Sitting in the Great Room of Big Meadows Lodge, looking northwest over the valley that nestles the town of Stanley. The sun will be insistent that I pay attention, but in time he will retire behind the escarpment rising from the valley floor 10 miles from my bare feet.
I've given up reading; my love, my soul's bond with this place, can't be displaced by human authors. I cannot be here, or even dwell on it at length from my room, without my heart overflowing with longing to stay here forever. I have wonderful memories, some that have taken on a bitter-sweetness because I know that nothing will ever allow me to recreate any of those times. At other times when I dream of this place, I wish that I could know all the things that have passed by as I have lived my days away from here.
I want to be a man with limitless means, one that can organize the most magical of Christmastimes for family and friends here. My favorite musicians, my children, their children, and their children's children, those that I love, the one that I love, joining in the singing of carols as the children run about, all turning at once as they hear the cry "It's snowing!"
But now, I give old Sol a wry smile as I acknowledge his defeat without malice, and in the valley, lights begin to take over the old boy's task as dusk grows to darkness.
I stay for a long while. I allow the overwhelming emotions to have their way as they flow like the eddies in a brook - contentment and regret, happiness and longing, anger at the injustice of growing old and satisfaction knowing I have eternal life, frustration at never really having been able to express the love that I wish people could accept without it seeming odd and gratitude that there have been just a few who have.
I long for the weather to do for me what it did my last time here - sweep in with fog and rainy clouds that obscure my vision of the magnificent vista as the sky grows dark, casting a seasonal cool on my room, then chasing it all away with a freshening wind during the night watch, so that I awake to a dawn view of the valley and a chill morning full of emotions made of spiced cider and maple sugar candy and the smell of the fire in the Great Room. To again climb the stairs to the deck and encounter the sound of heart-filling music unspoiled by a human voice, a gift from the early morning keepers of this place, and the absence of another soul for these precious ten minutes . . .
