But I don’t want to start there. I want to start with what I heard.

When I was fourteen, two boys from Saluda met something in the woods that wasn’t supposed to exist. We ran. I spent fifty years pretending I hadn’t heard what I heard. In that hospital bed I heard it again. Same wool-blanket quiet. Same low roar. Only this time I couldn’t run, so I listened.

These dispatches are what I’ve been writing down since.

Here’s the deal. About once a month I’ll send you a field note from the wilderness of being human. A story, mostly. Sometimes a question worth carrying in your pocket for a week. Things I learned hauling a couch across South Carolina so teenagers had somewhere to sit and say what they actually believed. Things I learned making cheese at 4 AM with people who love it, and talking with students in Compton, and bouncing down desert roads in Baja. Things I’m still learning now, walking with a cane, drawing Sasquatch stickers and giving them to strangers at a coffee shop.

Nobody’s going to sell you ten steps here. I spent thirty years in marketing, so I know exactly what that pitch smells like. I’d rather sit with you than sell to you.

Fair warning about the company, though. There’s a Sasquatch at this fire. He showed up when my map gave out, and he stayed. He doesn’t explain himself, and I’ve quit asking him to. You’ll meet him.

If you know somebody whose map has stopped working, a friend, a sister, the guy behind the counter, send them this one. The fire doesn’t care what anybody does for a living.

The coffee’s mine. The log’s yours.
Geno