I love book clubs!

And I wrote about why in Parade this week!

http://parade.com/486461/annhood/ann-hood-why-we-love-book-clubs/

The shadows from the starlight are softer than a lullaby

Do you recognize that? If you're a John Denver fan like me then you know it's from Rocky Mountain High. Yup! I've been in Colorado all week, teaching at the lovely Aspen Words. My beginning fiction workshop has dazzled me every day with their bravery, talent, and general wonderfulness. And while I'm teaching and paneling, Annabelle has been tracking bears and building beaver dams at ACES camp. 

Today the first leg of our summer adventure ends as we head home. What a great start to summer! 

We are in the midst of big life changes, which I'll write about later when all the dust settles. For now, we are sadly packing up our Aspen condo and bidding goodbye to the mountains. I love how it rains puffs of cotton from the cottonwood trees here...

The man in the street

Yesterday was one of the more stressful days in a long string of stressful days. At 3:00 I had to drive an hour to a book club in a little seaside town here, and I was kind of looking forward to the drive: no emails, no pressures, maybe just saw classical music or Alec Baldwin on podcast and me. 

I was on Route 1, the beach road, a two lane 55 mile an hour road with a grassy median and then two lanes heading the other direction, and I saw a man on the median. He looked nervous as he watched the traffic heading south--my car among it. I wondered why he didn't cross when there was a break. Then, my car fast approaching, he threw himself into my lane. I mean, he did a belly flop smack onto the road and stayed there. 

I both braked and swerved into the other lane, and the man began to roll and then crawl across the road, finally crawling into the nearby woods. Miraculously, I didn't hit him or even come close to hitting him. But I realized in the shock that followed that was he wanted. He didn't try to run across the busy road; he threw himself onto it. In front of me. 

I know I should make something of this, some realization about life and death or the human condition. I should take inspiration from it: I'm going through a lot right now but we all need to keep going, or some such. But I have had no epiphany. Just the image of that man, scared, jumping.