Twenty-two years ago today, I was wrestling with the blues creeping in after losing my job. Funny how the silence from friends can be deafening when you're down. But there was this bright spot... those Comanche helicopters at the Bridgeport facility, carbon fiber and titanium marvels that belonged in a museum. I actually wrote about them twice that day, which tells you how badly I needed something beautiful to focus on while facing that looming stop-work order.
The years that followed painted different versions of this date. There was Spring Break 2007 with Paul, turning mountains into our playground minus the questionable decisions, plus way more snow. A year later came blizzard conditions at Lost Trail Pass, my muscles turning to ice while Mr. Blizzard crashed the party. In 2010, I captured "Escape" at Blue Point, that golden hour reminder that darkness brings its own kind of peace.
By 2012, I was hitting Pipestone on my Mukluk, riding a sofa across dirt while the rest of Montana froze. The 2017 Togwotee race brought a fox on my porch whispering "go"... my first good race after turning fifty. Then there's Cape Mears in 2023, watching waves pound those rocks, and last year's Lake Como visit looking back at all these dates.
Most recently, there's Point Six with its wildflowers that somehow thrive where nothing should. That's the pattern here, isn't it? March 16th keeps teaching me that beauty shows up in unlikely places, that you keep moving even when knocked down, and that mountains... they always deliver something worth the climb.