The element of surprise

Oil Creek State Park, Pennsylvania.

As you sit on the hillside, or lie prone under the trees of the forest, or sprawl wet-legged by a mountain stream, the great door, that does not look like a door, opens.

~ Stephen Graham, The Gentle Art of Tramping, 1926

I have participated in the original, official NaBloPoMo since November of 2006.  It was, in a way, a lifeline for me.  It was through that first NaBloPoMo that I began to experience a sense of community in what I think of as the outer blogosphere.  (I had previously been blogging for years under a pseudonym in a more closed space with a smaller community.)  I was going to need my new blogmates and this sense of being in touch with the outer world beginning the following month when M and I made a temporary move to West Chester, Pennsylvania (a town I referred to as Sabbaticalville while we were living there).

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