As i like to tell my friends, when it comes to running, or quitting smoking, that first step is the hardest, though i only have experience with the former and don’t have to worry about the latter.

But it must be true with my dance around writing. I am half a century plus five years old, and the notion that i am a writer doesn’t ring true except in my imagination. Since second grade, i have harbored fantasies of writing, when i (my mother, more likely) submitted some piece of creative writing to Golden (?) magazine. It wasn’t published, but i do recall a nice rejection letter. My first, though, and only, as all my writing has been for naught, never going past the draft in my mind and on my screen.

This will be my experiment in giving myself permission to write, and to do it publicly. Who finds it will be the test–until then, i will be writing for myself, as i try to do anyway, but here on this blog, it will be left to the muses for readers to find.

I will write about this place, where i am privileged beyond reason, to live, to come home to, and to try to leave it just a little bit better. There are 299 acres here, with the house it is actually 300. That number has always astounded me and of late, as i have been studying the maps my great uncle FB drew of the chain of title on his farm, i come to appreciate the lines, the work, the years of farming here.

There were so many possible titles to this blog–from Rose Hill, to Fair View (my license plate), to McFarlands Tract and Big Henry’s Farm, to FB’s Christmas card post one year late in life, “my health cometh from the hills, a twice daily view…” I go with west of Queen’s Knob, as this mountain and its iconic shape, has been a moral compass for my family for going on six generations now, from William Kegley to my children.