wynnesome

I started reading Ghost Rider by Neil Peart, the drummer of Rush. This is his second book, about the motorcycle journey of healing that he undertook after tragically losing his family. I've always thought he was an interesting person, tremendously intelligent, and one of, if not my favorite ever lyricists. There are so many tragedies endured by so many people, but hearing that bad things happened to someone I know of and like well, even if just from the distance of an admired celebrity, is affecting. And reading about his desolation... he's an excellent writer, and eloquent in describing his feelings of loss and depression. I've been in those feelings before. I recognize them, I feel them when he writes them.
Recently I've read a couple of books about really serious birders and their searches for sightings of many bird species. These books describe a lot of travel experiences along the way to areas populated by particular birds. I've never been a reader of "travel" books, but I found these stories of "how I got there and who I talked to along the way" interesting, and Peart's book is giving similar accounts, right alongside his introspections. And... he talks about the birds he sees as he travels-- he's a birder, too! I had no idea, and of course, this being the field I work in now, that was just really neat to find out. He's travelling through some of the same places as the people in the bird books, and though the journey is from an entirely different perspective, there is a common tie that I had no idea I would find when I started this book.
I'm less than 100 pages into a few-hundred page book, sorrowing to read some of it, but enjoying the writing, the journey, and the story of it.

Not to get pulled too far in though, I'm going to go for a short workout, I think. This cold I've been fighting all week is trying again to get me, I'm feeling a little congested, and maybe some exercise, getting my blood flowing, will send that moving along and out again as well.