Book Serendipity, Part I

This past February, a small reclaimed furniture store was closing in Greenpoint, Brooklyn.  Inside, all that remained were a few chairs, a dresser, some chalkboard paint, a random assortment of knobs, and the tiniest of books tucked beside a lamp.

The book was two and a half inches high, four inches wide, and eight pages long.  It was covered in images of fall foliage - orange and red - along the Skyline Drive in Shenandoah National Park in Virginia - images faded over the four decades since their printing.

I told the shopkeeper that I was from Virginia, and she begged for me to take it.  Everything had to go.

I went home, sat on my couch, and flipped through the pages of this tiny book - pages featuring picture after picture of rolling mountains colored by the seasons and a road winding through them.  A road I felt I needed to drive.