

Butterflies, Milkweed, and Miracles

 

A milkweed grew up in our front yard, right in front of the house, and it came up as a volunteer. Milkweed, I learned, is the only host plant for Monarch butterflies. Its blooms are various colors, but the ones in our yard were orange, and hungry caterpillars swarmed about it to eat and be satisfied, although it seemed as though their tummies were never full. These colorful, striped worms nibbled away at all the foliage and stripped the plant of its greenery. By the time they finished, only the stems remained.

Pretty Songs and Unsung Authors

I lead a chapter of Virginia Writers Club, and I try to dispense positive words in a monthly newsletter. Here is a portion of a recent one:

First, some thoughts:

Music had been playing on the radio in my kitchen for an hour or two. When I turned the dial to off, I wondered how I could listen to the radio for an hour or two and never hear a pretty song. I mean, a really pretty song.

More than once, when watching the American Idol TV show, I asked the one sitting next to me, "Why can't somebody sing a pretty song?" The lyrics were often repetitive and meaningless.

I mentioned this musical disappointment to a friend, and as I lamented, the thought occurred to me that maybe all the pretty songs had already been written. Could that be possible? Are all the pretty songs already written? I shudder to think it is true, just as I shudder at the notion that all the good books are already written, but a newsletter writer I subscribe to suggested that revelation. He stated there is nothing new to say and everything has already been said.

Now, Now. Don't Go Jumping Off a Cliff.

About ten years ago, a guy named Dean Potter and a friend, Graham Hunt, put on their wingsuits and jumped off a cliff. The wingsuits enabled them to soar in flying squirrel fashion. Potter, age forty-three, and Hunt, twenty-nine, were experienced BASE jumpers. The acronym stands for Building, Antenna, Span, and Earth, the locations jumpers jump from. 

Both Potter and Hunt were expert jumpers, but Potter broke the record in 2009 for the longest BASE jump, at two minutes and fifty seconds, after jumping from Eiger North Face in Switzerland. By accomplishing this feat, he earned the title of Adventurer of the Year by National Geographic magazine.