One Hell of a Ride
The Muddy Way
The Long Veranda
Dedicated to my children, characters in the story, Axel, Anton and Iris.
Winter 2055
Sage — ninety-five winters deep now — sits wrapped in the red wool Hudson Bay Trading Company blanket, the one with the wide white stripe that has outlived four continents and five houses. The wool still carries faint smoke from the first warming fire in Somartin Nr 4, still smells faintly of rhubarb juice and oak. The veranda stretches wide, slate floor quarried fresh from the ridge, mass heater roaring on oak that was a sapling when he first arrived. Somartin exhales: four hundred and eighty-seven souls tonight, edging toward the thousand they once whispered about in leaner years. Houses cluster — Saxon barns reborn as co-housing, earthships tucked into hillsides, the old ruin at Nr 5 now the heart of the brewery and distillery. Smoke rises from every chimney like steady breath. Laughter drifts from the common hall where kids are watching old episodes of Billions, quoting lines they half-grasp, the way children steal fire.
Iris — thirty-six, silver just beginning to thread her dark curls — sits beside him, hands quiet tonight, just breathing with the flames. Sage speaks slow, voice gravel and river stone.
“They say if you die in your twenties, thirties, forties, it’s a tragedy. But if you make it to your nineties… that’s one hell of a ride.” He lets the words hang, lets the snow catch them. “Still ridin’. Ain’t done yet.”
A young voice — Lukas’s grandson — asks from the dark: “What’s it feel like, Sage? The whole damn thing?”
Sage tilts his head toward the ridge where the Carpathians meet the stars, a smirk and twinkle in his eyes.
“Like tantric sex. Energy as a sine wave, rising slowly from the depths — building, expanding, thinking it’ll never crest. Then the peak: explosion of light, everything opens, everything sings. But then the drop — hard, fast — into darkness. Bottom hits, and that bottom itself is another peak, another explosion. Inverted. My lowest valley was someone else’s highest ridge. My brightest crest… someone else’s shadow.”
He tells it all in the firelight — childhood in Southern California under Catholic rulers sharp as Latin chants, Alaska’s red-eye flights thirty thousand feet above the Yukon with aurora green fire on black velvet, Sweden’s twenty-hour winter nights carving room for surrender, the first divorce cracking the shell, the long dark teaching him the anchor holds. Then Romania at forty-five degrees — stranger land, stranger still — where the mud became the teacher and the crew gathered.
The fire pops. Snow falls soft.
He leans back, eyes tracing the ridge where the future already lives in the present.
“That’s the rhythm. Rise — first good harvest, first earthship, first child born under this roof. Explosion of light. Drop — dry summers, empty vats, silence where a small voice should have been. Bottom hits — another explosion. Inverted. Kids running the paths we carved, elders sitting where we sit, telling the same stories with new dents. Earth Care healed the clay. People Care stitched the hearts. Fair Share filled the mugs when they were empty. Seven generations ahead — Bert’s words still ringing. Soil remembers. People remember kinder.”
The roller coaster never levels out. It just gets taller. Deeper valleys. Brighter crests. And you learn to love the negative g’s because they’re the wind that lifts you higher.
Sage looks at Iris — his daughter now beside him, steady as the ridge.
“Alan Watts told the Zen story right: when the ride finally clicks, you’re floating six inches above the ground. Not because the ground changed — because you stopped fighting the wave. The mud, the lean years, the losses — they’re the same mud that grew the humus. Same darkness that grew the light. The roller coaster doesn’t stop. It just keeps rising and falling, crest after inverted crest, breath after breath. And you learn to ride the rhythm instead of resisting it.”
He raises the mug — rhubarb juice catching firelight like stained glass.
“To the next rise. To the next drop. To the ride between — crest after inverted crest, breath after breath. May it be longer, muddier, and twice as beautiful.”
The crew murmurs agreement. Fire pops. Snow falls soft. Sage leans back, red blanket pulled tight, eyes on the ridge. Iris rests her head on his shoulder.
One hell of a ride.
Still rolling.
Mitakuye Oyasin.
Now our minds are one.
In Harmony,
Kevin
Walk with me on The Earthway. Share your journey, your balance, your light, and your shadows. Together, let’s explore how our diverse paths can lead us to a unified understanding of life.
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