Two peaches and a bridge.

The gold has started, and I have a walk to give you.

Friend,

It is nine in the morning at the desk. The scones went in at six, the second pot of coffee is on, and the guests who said they were leaving early are, as ever, leaving late.

Yesterday I rode down to the creek with a bouquet and two peaches in the basket, which is the most Frisco sentence I have ever written. The flowers were for the front desk. The peaches were for me. I ate one standing on the bridge, over the water, like a person with no responsibilities at all, and then I came back and made the beds.

This letter is that ride. The water, the trail, the gold coming down the mountain, and everything the house has open for you, which this week is nearly all of it.

The trail

Four stops, about an hour.

If you ever come to Frisco, this is the walk I would give you, and you do not need me to take it. Print it, screenshot it, or just keep it in a drawer for the someday.

Start on Galena Street with a coffee you did not make. Walk west. The town gets quieter in about four minutes, which is the whole trick of this place.

The footbridge over Tenmile Creek. Stop in the middle. The water is loud enough that you have to stop talking, which is the point. Stay until you have heard it twice.

The aspens on the far bank. Look up, not out. Everyone photographs the mountain and misses the ceiling.

Out to the water at the end of town, and sit down on the shore even if the bench is wet. Bring a peach. Bring two, in case you meet somebody.

There is a longer piece about the town in this weather in the journal. Free, and it does not ask you for anything.

The episode

The water between places.

Episode Three is out, and it is the one I was most afraid to make. I went looking for my grandmother and kept finding water: a hot spring in Montana, a river here that will not stop for anyone, the flat green heat of a Georgia summer and a kitchen table where I learned to watch a room before I spoke in it.

Twenty six quiet minutes on what survives the leaving. It ends with her orange scones, in her own measures, which I read out loud because that is the only way I know how to keep her handwriting alive.

Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Pandora, iHeart, YouTube. New episodes when they are ready, and not before.

The kitchen

Every recipe, in one room.

Every episode ends with a recipe, and they all live together now: the house scones with the altitude notes, and the ones that come after. People ask about the scones more than they ask about the books. I have made my peace with it.

The book

Any bookstore can order it now.

The trade paperback of Still, by Design. is in the catalogue, which means your bookshop can order it by its number, and Bookshop.org sends the order to a local shop. There is a hardcover, an ebook, and a seven hour audiobook read by me, if you would rather be read to while you drive.

The second book

Still looking for a home.

Good Little Innkeeper is finished. It is the reckoning to the first book’s atmosphere, and it is out with agents now, looking for the right one. No date, because I will not invent one. If you know the person who should read it, you know where the desk is.

In the meantime the first readers keep writing to me about it, which is a strange and lovely way to live.

The reading room

The house, in your pocket.

Epopteia is the reading room the house built: the books, the letters, the magazine and the podcast, kept in one quiet place that does not blink at you. Free on the App Store.

The season

The gold is coming down the mountain a little further every day, the mornings are cold enough for the good coat, and the town has gone quiet in the way it only does between the seasons. It is the best baking weather of the year, and the best walking weather, and the best month to be exactly where you are.

That is the whole table this week. Go stand on a bridge over some water this weekend. Take the long way back.

Avery

P.S. The second peach did not make it home either. The flowers are on the desk, and they will outlast us all, on account of being dried when I bought them.