While hiking Muir Woods National Park, a grove of coastal redwood trees, we had the following two encounters:
Seeing Elysha’s New York Yankees cap, a man said, “Oh, you’re from New York?”
“No,” Elysha said. “We live in Connecticut.”
“Oh!” he said. “I grew up in West Hartford, Connecticut.”
So, too, did Elysha. For a time, we lived together in West Hartford. I’ve also been teaching in West Hartford for the last 25 years. Elysha, too, for nearly as long.
The man also lived in Newington for a time, where we’ve been living for the past 14 years.
We spoke for a while about old haunts, familiar hangs, and the like.
Later, a young woman approached me. “Are you the storyteller?” she asked.
“I tell stories,” I said.
She recognized my voice while I was talking to Charlie. Her professor in college had assigned her my book, Storyworthy, and they had spent much of the semester reading the book and watching my stories online, so much so that she could pick my voice out amongst a crowd of people. She was hesitant to approach me at first, but her mother, who was hiking alongside her, insisted she say hello.
We chatted about storytelling, Homework for Life (which she does), and more.
You don’t travel more than 3,000 miles from home and hike into a redwood forest expecting to find someone who grew up about a mile from where you currently teach and where you once lived.
Nor do you expect someone to pick you out of a crowd by the sound of your voice.
It truly is a small, small world.
