About
Published by winddrifter on Thursday, September 26, 2013
Most of my life stories can be found on my web page (http://wind-drifter.com). This blog page is mainly for various musings and ramblings I’ve written over the years. I don’t write for the sake of writing, but only when something wants to be written. Richard Bach, in the preface to Illusions, said it better than I ever could:
But once in a while there’s a great dynamite-burst of flying glass and brick and splinters through the front wall and somebody stalks over the rubble, seizes me by the throat and gently says “I will not let you go until you set me, in words, on paper”.
And that is mostly how writing has been for me.
When I was still working as an engineer I commuted, on a weekly basis, over 250 miles to work. That was at minimum a four hour drive at both ends of my work week - a lot of time for letting thoughts roam. Every now and then an event, a news story, or a random thought would get snagged out of the mental stream. Sometimes it only lingered for a brief musing before drifting on it’s way, but other times it would start to build and coalesce into something that began to have a life that demanded acknowledgement. And then my normal plans for the weekend would get shoved aside for awhile…
I’m not doing the long drive anymore, so there is less idle time for mental fermenting, but every now and then something still comes along and grabs me by the throat…
Wind Drifter was originally the name I selected for my small (1 person) hang gliding school in Pennsylvania in the 1980’s. At the time I was thinking mainly of “cross country” hang gliding flights, where a pilot gets high enough to often travel long distances “following the wind”. But then I came across these song lyrics:
“I hitched a ride with the wind
And since he was my friend
I just let him decide where we’d go”Wildflowers - Dolly Parton
and realized that Wind Drifter fit my life in more ways than just flying, so I’ve adopted the name for more general use.
Richard Cobb
Blacksburg, Virginia