Greetings from the Kilopede

This is quite a surprise! Thank you! I got your letter this morning and nearly fell out of my pagoda. I've never tried writing a blog before, unless you count the time I started interviewing all those spindle beetles who kept mistaking me for Captain Tamarac. That isn't exactly the same, though.

I never did find out who Captain Tamarac was, by the way. None of the spindle beetles seemed to know.

I'm glad to hear that the mountain's doing well! I wish I'd gotten to take a better look at it before I left. If only the Moler Festival were a few days later... Of course, the way things have been going, I still may not get there in time. I suppose I should write something about where I am at the moment. I still haven't reached Mount Moler. I think the Kilopede must have taken a wrong turn somewhere, maybe where it had to go around all the paper kite lizards by the lake. I don't know why this always happens; every time I travel by Kilopede, I somehow end up miles away from my destination. With all the eyes they have, you'd think they would always know where to go.

Now that I think about it, though, they almost always end up somewhere much more interesting than where I intended. Hmm. Maybe they know what they're doing after all. I've always wondered what goes on in those mile-long brains of theirs.

Oh! That's all I can write for now. The Kilopede just stopped to let someone cross it - I don't know who, they're about half a mile closer to its head than I am - and there's something off to the right that I have to get a picture of. I'm going to miss the Moler Festival for certain, but it will happen again next year, and I'll probably never be able to find this place again. As far as I know, the Kilopede is the only one who knows where we are - if even it does. It's a good thing I still have my suitcase packed. I'll try to send this by the first postbird I find after I jump off. I'll write more later...

Nigel

So It Starts

My son Nigel doesn't know I've started this blog. It's really for him, but I intend to use it too, with his permission. We discussed it on vacation, when we decided that we would share our thoughts, images, and wanderings around Hamjamser, whether by sunlight or the light of our moon and grandmoon.

Currently I'm living in the hamlet of Glee Fiddler's Onion, where I have had my mountain delivered. I'm terribly impressed with the movers. Not a tree toppled or boulder out of place, best I can tell. It gives me a headache to think what they did with all the water that normally flows from it while they moved it.

I haven't decided whether to live on the mountain or just beside it, leaving it as I found it. The natural beauty of it, it's grandeur, and it's lovely shape were what caused me to buy it in the first place. I wasn't even in the market when I was bowled over by the great big thing. It has beautiful bones, it seems to me - a thoroughbred of mountains. And just the right combination of open meadow, woods, cliff, and scree slopes to be eternally interesting.

The hardest part was deciding how to orient it at delivery, but in the end I followed the movers' advice and kept it same side toward the sun. After all, the plants, trees, and wildlife are all used to the sun coming up on THAT side and going down on the other. Can't very well disrupt that without inviting grumbling at the very least.

Distant family members haven't seen it yet (can't very well carry it around for show and tell, can I), so I hope to post pictures of it soon.

Virgil.