Ornoth

Last month Inna & I spent eight days in Austin. She was headed there for a four-day workshop, and it made sense for me to tag along and extend our trip, so that we could check it out as a possible place to relocate to.

Austin Skyline

Inna enjoying her palapa

Sparky Park

Austin Boardwalk

Craft

Couple under a palapa

Couple at Clay Pit

Couple at Lupe's Tex-Mex

Mt. Bonnell Sunset

Prologue

This was my first trip out of Pennsylvania since the Covid-19 pandemic hit; my first time sleeping anywhere other than my own bed since 2019. With the pandemic winding down, it was a nervous, awkward person who finally emerged from his cave after 2½ years of hibernation.

Leading up to the trip, I wasn’t able to muster much motivation to do the advanced research I needed to be well-prepared. I wasn’t big on the idea of living in Texas, and my previous visits to Austin (in 1994, 2003, and 2004) had left me with the impression that it was a cycling-unfriendly area. On top of that, I had some trepidation about the reasons behind Inna’s sudden enthusiasm for moving to such a scorchingly hot location.

I should also point out that I just wasn’t in a very positive place emotionally, which colored my experience of Austin and thereby this account of our travels. So please discount the “grumpy old man” factor that you’ll encounter below.

Here’s my day-by-day account, but if you’re only interested in the bottom line, you can skip ahead to the Epilogue.

Wed April 20: Travel

Arriving at the Pittsburgh airport, I dropped Inna near the terminal, drove out to long-term parking, and made the long walk back. Only to discover that Inna had forgotten to leave her winter coat in the car, so I offered to schlep it back out to the car and repeat my inbound hike. We breezed through security thanks to TSA PreCheck. Breakfast from McDonalds. Unlike ourselves, only 10% of people were masked up.

Our two-stage flight went well. I used the flight time to practice Japanese on Duolingo. At our connection in Detroit, our outbound flight to Austin was the same gate and aircraft we’d arrived in from Pittsburgh, which happily obviated the entire hectic connecting-flight dependency chain.

Grabbed our rental car from Enterprise, where they were much too friendly. Drove across town and checked into our hotel, right on the I-35 highway access road. Seeing Captain Benny’s seafood restaurant with outdoor seating and palapas right next to the hotel, Inna was delighted by the reminder of our time in the Caribbean, so we immediately had a light outdoor dinner there.

The weather – as it would be all week long – was very windy and heavy overcast that would occasionally burn off to reveal the sun. Days ranged from 20-30° and nights from 10-20°. Inna found it delightful, and it was quite an improvement over Pittsburgh, where it had snowed all day the day before we left.

Afterward, we went straight to the Atown local souvenir shop, checked out “Sparky Park” (a former electrical substation decorated with pretty and sparkly and delightful junk), and got supplies at the local H-E-B (Howard E. Butt) grocery, which included some interesting “double chocolate” Lindt truffles.

Had some challenges navigating the Texan highway access road system, Austin’s half streets (e.g. East 38½ Street), and the mystery of why anyone would name a residential street “Speedway”. Returned to the hotel very tired and spent some time catching up on stuff before turning in.

Thu April 21: Level Up Circling & Mariposa

After a breakfast of OJ and cookies, I dropped Inna off at the modest ranch house where her four-day Circle Anywhere workshop was held. My plan for Day 1 was to shower, settle in, and attend an evening meditation group at Mariposa Sangha.

My contact there had proposed meeting up beforehand, but never replied to my response, so I had dinner on my own: an idiosyncratic Panang curry at Thai Kitchen, where I got instant service, being the only customer who was dining in. Dessert was a Mexican vanilla milkshake at Amy’s Ice Cream up the street, after being asked by the staff whether I was able to fix their “waffle dough pump”.

Then to Mariposa, a small peer-led Vipassana meditation group, held in a Methodist church chapel, which was still filled with Easter lilies. Met Paul Schlaud, who was leading the evening sitting and dhamma talk, covering the Buddhist precept against misusing sexuality. I contributed during the Q&A, and chatted with Paul afterward. It seemed comparable to our sitting group in Pittsburgh: pretty small and informal, where I’d be equally welcome to teach as well as be taught.

My session ended just as Inna’s post-workshop dinner broke up, so I swung by the Italian restaurant to pick her up and drive back to the hotel.

Fri April 22: Bike Shops

After dropping Inna off, I began my cycling-focused day with a stop at TJ’s Cycle, where I got a lot of good pointers, despite them being mostly an MTB shop.

The guy there pointed me to a new shop nearby called Bicycle House ATX, where I gathered a little more info.

Then downtown, where I stopped at REI to get an independent opinion. I picked up a hardcopy Austin bike map and chatted with a couple friendly locals. Then the nearby Rapha store, which was predictably pretentious but helpful.

My final downtown stop was Mellow Johnny’s, the store founded by cycling pariah Lance Armstrong. It is a hub of the local cycling community, and had dozens of workers manning the store, but to me it seemed both tackily self-promoting and thoroughly unfriendly.

My final stop was Trek Bicycle Lamar. The former center of Austin’s cycling scene, it had been known as the Bicycle Sport Shop before a corporate buyout. I spoke briefly to an attendant who had once lived in Pittsburgh. The shop had a whole wall full of suggested rides, which I captured for future reference.

By the end of the afternoon, I had gathered way more information about the Austin cycling scene than needs to be recorded here, but my impression was that cycling was popular enough to support for several bike shops and group rides. And although I couldn’t find evidence of any centuries or major events (other than the Hill Country Randonneurs), people sounded confident in riding out beyond the city limits into Texas proper. Austin seemed to pass my cycling sniff test.

I’d planned to walk around the corner to visit Peter Pan Mini Golf, which I’d visited with my DargonZine pals in 2003, but by then I was so tired that it slipped my mind in my desire to get back to the comfort of the hotel.

After meeting up with Inna, dinner was a pound of pork ribs at Rudy’s BBQ. As we entered the building, the wind was so strong that it blew down a renovator’s ladder, which nearly fell on top of me!

For dessert I took Inna to Amy’s Ice Cream. She’d had a challenging day at her workshop, and I let her talk it out and relax in the outdoor seating. We were both beat and headed back to the hotel to crash.

Sat April 23: Kyūdō & Newspaper Quest

After taking Inna to Day 3 of her workshop, I went back to the hotel to shower, which for this one day was swarmed with dozens of college students. Then it was back into town to pick up some Excedrin and the day’s main event.

I stepped into the Rising Sun Aikido studio, where people from Austin Kyūdō were assembling for practice. When the leader introduced herself to me, I heard her name as “VHS”, which she subsequently corrected to “Beatrice” (Haven). I also met Helen Febrie, whom I’d exchanged emails with to schedule my visit.

I have two main takeaways from their practice. One is that they’re an ANKF/IKYF group, rather than the Zenko/Heki-ryu Bishu Chikurin-ha lineage of kyūdō that I studied back in Boston. That means they put less emphasis on the mental and meditative aspect of kyūdō, and like other martial arts they give formal ranks to practitioners. There are also some tiny differences in their technique, such as using the two-arrow form, not smoothing the arrow feathers, emphasis on coordinated team practice, less ritualized arrow retrieval, and permission to use bows made of materials other than bamboo. It also means they’re on good terms with American bowmaker Don Symanski, which could someday prove valuable. But I’m agnostic about which school of kyūdō I’m involved with, and find that petty rivalry to be shortsighted, given how tiny the pastime is here in the U.S..

My other takeaway is that it’s a small group with friendly, approachable members. They’re a small offshoot of the IKYF South Carolina Kyūdō Renmei based near Greenville, SC. They’re not unfriendly with the remnants of the dormant Austin Shambhala kyūdō group, as well as Zenko, and they sometime cross paths. It seemed like a nice, supportive group, although requiring an immense 1,800 KM trip to SC to get instruction and support from an experienced teacher.

I stayed for the full 2-hour indoor practice, occasionally chatting but mostly enjoying the beauty of the form and teasing out the differences in technique.

It being Saturday, I wanted to pick up a Barron’s financial newspaper, since I’d suspended my home delivery for the week. Long story short, I had no luck, despite hitting a CVS drugstore, Barnes & Noble bookstore, Kinokuniya Japanese bookstore, and 7-Eleven and Valero convenience stores all across town.

Frustrated, I went back to the hotel and spent the night eating snacks and watching soccer. I was too tired to go out, find a big meal, and fight the Saturday night crowds. Inna found her own dinner and eventually Ubered home.

Sun April 24: Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Hotel Day

Day Four in Austin, and for the third day I woke up headachey and nauseous. The weather was continued overcast, which certainly was preferable to Texas heat, but weighed on my mood.

Despite fulfilling major criteria like cycling, meditation, and kyūdō, much of Austin felt like America at its worst: soulless highway car culture and chain store strip mall hell. The city has become ridiculously expensive and its overtaxed infrastructure can’t handle the explosive population growth it has experienced.

Although I’d brought all my cycling gear and hoped to enjoy some cycling around Austin – especially the Veloway and bike night at the Circuit of the Americas – logistical difficulties had made it impossible. I was disappointed and depressed.

After dropping Inna off at her final workshop session, I wanted to fetch drinks and a Barron’s, but had no luck at Circle-K, the H-E-B grocery, or Target. Then I went back to the hotel to regroup and figure out my plan for the day.

While brushing my teeth, I dropped a hotel glass in the bathroom sink, smashing it and cutting up my hands, especially my right ring finger, which began bleeding profusely. It took two hours of constant direct pressure to get the bleeding under control, and another hour before it stopped enough to be able to stick a bandage on it. The white facecloth I’d used was crimson and completely soaked with blood. Getting that under control pretty much took up my whole day. By evening, I was able to gingerly drive myself to another nearby Thai restaurant, Pad Thai, for takeout.

Meanwhile, Inna had decided to spend the evening with her workshop cohort, going wading in Barton Springs before getting a late ride back to the hotel.

From my perspective, it had been another shitty day and I just wanted nothing other than to go home.

Mon April 25: Storms & Hotel Swap

Monday wasn’t much of a day either, washed out by thunderstorms and off-and-on rain. Inna spent her first non-workshop morning recovering needed work files that her teammates had mistakenly deleted. Then we packed up and checked out of our north-of-town hotel. Although we’ve usually stayed at B&Bs, Inna had found exceptional deals at standard hotels, and changing hotels allowed us to explore different parts of the city with less travel time in the car.

With time to kill before our check-in time at the next, south-of-town hotel, we drove around town looking at houses that were for sale. They were mostly ranches, of course, and the residential neighborhoods only varied in how recently they’d been developed. Prices were high but not completely insane.

After an unenthusiastic debate, we opted for a late lunch at the Clay Pit, a downtown Indian restaurant that I had visited during the 2003 DargonZine Summit meetup, and where I’d left behind (and then fetched) a digital camera. The food was surprisingly good.

Our new hotel was located right in the middle of a massive highway interchange in a more industrial section of town. Inna was delighted that the new room — unlike the old one – had a safe, until I pointed out that it was actually a microwave oven, and she probably didn’t want to store her work computer in there!

We spent the rainy afternoon relaxing. Inna napped, and then practiced her Hebrew on Duolingo, which she’d picked up after I’d started using it over Xmas to learn Japanese. Then we went to H-E-B for supplies before calling it a day.

Tue April 26: Grumpy Goes Downtown

By Tuesday, it had all caught up with me: the gloomy weather, my headaches, bad eating, inability to do any cycling, and injuring my hand, all on top of longstanding background dissatisfaction with aging and cardiac health. First thing after waking up, Inna patiently sat through one of my rare emotional dumps.

She then equally patiently helped me shower and wash my hair, since I still couldn’t use my right hand. Afterward, I replaced the bandage for the first time, and happily noted that my fingers looked much better than they had two days earlier.

Focusing on what she could control (my diet), Inna directed us to breakfast at the Magnolia Cafe, where I demolished Eggs Zapata, which amounted to scrambled eggs on english with sausage and spicy queso.

Next stop was “Austin Art Garage”, but we arrived before opening, so killed time in a nearby Indian shoppe. Returning, we scoped out the gallery, and I was amused by their 1980s vintage Tron arcade game console.

Heading downtown, we stopped at the Austin Visitor Center, which provided a transit map and just two brochures, only one of which was Austin-specific. Worthless.

With the day turning warm and sunny, Inna directed us to the mile-long Lady Bird Lake Boardwalk that’s part of the bike trail along the south side of the Colorado River. We took up residence in some Adirondack chairs left on a riverside dock and enjoyed the sun and the skyline view for a while, and watched a couple guys fooling around on e-foils. On the walk back, Inna greeted a young black woman who had brought her cat down to the river.

The rest of the day was haphazard. Another Amy’s Ice Cream, followed by Uncommon Objects, a big antiques (junk) store with most of its wares displayed by color. I dropped Inna off to meet a friend for a food truck dinner, then went back to the hotel, where I waited until 10:30pm to hear whether she needed me for a return ride or not.

Wed April 27: Lupes & More Circling

We (well, Inna) slept in until lunchtime. After hitting CVS, we stopped to admire Casa Neverlandia, a creatively-decorated private house that reminded me of Pittsburgh’s Randyland.

Lunch was a long-anticipated stop on the 360 at Lupe’s Tex-Mex restaurant, an Inna favorite since her first business trip to Houston, having heard it reviewed by a co-worker back when she was in Kuala Lumpur. It being my first time, I was pleased with the fajitas we got. I’m not sure it lived up to the years of hype I’d heard – and it was stunningly expensive! – but it was good to finally try the place for myself.

After yet another Amy’s Ice Cream, we stopped for a brief rest at the small Govalle Neighborhood Park at the Southern Walnut Creek trailhead.

Then Inna navigated us to Craft, a big DIY crafting warehouse. After a quick tour, we settled in and gave it a try. Inna produced one of her typical paint-and-collage compositions, and I stayed true to form with a bold abstract paint-based thing. Nothing noteworthy, but it was a nice activity, and something to do as a couple other than sitting around the hotel or eating.

Although Inna’s weekend workshop was over, she wanted to go to Circle Anywhere’s regular weekly evening session, so I dropped her off and went to kill time at the Kinokunia Japanese bookstore. I browsed for 45 minutes without finding anything that jumped out at me, so I moseyed on to the Daiso Japanese housewares store next door.

Bored with that, I consulted my map to find a nearby park to hang out in for the 90 minutes until Inna’s session ended. Covert Park at Mount Bonnell was nearby and looked like it would have a view overlooking the river, so I drove there.

I’d forgotten that Mount Bonnell is a favorite semi-touristy spot to watch the sunsets from atop a high bluff over the river. I’d arrived just in time, and spent a few minutes scouting out the walking paths, looking for an unoccupied vantage point. It reminded me a lot of the “overlooks” back in Pittsburgh. I relaxed, watched the sun set, and took a couple selfies and panoramas. I also enjoyed the modern convenience of using a 5G phone connection to check Inna and I into our upcoming flights home.

Inna’s workshop session had been unsatisfying, so we chatted about it on the way back to the hotel, where we started packing up while watching another soccer game.

Thu April 28: Killing Time til We Can Go Home

Our last day in Austin began as you’d expect: packing up and checking out of our hotel.

Then we made our way to the Buzz Mill cafe, where we met up with Inna’s friend Sarah Ness, a former Pittsburgher who had founded Authentic Revolution, one of Austin’s other “circling” groups. She was pleasant and interested and energetic, and had lots of positive things to say about Austin.

When Sarah left, Inna and I went next door to a Dairy Queen, where I ordered the traditional Dilly Bar. Then we literally drove around the block before Inna proposed that we go back and hang out at the Buzz Mill until it was time to head to the airport.

The car was dropped off in seconds, our TSA PreCheck got us through security in no time, and Inna disappeared into a massage booth while I finally found a copy of Barron’s at an airport newsstand. Inna stopped at “Salvation Pizza” and spent $7.50 a slice for some greasy pizza that they stacked such that each slice was stuck to the paper plate of the one above it. Did we still eat it? Yeah, you can’t be choosy when eating in the airport.

By the time our 7pm flight was boarding, even Inna just wanted to be home. Happily, like our previous connection in Detroit, our transfer in Atlanta was also back onto the same aircraft at the same gate we arrived at, which made for the best Hartsfield experience either of us have ever had. We shared a laugh when the PA announcer sounds like he asked passengers to please make sure everyone in your party had their body parts for boarding.

Although it wasn’t objectively long, our journey home felt like it took forever. The flight, the trek to the intra-terminal shuttle, waiting at baggage claim (we’d been forced to gate-check our carry-ons), the trudge out to the car, paying for long-term parking, and the 45-minute drive home. There – despite it being 2:30am — I jumped straight into trash, recycling, and cleaning out the cat’s litterbox and put everything out for pickup later that morning. But the cat was happy to see us, and we were very glad to climb into bed shortly before the sun rose.

Epilogue

Recalling that this was my first major trip post-Covid, since late 2019, I am delighted that we made it through without either of us getting sick. We were masked and careful at the airports and during flights, but less so in Austin, where we – like everyone else – went mostly mask-free in stores and restaurants. Although we weren’t especially stringent, we didn’t have any problems at all, even though our immune systems haven’t been exercised in 2½ years.

As for the prospects for relocating, that remains a bit unclear, although after numerous false starts, Austin’s the first place that we both agree has real potential.

For me, the positive side of the ledger includes Inna’s willingness to move there, an active cycling community, the presence of a kyūdō dojo, an MLS team, and no city or state income taxes. Although I’ll repeat how disappointed I am that I wasn’t able to do any cycling during this trip, either solo or in the company of locals.

The list of Austin’s negatives includes the cost of living, the traffic, the highways, the endless expanse of character-less strip malls. Higher property and sales taxes. No casino. Poisonous snakes, spiders, fire ants, scorpions, and lots of other creepy-crawlies. And no matter how reasonable Austinites might seem, it’s a tenuous island of approximate sanity amid Texas’ vast and frightening brand of crazy.

As for mixed blessings… This trip’s weather notwithstanding, there’s the heat. Although I would certainly be leaving New England winters far behind, even a sun-worshipper like myself am intimidated at the prospect of living with Texas’ infamous heat, even if Inna is resigned to being uncomfortable no matter where we go.

And the meditation scene also counts as a mixed blessing. There aren’t any longstanding teachers, nor any retreat centers anywhere nearby. The community is small and led by a group of peer leaders. While that’s much like my situation here in Pittsburgh and would allow me to continue to develop my role as a teacher, I would have even less experienced support in my own personal practice than I already have here.

So that leaves me with mixed feelings. Austin seems to have almost all of the things I want in a home, and Inna seems willing to commit. If it wasn’t Texas, it might be an easy decision to make. But I can’t escape the fact that it is Texas, and living there would require an immense adjustment, as compared to moving somewhere a little more temperate and with a more familiar East Coast culture.

Making another scouting trip would make a lot of sense, to become more confident about our decision, whatever that winds up being. There’s just so much that we haven’t looked at, including Inna’s employer’s local office, and that dreaded summertime heat.

So that’s where I wound up. As a vacation, it wasn’t a very good trip for me; and as a relocation spot, Austin has a lot of potential, although there are lots of plusses and minuses for us still to weigh.

Mt. Bonnell Sunset Pano

Mise en scène: a tiny village in northern Scotland called Huntly, Thursday, May 28 2002. Seven DargonZine writers and one NPC follower pile out of a rental van for a tour and demonstration at the North East Falconry Centre.

After the show, I saw something that just screamed to be captured. Here’s how I wrote it up in my original travelogue, seven years ago:

On the way out, I caught a singularly amusing moment. One of the bald eagles had decided it might be fun to stand in the big water bowl I described above. So here’s the symbol of America, standing in a pool of water up to his knees, looking down as if to say “Goddamn, I’m standing in water! What the hell’s going on here? This is so humiliating! Somebody ought to do something about this…” I dunno, it struck me as hilarious, and still does.

The photo lived on my Scrapbook page for years, where I’d occasionally share it with friends.

A couple days ago, a former coworker pointed me here. Apparently he’d uploaded the photo to LOLcat central: ICanHasCheezburger. Beyond that, eighteen people have made up their own captions for it!

It’s a little slice of noteriety that I find amusing, and it’s interesting to see what captions other people have added to it.

I figured I’d spare you the long version, and only post this very abbreviated version of this year’s DargonZine Writers’ Summit travelogue.

Thursday I flew Boston to Denver to Portland, Oregon for this year’s DargonZine Summit. Neither flight was very pleasant, nor was the cab ride to the hotel.

Although I was in by midafternoon, this year’s host, Jim, wasn’t going to pick me up until the following morning, so I had the evening to kill. I opted for a Thai place that was within walking distance, but had to ad lib when I discovered that it was closed for renovations. Fortunately, my new phone (Sprint’s Samsung Instinct) has a GPS function which allowed me to find the next nearest Thai place and get directions.

The food was tremendous. It really capped the day. On the way back to the hotel, I picked up some goodies at Safeway and was harassed by the cashier to pick up one of their store discount cards. Never mind that the nearest Safeway is 400 miles from home…

Friday morning Dafydd swung by to chat, and then Jim and his wife Naomi showed up with their car. We promptly stopped at 7-Eleven (on 7/11) to get our free Slurpees, which sucked. We stopped at a sushi place for lunch, where I had a decent pork schnitzel, carefully relabelled “tonkatsu” by the Japanese.

Then came the two hour drive to the B&B in Seaside, where we met Rena, Jon, Liam, and his wife Mayellen. Then we carpooled down the coast to Cannon Beach to eat, stroll the beach, and view the famous Haystack Rock monolith.

Back home, the power was out, but fortunately it came back on before sunset could interrupt our marathon four-hour session of land-grab game Carcassone, which I almost won.

Saturday working sessions included some administrative items from the guys who are running the show, now that I’ve bowed out. Then Jim sprang an unplanned 90-minute writing exercise on everyone, which kinda mucked up the schedule. While the group strategized about their next story arc, I grabbed Jim’s car for a quick bank run.

Lunch involved searching for a rumored but non-existant Thai place, then finding a Thai place downtown and turning away at the last second in favor of a really mediocre American family restaurant.

Then we rented two four-person surrey-style quadracycles and headed down the coast to the rocky edge of the beach, where I took the opportunity to wade in the Pacific Ocean. Then back to town to return the surreys and wander around at random, including some disappointing stores, bumper cars, and mini-golf.

We played crazy card game Fluxx until it was time for the lengthy drive to our dinner spot. Four of us grabbed a car and hopped to it, stopping only long enough to rouse the napping others, who wouldn’t get out of the house for fifteen more minutes.

Dinner was at a huge log cabin style restaurant called Camp 18 (not Latitude 18, which was a restaurant down in St. Thomas). The theme was an old logging camp, which felt to me like a huge YMCA camp lodge. We were seated as a private party in one of the two lofts under the rafters, overlooking the rest of the dining room, which was pretty cool.

Back home, we organized a poker game using the chips Dafydd had purchased for the Las Vegas Summit. I wound up losing $8, which is tolerable.

Sunday’s working session was nothing major, and then we hit the road up to Astoria, where we went up to the Astoria Column, a big column (surprise!) set atop one of the hills surrounding the town and overlooking the mouth of the Columbia River.

Having some time left over, we decided to hike about two thirds of a mile to the Cathedral Spruce, which is basically a big tree with a small hollow at the base. We got there, took a few pictures, and headed back.

Then it was down to the riverfront for a two-hour river tour on a stinky working fishing boat. We went upriver along the shore, then turned back into the wind and toward the estuary. The whole way back, the forty-foot boat was tossed up and down by four- to five-foot swells and bigger. We all got quite wet, but my pocket camera survived, unlike the two I brought Waverunning in St. Thomas.

Ashore, we found food at the unprepossessing wharfside Wet Dog Brewpub, where I indulged myself a bit with a milkshake, lemonade, and a burger with jalapeno and Canadian bacon.

Back to the house for an evening of Carcassone. I passed on it, and passed out on the couch.

Monday morning four of us were out of the house by 6:30am for the trip back to the Portland airport. Goodbyes all around, which were more difficult for me, since I may never see some of these people again.

One of the things I wanted to do on this trip was to let people adjust to the idea that I won’t be very involved in DargonZine anymore and achieve some closure for everyone. I’ve also made it clear that I will not be writing any more fiction, nor will I be attending any more Summit gatherings. It’s been two years since I announced my intention to step down, and I think everyone’s ready for it: myself, the project leadership, and the other writers.

I’ve already talked a little bit about how big a change this is for me. It’s letting go of one of my greatest creations, and closing the book on something that has been a large part of my life for nearly all of the past 24 years. There’s an awful lot that I’ll miss about it: the Summits, the people, the praise, the recognition, and the creative outlet. And I really don’t know what is going to arise to take its place in my life. But leaving DargonZine is one of several major transitions I’m going through right now, and I just have to do it and find out what’s next for me.

It might be a bit melodramatic to compare it to life as a whole, but DargonZine has been a long, wonderful ride, and I’ve been blessed to share the journey with dozens of people, many of whom have become very dear to me and important parts of my life. I really hope to retain those connections, even though I will not be participating in the project anymore.

I grew up kinda of as an only child, so I’m sure it’s not the first time I appreciated silence, but one of the most noteworthy times I recall noticing silence took place in 1999.

The Dargon Writers’ Summit is always a hectic time, and holding it in the middle of New York City made it doubly so. Insane cabbies, brusque shopkeepers, and swarming crowds all added to the chaos of spending the weekend with seven other somewhat manic writers.

The trip up to the observation deck of the World Trade Center towers was no better: huge lines, then crowds of people shouldering each other to get close to the windows on the top floor observation deck.

One thing that still amazes me is that even in New York in 1999, they let tourists out onto the completely open roof of the tower. As I stepped out there, 1370 feet above the street, the one thing that struck me more than anything else was the absolute silence.

All I could see was an immense mass of urban congestion from one horizon to the other, but none of it reached me. There I was, smack in the middle of one of the biggest cities on the entire planet, but I was surrounded by near total silence. The contrast with the street level I’d just come from was intense. No buses, no trains, no cabs. No street vendors, no panhandlers, no public cell phone conversations. No horns, no shouting, no construction noises.

Here’s the pertinent section of my travelogue from that visit:

     From there we drove downtown and took some time finding a parking garage that could hold the mega-van. […] We were actually kind of directionless, but Max really wanted to go to the top of the World Trade Center, so we wound up moseying in that general direction. We walked right by Wall Street and Trinity Church and up Broadway for a while, then found the WTC. […]
     Inside, we made our way through the underground mall and up some escalators to the place where the tours began; the area had a good view of a nearby building bearing a sign "Amish". We paid and most of us successfully slipped by the photo op guys, passed through the metal detectors, got accosted by some Chinese good-luck hand-stamper, and stood by a railing overlooking the lower floor, waiting for the others, who didn't have the bluster to walk past the photo-op guys.
     At this point, Rena, who had pushed her sunglasses up above her forehead, as seems to be eerily popular these days, leaned back against the railing. The glasses slipped slowly from her hair, and she turned just in time to see them fall the forty feet to the floor below. While she went down to retrieve them, the rest of the group clustered by the railing, estimating how high it was, and how Rena would get by the security gates and into the secure area where her glasses had fallen. Many times other tourists queued up behind Stuart, who was at the end of our group, thinking we were in line for some special treat. We all took pictures as Rena slipped under the gate and picked up her glasses. Finally, she caught back up with us and we were herded into the express freight elevator headed to the top!
     On the 107th floor is a glassed-in observation deck, with odd ski-lift-like seating compartments which allow you to look nearly straight down. We started with a northeast view, and I identified the Brooklyn, Manhattan, Williamsburg, Queensboro, and 59th Street Bridges. I also noted Roosevelt Island and LaGuardia airport (near where Linda used to live, sandwiched between LaGuardia and Rikers Island). Looking north: Fifth Avenue, Washington Square Park, the Chrysler and Empire State Buildings, and the GW Bridge. Directly west was New Jersey and a great view of the office towers where Sapient's old and current Jersey City offices have been housed. And south was Ellis Island, the Statue of Liberty, Governors Island, and Staten Island. The view was fantastic, but I couldn't see the west side pier where the USS Intrepid was docked, because the other WTC tower blocked the view in the northwest direction. While we gawked, several of us stopped at the gift shop, and Max bought a set of clear NYPD shot glasses to go with the blue ones he's obtained at the airport!
     But the real treat was still further up. There's an escalator that leads up to the 110th floor, the open roof of the building! The view from up there was breathtaking, and I never had any sense of fearful heights. People are kept a good 12-15 feet from the edge of the building by a railing, a 12-foot drop onto another platform, a big cyclone fence topped with razorwire, and a couple electrified rails, which also makes it impossible to see straight down, as you could on observation deck. Max was telling us about all those precautions against "jumpers", and also pointed out the two-foot markers on the edge to document where people jump, and the automated cameras maintained by local television stations to capture any jumpers on tape, when a woman came up and expressed her disbelief at all those precautions. Max sent her on her way before reassuring us that the marks were probably as much for window-washers as jumpers, and that the video cameras would also be useful in capturing a bird's eye view of the whole city, not just jumpers!
     For myself, I was surprised by the lack of wind on the roof. I had been expecting as much wind as you get in the canyons at street level, but there really was very little wind at all up there. In addition, there was much less smog, and virtually no noise of traffic or anything else! In the summer sun, it was a wonderful treat, and we hung around up there for more than half an hour, talking, resting, taking pictures of one another (including the infamous recursive group shot), enjoying the view, and just lounging in the sun.
     After passing the photo op booth on the way back out, people stopped at a bathroom on 107. Meanwhile, I found and pointed out an empty four-foot square closet with a glass door bearing the logo of an interior design firm -- very odd. Returning to ground level, the group got drinks while Alan went to fetch the van. In the pizza joint I'd gotten lunch from, as I ordered my Coke I noticed one of the cooks by the pizza oven yelling through a two-foot hole cut in the tile floor; apparently that was their cellar access, and he was asking someone down there for more Snapple! Outside, Stu and Jon went in search of a drug store to procure film […]

I guess it’s a bit silly trying to communicate the value of silence through words, but it really was something quite special. I think everyone recognized that, because we stayed up there quite some time, just enjoying the quiet and the open breeze.

I’ve always had a very strong appreciation of silence, and I think it’s kind of interesting that one of the most compelling experiences I’ve had was experiencing it in the middle of the biggest city on the planet, atop a pair of buildings that no longer exist.

So it’s been a couple weeks since the 2006 Dargon Writers’ Summit, which this year took place in Cincinnati. What follows is a highly-hacked up version of the summary I posted to our discussion list.

Typically, I’d say this posting would only be of interest to me, but you might be interested to know that this year I went into the Summit with the intention of resigning most of my responsibilities.

Having run this writing group since 1984 and long having considered it one of the most important activities in my life, my departure represents a major, possibly shocking development. So you might want to read about that. But I won’t get into the details of it until near the end of this missive.

So here’s the story. Note that the original email this is based on is addressed to the writers themselves. The original email text is indented, with comments outdented.

Last Wednesday afternoon Daf, Rena, and I arrived at Liam’s and went to dinner at Longhorn Steakhouse. Rena made her way to her hotel, while the rest of us played a quick game of “You Have Been Sentenced”, an educational sentence-building game designed for a bit younger audience, before crashing throughout Liam’s many guest bedrooms.
 
Thursday the four of us drove a couple hours into the Kentucky Hills. Daf and Rena went to Natural Bridge State Park, where they took a chairlift up to (or perhaps only down from?) the top of a ridge and hiked across the massive stone bridge and around the area. Meanwhile, Liam and I went to nearby Red River Gorge for a 6-mile hike along one ridge, then down into a valley and up another. It was very steamy, hot work, and we were glad to get back to house, exhusted, for a shower before meeting up with Jim and snagging Jon at the airport to complete our complement of six for this year’s Summit. Sadly, there were no new writers joining us this year.

Ironically, we drove through Lexington KY. The only time I’ve been there before was for the 1991 VM Workshop. I returned from that trip to find my wife moving out prior to our eventual divorce, so the area, though very pretty, has very mixed emotions associated with it.

The hike was really spectacular, and I enjoyed it a lot. It was just right: enough exertion so that you knew you’d had a workout, but not so much that we were limping home in abject pain. I was impressed with Kentucky when I was down there in 1991, and came away just as impressed this time.

I was disappointed with the meager turnout of just five other writers, but one can’t expect much, given our rapidly-dwindling numbers. It was definitely nothing like Austin, just three years ago, when we had a dozen. The chronic absence of any new (unpublished) writers was another major irritant for me.

Supper was at Knotty Pine on the Bayou, a nice but rustic Cajun place near Liam’s. Pretty good stuff. Returning to the house, we had a bit of a scotch tasting, mostly thanks to Daf’s plunder from his 2005 Scotland trip, then proceeded with a game of Summit favorite Settlers of Catan before crashage.

I pretty much confirmed my preference for Talisker as a full-bodied, smoky whisky. Nothing else came close.

Friday a few people slept in, while the rest of us got a very substantial breakfast at a place called First Watch. Then it was back to the house for the Summit working sessions. Friday’s sessions were designed to be all focused on writing (as opposed to project administration stuff).

Jon, our impulsive guy, was twice warned not to order a huge plate of pancakes, but decided to do it anyways. He probably ate about 2/3rds of what he received.

The thinking behind separating project business and writing was to do the writing-related stuff before the surprise announcement of my scaling back my involvement, which would be an immense distraction. I also wanted to set the zine up to succeed as best I could, and that seemed to suggest making as much progress on the writing stuff as possible before throwing the spanner into the works.

I opened the ceremonies by sharing a bit of a joke: a map of Baranur where all the place names had been replaced by anagrams. For example, Monrodya had been rechristened “Many Odor” and Welspeare was now “Ale Spewer” and Leftwich became “Elfwitch”.
 
Next up was Liam with a very informative talk about point of view. He made the important distinction (which I hope we’ll observe henceforth) between POV (first person, second person, third person; omniscient vs. limited, etc) and perspective (which character’s head you’re occupying). Then he went on to talk about advantages and disadvantages of each, and rules for their use. Great stuff!
 
Next, Jim—in his usual animated fashion—gave a great talk about medieval ships and shipping. He described their main uses— transportation, fishing, and warfare—the various types of ships, their methods of propulsion, and what life was like on board. Again, great stuff!

The whole idea of “white papers”, where a writer goes off and does some research and then reports back to the group at the Summit, is fairly recent, but has always worked out very well.

While Liam stepped out to get out lunch, I led the group through an interesting writing exercise called “sausage sentences”. The idea was to write an entire story where the last letter of one word was the first letter of the next, “linking” them together. It was fun, but rough! Adverbs are not your friends! And you can just forget about fancy verb tenses and even pronouns! In the end, some pretty interesting works were crafted, including the ever-memorable “gnarly yellow walnuts”.
 
Finally, Liam shared the results of his and Rena’s research into Dargon’s money systems and monetary values. The basic message was that our intention to make the money systems confusing for the characters in Dargon had simultaneously confused the heck out of our writers, as well! The research indicates that although there were a few notable outliers, people have stayed mostly within the ballpark of rational values, and a few specific tweaks might clarify things nicely for the writers. Liam will do one more iteration and present a summary document to the group which will hopefully set the level for monetary values and sexchange rates so you can use them without fear.
 
With the working sessions over, we headed over into Ohio for the first time. We tromped through the Cincinnati Art Museum, which had a fascinating show of dozens of Rembrandt van Rijn etchings; sadly, no photos allowed. Half the group stayed to plunder the art museum while several others went to the Krohn Conservatory’s Australian butterfly show. Later, we met up and made our way to Mt. Adams, a trendy sightseeing district in Cincy. After a bit of wandering and admiring the views of the city, we had a fine supper at Teak, a Thai place.

The butterfly exhibit was nowhere near as impressive as my expectation had been, and the most beautiful example—this iridescent blue species -- adamantly refused to keep its wings open when being photographed. But it was better than wandering around the art museum for two hours…

The Thai food was pretty good. I had cashew chicken, which was probably second only to that at Boston’s King & I.

Returning home, we made good use of Liam’s pool table while putting some brass tacks down in the Doravin story arc. Things are coming together there, especially in the first section of the arc, which will get the ball rolling. A few of us capped the evening off with another round of Settlers, again running late into the night.

I had really hoped we’d make a lot more progress on the Doravin arc, but it wasn’t to be. I think it’ll get off the ground, but I’m not sure how much momentum it really has.

That brings us to Saturday. Liam, despite his bleary-eyed sleep deprivation, got up and got everyone waffled before the working sessions, which in turn focused on the project, what we’re doing, how it runs, and so forth (as opposed to writing).
 
I went through the results of the Web survey from last month, which I’ll publish shortly. The statements that our writers agree with most are that the quality of writing in DZ is very high, that writers feel empowered to run with ideas for the project, that participating has been fun, and that DZ is a great social group. But we don’t feel that we do a good job achieving our goals, nor that the zine could continue in my absence, or that we could rely on our fellow writers to do what they promise. This last one was a big “ah-ha!”, and is a huge integrity issue that stands in the way of our getting anything done, and is something that frustrates the heck out of me, personally.

Basically, this was a 20-question survey wherein I probed how people felt about the project, and about how we’ve done against the goals I’ve always had for it. The results are disappointing in places, and in other places contradict my own beliefs about where we’re at. At any rate, it was educational.

That was, of course, the prelude to my resignation discussion. I started out with some level-setting, including what I get out of running DargonZine and the accomplishments I’m most proud of, before segueing into the numerous things that have driven me apeshit.

Next came “The Discussion”, and I’m as unsure how to talk about it here as I was at the Summit. I guess the short version is that I’m burned out. I have a bunch of specific goals I’ve always wanted the group to achieve, and we haven’t achieved them under my leadership. What’s worse, I don’t think we ever will achieve them under my leadership.
 
I want to actually list what those goals are, so that you can understand where I’m coming from. They may differ from your goals, or your idea of the project’s goals. My personal goals include: making DZ a supportive and nonthreatening and fun environment; helping writers improve their craft; creating a group that values new writers as our most precious asset, whatever their writing level; building a close-knit community; allowing people to form meaningful friendships; building something that people care about and feel they own; building something people will actively contribute to and work to build up; ensuring the project’s survival; advancing my own writing; helping people grow in other ways, like leadership, initiative, and maturity; and providing meaning for my life by helping other people.

Basically, I went through each goal in detail, describing the failures I’ve seen: how we are a closed group and don’t value our new writers, our 2% success rate over the past five years at getting new writers into print, our chronic inability to achieve our goals, and how no one seems to feel any ownership in the zine or willingness to help make it work.

Beyond my concern about how we’re doing against my personal goals, keeping this group moving forward is an immense amount of work, and I’ve exceeded my ability to do that, to the point that I’ve gotten discouraged, resentful, and irritable. It’s no longer fun, and my irritability increases the amount of conflict on the list. As much as I love DZ and as much as it means to me to be its leader, there’s no question in my mind that I have to step out of that leadership role. And I shared that with the people at the Summit, over the course of an emotional (and far too lengthy) diatribe.

For about the past three years, I’ve gone through periods where I considered quitting. Usually I decide to hang on, because I thought things might get better, but now I feel like I have to admit that they aren’t going to get better under my leadership.

I can’t really say much about what it felt like to tell this to these people who have depended on me to run the project since its inception. It was hard. It was a relief. It was painful. It was emotional. I was numb. Putting it all out there, being willing to walk away from my life’s work… Well, it’s a watershed point. It had been coming for a long time, and I had to get through it. Something had to change, and that change was long overdue.

I’m really not in a position where I can or should be the decisionmaker for the zine anymore, so I left it up to the group what they wanted to do next. The cool thing is that I think they responded well to this immense challenge that—for most of them —came out of the blue.

Although I tend to remember the many times the writers have disappointed me by blowing deadlines, dropping the ball, and conveniently forgetting things they had promised, I have to repeat that I was very impressed by how the group responded. They were mature and practical, and accepted my statement of the problem and my inability to continue as leader without question. Then they got into solution mode and came up with some great ideas that I hadn’t foreseen.

So we listed all the things I do and broke them down into four roles: editor, leader, techie, and marketing (the fifth role of mentor having already been forked off as a separate position that Jim presently occupies). Then we looked at what could be reassigned. The majority of the stress in my job comes from being leader/visionary and ultimate decisionmaker, so we decided to take that role off my hands. The ultimate project leader is now Liam Donahue, and he will share that role to some degree with Jon Evans, and I’ll be involved to a much lesser degree, in an advisory capacity. I will continue to perform the editor job (putting out issues), with Liam as the Assistant Editor backup. Dafydd has agreed to share the work load of the techie role, and he and I will work together over time so that he is able to maintain the web site and other technical stuff just as well as I. The marketing role remains a questionmark, but Jon and I have both been talking to former DZ writer Rhonda Gomez, and we believe she’ll be willing to take on some of those duties.

It was kind of a revelation to me that most of my stress comes from the visionary role. Of course, that role also includes arbiter of conflict and ultimate decisionmaker, which makes that person a lightning rod for conflict.

Furthermore, that person is also charged with setting the group’s goals and ensuring that we achieve them, and our constant failure to achieve our goals has left me utterly demoralized.

On top of that, over the past twelve years I’ve tried just about everything I can think of to inspire the group and move the group forward. The perpetual lack of success tells me that my methods haven’t worked, and—since I lack any more ideas about how to motivate people -- it’s time to turn the reins over to someone with more fresh ideas and evergy to try and make them happen.

So let me ask you to pay attention to and work with Liam and Jon. They’re both experienced managers and able leaders and know the project inside and out, and I have absolutely every confidence in their wisdom. The project and where it goes from here is largely theirs to determine. As for me, I’ll remain around. I hope that I’ll be able to contribute more writing in the future and maybe do some mentoring, but we’ll see about that. I’m going to have to spend some time transitioning duties and then see how my attitude responds to this change. However, I’m honestly pretty confident that this change is best for me, for the zine, and for you. I’m excited to see what Liam and Jon come up with.

The interesting thing is that their solution of farming out responsibilities leaves me with the option of staying with the project -- even in an editorial role—while drastically reducing my responsibilities. I think that worked out rather nicely, and it gives me the opportunity to do two of the things that mean the most to me— mentoring and doing my own writing—which I haven’t had the time to do in years.

One of my major harping points has been how poorly we have served our new writers. The Summitteers took up that challenge and completely revised the mentoring system in a way that—to our surprise—received universal support. I’ll leave the details of it to Jim, but the basic idea is to make it easier for new writers to get involved with DZ by giving them the ability to share their existing and new non-Dargon works, then some reduced requirements for getting their first full Dargon stories printed. New writers can start anywhere along a whole continuum of participation levels, with increasing rewards being given for increasingly integrated stories. Everyone thought the idea had a ton of merit, and Jim will be filling you in with more details shortly, but everyone was really excited by the idea. We are even planning to get back in touch with a number of former writers who never got printed, in hopes that some of them may want to try this new way of getting up to speed with the zine.

This was something of a surprise to me. It’s been a while since anyone applied much creative thinking to the project, so I’ll be curious to see how this dramatically new direction plays out. But clearly, if we don’t solve the new writer ramp-up problem immediately, the zine is dead.

After all that painful stuff, Jon took the floor to talk about our financial state and nonprofit status, then gave his presentation on how to manage a project. That might sound like it doesn’t apply to you, but everyone here is involved in little projects, and we have always sucked at getting things done. Several writers have listed these non-writing projects as things that frustrated them to the point of quitting. Jon’s project management techniques, if applied, are absolutely guaranteed to help. The information was straightforward and should help people follow through, so that— unlike today—we can once again feel confident that we can rely on people to actually do what they say they will do.

This reliability bit is a major thorn, and something that really discourages new writers, who might sign up for a task, full of enthusiasm, only to have it unceremoniously dropped in their lap by a veteran. And I’ve always thought this was the most basic form of integrity, so it’s always driven me apeshit whenever this happens in “my” organization.

And yes, these things driving me apeshit is definitely a theme here… Has been for over a decade.

All these sessions will have results placed in the Document Library shortly, as soon as I can collect them from the presenters. I strongly encourage you to check them out, because they were really great presentations that I think will help us a great deal.
 
After spending most of the day on all that heavy stuff, we were eager to have some fun. We moved our dinner reservation up and had champagne (thanks to Jon) and an early dinner at Brio, an Italian place at Newport on the Levee, a touristy shopping area. From there, we went through the Newport Aquarium, which had some really interesting stuff: sharks, avians, otters, gators, and so forth. Afterward we stopped for ice cream at Graetor’s, a Cincinnati original, before heading home. Dafydd showed us his pictures from his trips to Hawaii, Australia, and Scotland, but people were dropping hard, and we went to bed without even managing a single game of Settlers! We’re clearly not as young as we used to was.

The Summit is always a big photographic opportunity, and I definitely plunged in with my new camera. The aquarium was both a particular showcase and a major challenge, since the ambient lighting was kept very low so you could see through the glass. There’ll be some photos posted in short order, and you can also check out this year’s Summit page for both photos and a writeup.

Sunday was departure day, and with no working sessions, people slept in and took good long showers. We got the group photo done and cleaned up the house, then managed a quick game of Settlers before Rena and Jon left for the airport. The rest of us had a quick and enjoyable game of the related Seafarers of Catan before we, too, had to make our way to the airport. Tired good-byes were said, and the journey back home via the evil that is O’Hare was undertaken, carrying with us the precious memories of another wonderful encounter with our longtime friends and fellow writers.

So I got home from the Summit late Sunday night; my flight out of O’Hare had been delayed, and I didn’t get home until after midnight. So that wasn’t a restful night. I’d taken Monday off, but Monday night one of my former writers, Rhonda, was arriving in town for her daughter’s graduation, and wanted to visit. Unfortunately, her flight arrived at 10:15pm, and we were up until about 1:30, talking.

Less than a week later, Janine, another former writer, was in town for a week-long conference. We had dinner together several times, and talked well into the evening. Again, more sleep deprivation!

So June has been an interesting month, as far as my contact with my writers goes. And sleep deprivation like crazy, but at least it’s been in the service of socializing with people I care about, which is a pleasant change.

What's one thing you've always wanted to do, but never have?

For quite some time I’ve wanted to rent a Jet-Ski or other personal watercraft, and never had the opportunity. It definitely seems like something I’d enjoy, but it just hasn’t happened.
 
I had the chance during this year’s Dargon Writers Summit in Austin, but we’d already spent a couple hours on Lake Travis in a rented party boat, and everyone else wanted to go home. It was definitely a huge disappointment.
 

When someone asks your opinion about a new haircut/outfit/etc, are you always honest?

Brutally. I’m Ornoth. Why the hell would you bother asking the question if you don’t want to hear the answer?
 

Have you ever found out something about a friend and then wished you hadn't? What happened?

No. I find deception of any kind offensive and insulting, and intentional self-deception is absolutely unimaginable.
 

If you could live in any fictional world (from a book/movie/game/etc.) which would it be and why?

While I can’t give you a specific environment, it would probably be some type of low fantasy setting. Basically, I would want to preserve the affinity for nature and the sense of wonder that medieval fantasy evokes, yet avoid the trite (not to mention uncomfortable) presence of Absolute Evil that comes with high fantasy. I would prefer that the drama in my life come as a result of the interaction between normal people than from some overblown, simplistic idea of good and evil. Hey, maybe I should live in Dargon!
 

What's one talent/skill you don't have but always wanted?

Realistic or otherwise?
 
Realistically, I think a sense of visual creativity. I’ve never been able to draw or do visual art, and that’s been my biggest struggle as a graphic designer. My approach to graphic design is extremely functional, rather than creative.
 
However, if you’re talking about super powers, then I would like the ability to temporarily stop time, much as depicted in the book and film “The Girl, the Gold Watch, and Everything”. I could have a great deal of fun and do a great deal of good with soemthing like that.

Well, it's been a few days, so I suppose it's high time to file my report on the Scotland trip.

As a reminder, I am the founder and editor of DargonZine, a magazine which prints the output from a collaborative writing project that is dedicated to creating a writers' community and inspiring and growing aspiring amateur writers. Founded in 1984, it is the longest-running electronic magazine on the Internet.

Each year, one of our writers hosts our annual Dargon Writers' Summit, a weekend of writing and socializing in the host's home town. Our previous Summits have all been in the US: Boston, Denver, Washington D.C., Chicago, New York, Pittsburgh, and San Jose. But this year we extended the Summit to a full nine days in order for Stuart Whitby to show eight of us around his entire nation: Scotland!

I'm not going to go into painstaking detail about the trip, but I did want to summarize it and make a few observances here.

But before I get into that, some other pointers. First, my personal site, OrnothLand, already has brief descriptions of what we did each day, with a handful of photos. Second, I'll be writing an exhaustive travelogue, which will be available in the near future. If you're interested in that, drop me a line at ornoth@rcn.com. But be warned: my weekend travelogues are usually about 30 pages, so this one might well wind up being as large as 90 pages of text! Finally, as soon as I can get the photos approved by the writers, a new 2002 Dargon Summit page will be available on the DargonZine Web site. Each of these will have a slightly different take on the trip.

For now, I'll just summarize. Six castles. Two cairns. Two ruined cathedrals. Watching our host jump off a cliff into a narrow, raging, freezing mountain cataract. Reading ghost stories beneath an alien orange full moon in a ruined castle on a cliff above the sea, the castle Bram Stoker's inspiration for writing "Dracula". Flying eagles, owls, falcons, and hawks at a falconry center. Wading alone into mist-shrouded Loch Ness. Drinking forbidden absynthe, the wormwood liqueur favored by 19th century writers. Scrambling to keep a grip on the edge of the world, a sheer 864-foot drop beneath me, as I climbed the face of Arthur's Seat in Edinburgh. Taking a distillery tour and drinking more beer and scotch whisky than wisdom would indicate. Seeing my own face staring back at me from a Pepsi can. Haggis; neeps and tatties; bangers and mash; Irn-Bru; and the omnipresent 80 shilling. Weather that alternated between sun and rain every 20 minutes, every day, without fail. A distillery pictured on the Scottish 10 pound note. BEUM! Deep Sea World, the Fisheries Museum, scenic Crail Harbour, and some fantastic go-karting (bruised myself heavily by driving so aggressively). Rhonda setting off the hotel fire alarm. Late night talks about relationships, family, and sex. Asking a young waitress to bring me "Vanilla ice cream, nude". The religious experience of the mountains. Rainbows everywhere, especailly Glencoe. Closing the 1000-mile circumnavigation of the country in Glasgow, with lots of sidewalk leering. Cutting 3 CD-ROMs with 2400 photos and video clips for everyone.

But what really mattered in all that? What really impacted me?

Let's start with the countryside: it was incredible. Mountains that leap up above you in piles of scree that defy the angle of repose, topped with unbelievable cliffs, punctuated with frequent streams of snow runoff that cascade down the face of the mountain in waterfalls, spilling into the inevitable valley river or loch in a speeding torrent. The endless, sumptuous green carpet of woods and farmland, punctuated by the unique bright yellows of alfalfa in the fields, gorse and forsythia on the slopes. The constant parade of picturesque and ancient bulidings: proud cathedrals, self-consciously conspicuous castles, long-abandoned farmhouses. But oh! the castles. The cold, passive strength of a granite wall. The understated grace of the entry arch and towers of a curtain wall. The sense of walking in the footsteps of Mary Queen of Scots, Edward I, Robert the Bruce, and Rob Roy MacGregor... Standing on an outer wall, hundreds of feet above the plain, sharing the feeling of power that the residents of those castles atop the crags must have felt. It was like wallowing in that sense of wonder that only a good fantasy story can evoke, and being for once truly a participant in those wonderful tales. The only words I can come up with to describe the land are 'wonder' and 'majesty'.

Ever since I was a child growing up in Maine, I've had a very close, spiritual affinity for the silent woods and the rocky crags. I wish that I'd been able to spend less time on this trip as the leader of a noisy group of tourists, so that I could spend a little more time to appreciate, to experience a spiritual connection with the amazing places that we visited. The closest I came was in our death-defying climb of Arthur's Seat. Despite being implausibly steep and a wonderful challenge to climb, it was a mere hillock in comparison to most of the amazing landscape we traversed, including the breathtaking Ben Nevis, more than five times the height of Arthur's Seat.

The other items of note all relate to my relationship with my companions: my writers. One of the surprises was that I received almost universal expressions of support for taking a more authoritarian role as editor. This has always been anathema to me, because I view consensus as the only way to instill a sense of ownership for the project in my writers, and as a requirement for delegating work to others. However, nearly everyone I spoke to balked, and suggested that I both rely less on others for useful work, as well as take more of the decisionmaking upon myself. I'm slowly allowing myself to be convinced, but it really is a major philosophical shift for me. I do think that this would integrate well with the board of directors structure that we are establishing, in that writers who feel a strong degree of ownership and want to have input can participate on the board, while other writers, who don't have the desire or time to do anything but write, can do that. The next step here will be figuring out how to present all that to the group so that it goes over, without sounding like me trodding on toes.

But more importantly than the feedback I got about the structure of the writing group were the relationships that we built. Over the course of ten days together, we formed an intense, very personal bond. We talked about our family histories and our childhoods; we talked about our growth as sexual beings and our relationships. For my part, I was comfortable enough to at least reveal to people my own two biggest insecurities, and was rewarded with several very touching and surprising responses. We offered one another compassion and understanding and a closeness that I'd never felt before. At times it approached a sort of sexual tension, but it wasn't dirty; it was more like an intimate closeness that was far more meaningful than anything physical.

In the end, I was truly amazed by the wonderful friendships that have about amongst this group. I'm really awestruck that almost two decades after I founded it, the community of writers that I created solely for my own benefit has produced such a strong, genuinely caring, close-knit group of people. They really are my family, and I'm honored that DargonZine, which I've always stated was my life's work, has brought these individuals together and not just helped them as writers, but also provided a cohesive, loving, supportive community for them.

The awesome landscape and impressive castles made Scotland a wonderful vacation and great research for a fantasy writer; but it was the people and the relationships we built that made it something magical. It's awesome to see that this trip worked so well on all those levels, and it still amazes me that I had some role in bringing it about.