Arrive Where We Started

Beginning at age 18 I have lived much of my life in the shadow of Mt. Rainier. While I have never been inspired to climb that mountain, in 2010 a friend of mine and I walked 70 miles around it on The Wonderland Trail. A few months later I began telling the story of my life and career around 49 virtual campfires, journeying around a metaphorical mountain. What I thought would be primarily a journey of memory soon also became one of discovery. Because there wasn’t a clear end point one of the challenges was to decide when my journey was complete, when I had arrived where I started. In 2015 I realized that I’d been living in the shadow of Mt. Rainier for 50 years. It was also 50 years since my high school graduation. Half a century since I met and started singing with Mike McCoy. That June my older brother turned 70 and my younger brother retired from teaching. I took time to write both of them letters saying how much they meant to me. I am one who believes it is up to each of us to find the order and design in the chaos and randomness of life and our lives. I had seen enough in the summer of 2015 to believe that I had arrived where I’d started and as TS Eliot described, saw it as if for the first time.