Globe Road

I'm up in the mountains for a few days.  Not that you can see them, skulking behind their veil of rain.  It's shotgun wedding rain, sudden, knock-you-up, tie-you-down rain, barreling up behind you in no time flat.  It's the kind of rain that makes you run.  From the woods to the car.  From the car to the house.  And, early in the morning, trying to get three or four miles in before the rain comes.

Which is how I found Globe Road.  It hares off the highway halfway down the mountain.  It's unprepossessing, narrow as a driveway, and marked with one worn, white-painted arrow.

Globe, it says.  8.  Eight.  Not bothering to append the miles.

I've never been to Globe.  I do remember poring over one, as a child, trailing my fingers along the pauples of the Himalayas, the stubble of the Andes.  I was fascinated by the recesses, the odd corners, the never-mentioned peninsulas and forgotten plateaus.

I do not know what Globe is like, but I do know the pavement gives out before you get there.   It was 7:00 AM.  I ran down the gravel slope until the gravel turned to dirt and the curve was one more curve than I had the courage to round.  The clouds quickened.  The mountains secreted themselves.  It grew to be time to run back, as it always grows to be time, from every Globe in the world.