Having a rough year already? Maybe some otters in ponchos might help.

I keep thinking about the Peaks of Otter,  the way you might think about a book you haven’t read yet but already feel fond of. It sits out there quietly, not asking anything from me, just existing as a future possibility. Sometime this year, I want to go – not urgently, not as a quest, just as a gentle agreement with myself. I’ve been here for years and still haven’t headed over to that neck of rhe woods yet.

It makes me laugh that the name promises otters, and everyone knows you probably won’t see one. That feels solid somehow. A place that doesn’t guarantee its mascot. You show up for the idea, the shape of it, the sound of water and wind, and the way the mountains lean toward each other like they’re in on a secret.

I imagine the drive first: the slow unspooling of roads, trees reflecting the seasons, the radio half-listened to. That soft mental shift where Roanoke loosens its grip and your thoughts stretch their legs. By the time the peaks come into view, you are already different, even if only by a degree or two.

If we go and there are no otters, that will be fine. We will have seen ridgelines and old stone and the lake holding the sky like a comfy hammock. We will have walked a little and stood still a lot. We will have proven that the point was never the animal, but the act of going, of saying yes to a day that asks nothing more than your presence.

And if by some cosmic joke an otter does appear, slick and brief and unimpressed with us, that will just be a bonus. A footnote. The real entry will already be written in advance, in the wanting to go, in the quiet promise that sometime this year we will.

https://www.virginia.org/listing/peaks-of-otter/7079/

#Roanokeva #peaksofotter #doodle #otter #ottersinponchos