The Eve of Twenty-Nine

Long lost are the stories that exude the grace and wit and sensibility of those told to us by generations past. As I sit here, on the eve of my twenty-ninth birthday I find myself turning to stories that make me nostalgic for a time ended decades before my or even my parents own. This nostalgia never fails to force me toward Norman Maclean and the ill-fated heros of his triumphant story: A River Runs Through It. This particular story, more than any other, makes me think of my grandfather. He wasn't a fisherman, he did not cast dry flies over the Blackfoot River, and would never let on that he led the beautiful life depicted on Maclean's pages even if the story were written about him in Heber City, Utah instead of others in Missoula, Montana. This story is more than just the story of the kind of boys my Grandfather grew up with, but his brothers that died too young. They, his brothers, were boys that left families and kids older than my father. These are men I will never really know; as the boys in that story are boys I will never know.

So as I enter my last year of in the 20s. I wax nostalgic for a time and a land long lost.