Catoctin is a couple of days out. The weather looks like it’s going to be good: the horribly high humidity that has graced our Nation’s capital is moving on, and temps are slated for the high-80s/low-90s. Aside from the fact that the gypsy moth has done a number on the usually thick canopy over the course, and that lower temps means more lively (and prickly) herpetofauna, I’m feeling good about the race. I’m well trained; I’ve got my gear figured out, I’ve got a hotel room close enough to the start line that I don’t have to get up at 4 am (even though I probably will); my shoes are polished (figuratively speaking); and intellectually I’m ready.
All of which is very nice, I’m sure.
Then there’s the irrational side, the bit that cares not at all for all of those things, but instead, sitting astride a kettledrum of doubt, pounds out a steady cadence of 50K, 31M, 7H, 150 people, the unknown.
Impending Catoctin is right.
For many years now I've left a trail of flecks across the Internet. Just begun novels; explorations of culture, music, writing, food, the future, mountains, long distances, shallow oceans, deep canyons; oddly-composed music; even more oddly-constructed poetry; impassioned editorial; strident analysis, and a slew of images, sounds, and scribbles. Most of this has passed into the aether, waiting only for some semi-sentient algorithm to pull it from obscurity twenty years hence. In the meantime, there is this lodestone, gathering what it can.