Three small letters

The trip was not on the calendar. A friend called on a Sunday and asked if I could come down for a week, and I said yes before I knew why.

The valley is the kind of place you forget how to leave. Not because it is dramatic. The opposite. Mornings stayed still until almost ten. Evenings began at four. There were three days when nobody asked anything of me at all.

I did not write much that week. I read the same six pages of 1 Kings every morning until the still small voice felt less like a turn of phrase and more like a description of the actual sound of the place.

When I came home I had three letters in my coat pocket from people I had only known for a few days, asking me to keep writing. I did not know what I had said to make them ask. I am still not sure.

I am keeping the letters in the front of a notebook I do not use for anything else.