A chance meeting at Molas Lake

When I met Linda Kot, we were in our thirties and both camping with our families in Colorado.  We both pulled our pop up campers into a beautiful Molas Lake between Durango and Silverton.

We were dazzled by synchronicities as our conversations unfolded: we were both reading  Prince Of Tides (both on the same page!) and we had both been reading the same book to our sons, and we both had flower girls at our weddings named Tammy, and our parents both had the same anniversary.....and on and on and on.  If you needed markers to say: this is my friend, we had an abundance of them.

We were both at 22 on our rolls of film, too!  Her Steve took a photograph with the last two shots on their roll, and those pictures reminds us always of the moment a chance meeting turned into the beginning of a lifelong friendship.

In a response to my earlier blog this morning, Linda wrote this:

 I loved the "angels on your bumpers."  You're unaware of this, but, whenever any loved one or visitor leaves my driveway I always swing my arms around into a huge arc of a circle that encompasses my vision of the car and loop it big enough to extend a huge "protective" bubble in my mind for their journey.  The words in my head go something like this, "Protect the car with a wide berth, all the vehicles around it, and send Guardian Angels for every corner and behind the wheel."  Then of course, I wave, but I have to do the circle.  My kids have grown to expect it...and somehow it comforts me as I "let them go."  I think having lost both my grandparents while they were away on trips to highway accidents...I've become obsessed in trying to protect travelers from afar.  Every time I read your blog I envision my huge circle invisibly drawn around you and the Mini, and Guardian Angels on all four corners and one behind the wheel...much like "Angels on your bumpers!" 

As I've been blogging along on the road, Linda has been writing wonderful detailed  responses every day via email--and when I get home, I'm going to print them all out and save them.  It's uncanny how the synchronicities continue.

This morning I mentioned reading Arcadia--which I'm enjoying--and Linda wrote that that's the very next book on her stack to read!  She'd recommended a book last week (Gifts of An Ordinary Day) which I'd planned to order when I get home, and she already has a copy in the mail to meet me when I get back to San Antonio.

I'm having trouble with my photo program this morning, or I'd send you pictures of Linda and me: when we met all those years ago, when I have visited Cape Cod and she visited Texas, even pictures of her and her family with Lloyd and Carlene in Georgia and Cape Cod.  When Lloyd died almost 12 years ago, Steve and Linda drove all the way from Massachusetts to share the awfulness of losing him with me and Carlene.

Linda and I  will always remember Molas Lake as the place our friendship began, and these letters remind me of the continuing illumination of friendship that started on the bank of the beautiful lake, fishermen standing around the rims and pulling in big fat trout for supper.

When we meet a new friend, we are meeting their friends, their families, and even the friends they have met only on the page.  The circle expands infinitely, always.