Bump — wheels down, LAX, right on schedule. Baggage secured, I’m on the bus to the rental car center and then barreling along the freeway to my cousin’s home to hang with his family for ten days. And climb some mountains, too – why, I have a long list of them.
From the highway, I see big peaks floating to the north. Faint silhouettes cloaked by haze and ocean mist. Baking in the late afternoon glare…
One cold evening, as I was ruminating about my future, a sly thought crept into my vacant mind — to climb 1,000 mountains. And it felt so right, although I held off from making a firm commitment, reminding myself to “give yourself some time to think it through.” But the allure was powerful and immediate. You see, I’m the kind of person who likes to take on big projects and get them done. Like when I ran the Leadville 100-mile ultramarathon, and a few miles before the half-way point, there was this sign – “Go Big or Go Home.” And then the trail headed up and up and up, rising relentlessly into the mountains, until it finally crested at Hope Pass, elevation 12,600 feet, where I felt like lying down on the trail and dying, although I hadn’t yet reached the half-way point.
Mind you I didn’t initially draw any connection between this project and the dragon. Which I’d only seen once before. A year ago, to be precise, in December 2022. I was hurtling south on route 26 toward Grapevine, Texas, in a rental (black Dodge Charger with a 370-horsepower HEMI v8), satellite radio blasting Soundgarden’s alternative edgy angst — when my eye was snagged by the roadside foliage’s autumnal tints. Oaks in green and red and bronze and mottled orange. Cedar elms turning tangerine. Frilly mesquite leaves waving green and lemon. What did these colors signify? Could there be, I wondered, a cosmic dragon studying our world from a parallel neighboring universe – and were these spots of color, flecks in the iris of its eye? Continue reading “The 1,000 Mountains Project and a Cosmic Dragon”
The Long Brown Path 