Last evening I met longtime friends for dinner. It was a wonderful time, finally getting together after almost eighteen months. Much too long. I believe they shared my joy in all of us being together after the long dark pandemic. The only thing that could have made the reunion better would have been if Betty, who is still down on St. Simons, had been there.
We met at the Blue Bicycle, the best restaurant in the Atlanta exurbs up this way. It is located about half way between Potlatch and their place in the mountains. Some years ago, they built a second home on a high ridge about fifteen miles from here. It is beautiful contemporary structure set into a wooded hill frequented by bears.
I met them after I hired Carol to teach English at the college. Jack, her husband, and I bonded given our shared interest in hiking and propensity to hang out drinking whisky late into the night. Carol became a trusted lieutenant in university matters and Jack and I proceeded to traipse around the country climbing mountains, paddling backwoods lakes and hiking the Appalachian Trail.
The point of all this is to say that it was special renewing our important friendship after so long and it was a celebration of what appears to be the end of the awful pandemic which has taken so many lives and disrupted life as we knew it. May all of you be having similar experiences.