We tell our stories, and our stories tell us. They’re a bridge between nature and nurture, the answers to questions we might not even know we had. For me, that question took the form of the nebulous sadness and anxiety that hovered over my family. For my daughter, maybe the story that suddenly clicked for her was a clue to the fierce bond she and I share, the way it can morph, sometimes, from delight and adoration into tears and fury and then, just as quickly, back again. Or maybe it was something else, something that will come to light as she leaves home and figures out who she is.
The 50 cent token set into motion the electro-mechanical magic of the batting cage. The magic is not in the conveyors, the wheels, or the accelerator arm which catapults hardballs dumbly into flight. It is the machine’s ability to pull special memories right out of the past and into the strike zone. To get the memories to dance among flying fastballs requires squinting a little at life and letting yourself be lifted with the suspension of the present.
In “The Appalachian Trail: A Biography” Philip D’Anieri, a lecturer in architecture and regional planning at the University of Michigan, provides deft, engaging profiles of a dozen people who were instrumental in the trail’s history. These range from Arnold Guyot, who literally put the Appalachian Mountains on the map, to Bill Bryson, whose bestselling “A Walk in the Woods” resulted in a 45% increase in “thru-hikers”—those who travel the entire length of the trail in a single trip. Not bad for a travel writer who walked only 10% of the trail.
that I cut you down
with a knife borrowed
from the cafeteria
on a dark December night