Sitting on the outdoor patio at a brewery, there is a book of Barry Lopez’s essays in my hands and, in the distance, the Appalachian Mountains rise into an incomparably blue sky.
A local ale in a frosty glass rests on the table beside me. To my right is a dirt pit in which four young kids are busying themselves. Two work together to dig a trench around the perimeter; another is filling an old muffin tin and patting the dirt flat; and the youngest child sits on her diapered bottom, grabbing fistfuls of dirt and letting it fall through her fingers. She grins as dust lingers in the sunlit air.
There’s a bearded guy, presumably the dad, reclining in the nearby grass in a cheap lawn chair. He’s kicked off his Birkenstocks. I catch his eyes, and we exchange a knowing nod. He slides further into the chair and pulls his baseball cap low over his eyes.
Barry Lopez wrote, “There are simply no answers to some of the most pressing questions. You continue to live them out, making your life a worthy expression of a leaning into the light.”
I take a sip of beer, then close my eyes to the sun. Some days, it’s easy to let the light lean into you.
Andrew Taylor-Troutman is the author of “Little Big Moments,” a collection of mini-essays about parenting, and “Tigers, Mice & Strawberries: Poems.” Both titles are available most anywhere books are sold online. Taylor-Troutman lives in Chapel Hill where he serves as pastor of Chapel in the Pines Presbyterian Church and occasionally stumbles upon the wondrous while in search of his next cup of coffee.
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