The last stop.

(backposted from a hurried and unfinished draft, August 28th)

Well, kids.

We're in Monson, Maine, the last stop before the 100-mile Wilderness which leads up to Katahdin. I saw Katahdin the other day-- from atop a small climb on a clear day. I was unsure whether to smile or frown or raise one eyebrow and say, "we meet at last." I think I just stared. It stared back. And we two, mountain and mountain climber, we had a moment. It was a moment without a clearly-channeled emotion of some sort, one that tightrope-walked the line between ambivalence and equanimity, and I was without vertigo of any kind. We just were, it and I, for a few seconds under the sun.

We're coming.