Sermon on the Mount

Damn the News Gods. First they curse me with three straight days of general assignment strife; stripping me of my cloaking powers, making me chase potholes and pariahs until IQ points dribble down my chin. Then they lock me in a live truck where I serve a kind of purgatory known only to lenslingers of my vintage. Then -- just when I'm about to rip my eyelids off from sheer, tortured boredom, the heavens open up and I am beckoned Westward. That's what happened this morning as the Suits in the Room chose to throw me a bone. "Pilot Mountain's shut down. Go find out why." I was out the door before they finished their syllables - not because the Surry County summit was going anywhere, but because I'd been spinning my wheels all week. But all that consternation faded away as the ribbon of asphalt known as Highway 52 spooled out before me. I followed it and by the time Pilot Mountain hove into view, I found myself humming a familiar tune...

I've mentioned before my fixation on 'Mount Pilot' ... the way it calls to me whenever I zoom by its base, the photos of it I keep in my glovebox, how I like to shape its shoulders in peanut butter whenever the wife's not looking... Look, I've already revealed too much. Let's just say I got great love for this monadnock; whenever I can storm it, I do so with glee. Even when the whole place is shut down and I got to hitch a ride with a passing park ranger. Keith Martin was an amiable host: he chauffered me around the broken backroads of the great knob, and didn't even flinch when I asked about the pod people. A crafty one, that one. No bother: I'll gladly skulk away with my bounty: an incidental enough package - that, while it won't win me any pageants - was far more fun to shoot than your average sat truck convention. Now, get off my cloud!