Weekly “what are you reading” Thread #53

When I would wake early in the mornings and didn't have to trudge off to school, where I was an indifferent student, I couldn't wait to climb the steep Alleghenies (part of the Appalachian range) and hike around the woods like an explorer, some sort of modern-day Daniel Boone (who spent a lot of time in West Virginia) or Davy Crockett. With my Daisy Red Ryder BB gun in hand, then later a Remington .410 single-shot shotgun, I loved the fact that I had no idea what the heck I was going to see (though secretly I was both excited and terrified by the idea of running into a bear). I wanted to go places where no one else would be, or even think to venture. To me, the woods held the possibility of finding a magic elixir, a perfect-world Magic Kingdom where every animal I ever wanted to see—or have an opportunity to shoot—would be; they'd be there but hiding, watching me, as I would be on the lookout for them: squirrels, rabbits, and, if I was lucky, ruffed grouse. It became a competition, one of the first of many in my life, and in retrospect, I viewed it as one way to climb up from the abyss.

I had a sense of wonderment, a tingling feeling that would wash over me when I found spots high up where I could get a vast overview of what lay below (a feeling that has endured all these years, be it on a golf course at the top of a ridge or in an upper-level suite at an arena or from the window of an airplane). If I could have afforded binoculars or a telescope at the time, it would have been even better. The way I see it, we all have a different idea of what's beautiful, what's attractive to look at, what captures the eye. I am, more than anything else, a visual person. I love vibrant colors (if you ever saw my collection of patterned Missoni sweaters, which I take a lot of kidding about, you would see why). And I love to observe people practice their crafts.

Every August I could hardly wait to go to the State Fair, near Lewisburg, or the Kanawha County Fair, in Charleston. But instead of marveling at the largest cucumber or the largest tomato (though I have put in and tended a number of gardens in my life and can talk about the finer points of heirloom tomatoes with anyone), I most enjoyed watching the amateur sketch artists, trying to figure out how they could draw a person so quickly and make him or her so lifelike. That fascinated me, in part because I couldn't. And yet I wanted to know more. That's how I have always been. If I don't know something, I will strive to find out about it, and I will often drive everyone around me—including myself—crazy in the process. In this case, I wanted to know, to figure out, which of these people might go on to become professional artists and make a real living and perhaps paint masterpieces and which would not, maybe in part because they were merely content and comfortable to do what they were doing. What I came to realize, to sense even then, is that it is one thing to have a vague vision and quite another to be able to bring that vision into sharp focus and have the drive and will to go beyond it. So much depends on finding out what's inside a person that, eventually, will enable him to achieve on a larger scale.