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How I spent my Summer Derbyshire
I said, "really... go on." "One morning I headed for the slopes. The slash was heavy and the stumps huge. A fog had settled in and the going was very rough. At one point, I slid down a hole 20 feet deep. It took me half an hour to get out. When I did, I decided to stop until the fog burned off. I found a stump that could have held 4 more people. I sat there, breathing. I was up 6000 feet just below the snow line. Something inside me said 'listen.' I was about to say 'what?' when I heard it. A most faint grunt. It grew louder and developed into a honk, and before I knew it a V of geese flew just above my head. I could have reached up and pulled one down. My fear was replaced with an awe. It was most beautiful. I kept listening until only my memory could hear." "Yah.....huh....what else?" "I was on a ship one time and I was becoming more and more frustrated with my inability to get something. A kindly hand reached over, as the ocean glided 60 feet below my feet and with the hand gesture came this thought, 'as so often you are asked not to exert extraordinary skill but to place extraordinary trust in the skill you already possess.'" "Ok......anything else?" "Funny things happen when one gets old, you know. For instance, you will forever afterward remember a certain red dress you saw someone wear one day, or a pot of geraniums you glimpsed as you passed through a city, you no longer know which odd little details like that. Figures, on the other hand, went right out of my head a long time ago." It was at this point that my summer Derbyshire was coming to a close and before I departed I was told, "my unreasonable desire grew. Even now I cannot speak of it lightly, much less with derision. Certain of our desires, as if they knew about us before we do ourselves, do not deserve to be mocked.... I would feel so unhappy at being left behind that I would nurse my regret all day and with it an aching curiosity." Jan Derbyshire is a lot of things to me, an artist, a writer, a performer, but most importantly she is a friend. She is grand and eloquent and swims in a river bound for Along. Pete Smith 1 from MEDITATIONS by Marcus Aurilius Antonius
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