Which story would you choose?

Some eye candy, dessert before the meat of the post: Buddy and I kicked off October with a hike of La Luz trail in the Sandia Mountains. The experience tuckered us both!

I was born in autumn and suspect this is an inborn, natural, seasonal rhythm that explains the deep sense of well-being that settles within me this time of year. I love the color brown, sepia-toned photographs, and dirty, musty wines. I head up into the forest to breathe in the mouldering duff under the blanket of newly fallen leaves. I am deeply engaged in squirrel-like behavior, gathering for winter's leanness as if my life hangs in the balance. I miss the harvest fires of my North Dakota days but here in New Mexico, new pleasures: piñon nuts and prickly pear fruit. Quiet, calming, a natural slowing and ebbing, so wonderful.

It's also a time of year when reading is more appealing. Dark descends earlier and so the last evening hours seem best spent with a book and mug of tea. The year's deep reading project wraps up with The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoevsky which we'll discuss the evening of November 25 via Zoom (drop me an email if you'd like to jump in on that) and as I reflect on what I've read so far, all these classical texts and treasures our culture has produced, I revisit a provocation that's stuck with me from Ray Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451.

If you've read that book, you'll recall that this is a book about censorship and book burning. The protagonist, Montag, at first one of the book burners, later joins a community of outsiders where each member has committed one book or even part of a book to memory, an effort I interpret as both a means of preserving orally what is being lost and a commentary on the life-sustaining and life-shaping power of stories as essential for us as humans. Ray Bradbury, when asked which book he'd memorize, said Charles Dickens' A Christmas Carol.

Authoritarian hell-scape and apocalyptic tones aside, let me ask you this: pretend we all went camping for a week and around the fire every evening, we'd listen as you perform the book you've lovingly and painstakingly committed to memory. This is the one story that if all the books in the world suddenly disappeared, your having memorized it means that you are the keeper of that story for our culture.

Which book would you choose and why? Comment below or drop me an email and I'll tell you mine. If you have to think about this for a while, do so as you go for an autumnal walk enjoying the sights, sounds, smells, and feel of the season.