Wishing Well

Hours I've so merrily lost in this most familiar repetition these past few weeks - miles of trials and trials of miles, etcetera, etcetera, and I've not the words to describe how much more complete weeks of eighty, seventy, and ninety miles feel. Legs rolling over and over and over again, and I'm more myself, it's true. If I'll find ways to defy gravity more often than not on these slippery icy muddy slopes, hardly have I the audacity to claim she hadn't more than a few times asserted her dominance. Bruises I'd so proudly carry were this skin not already worn to stone, but so have the miles hardened my limbs against me in this fall-fading-to-winter chill. Slopes once green and then brown now wear their white proudly, and so too will I with honor wear this fatigue. So, too, I think would you.

We've a caucophony of gatherings these weeks, holiday and birthday season upon us, and yet - unlike myself, really - I find I'm glad for the noise. We've this family here of our choosing - which isn't to say blood isn't itself a choice, but then, you know of what I speak, don't you? - and if Easter were once my favorite holiday, so easily have I with Thanksgiving here supplanted it. This was my third turkey feast atop the bluff above the valley of the sun. Vineyard vistas we delighted in, views for miles and miles, to say nothing of the hosts and company we'd so gladly keep. Oh, how much more I each year look forward to this gathering! We've our communion here, brought together as we are by calories, equal parts burning and creating and consuming. Hiking and running and running and hiking, and cooking and baking and baking and cooking, and oh, the eating, altogether too much eating. Still, guilt-free and merry we shove our faces full, plate by gut-expanding plate: crab cakes! sweet potato fries! turkey! savory squash! pies - pumpkin and apple and peanut butter and coconut creme! Plate after plate, and wine and whiskey and whiskey and wine, our faces glowing and our stomachs near to bursting, brilliantly shining skin balloons stretched wide, even painful, perhaps - but, oh, the joys! Drunkenness and laughter and so much good food and better company!

It may well be this a long-winded way of saying something altogether simple, and if I'd a wish for more eloquent ways of saying it, instead I've only this: I've missed you, and you'd have so much loved near all this past week. The miles of trails, the vantage points all this vertical'll afford, all of it sure - but especially you'd have loved the food and the company. May well be that the sort I here keep isn't quite the sort we've there in those cities of lakes kept, but that'll not be a measure of quality. I've no doubt you'd find the same love here I've myself found, were you to make my company your own, is what I'm saying.

But. A promise I've made, and a promise I'll keep, but still some things I cannot avoid. Namely, this: I wish you were here. I miss you, and I wish you were here. More so even than that, though, I wish you well. Only you might know that path which's right, only you. I can't force that - and nor should I hope to be so unwise as to try. The simpler, more immediate things, then: let's catch up soon, alright?