Dear Jamie,

Just finished reading High Fidelity...you might hate me...but go buy it and read it.  Now.

Top 5 best songs to hike around the rim of an active volcano to (in chronological order):

1.  Supermassive Black Hole, Vitamin String Quartet version:  Ok, true, this song is the theme from the movie Twilight...which makes me incredibly lame.  BUT it is also the VSQ version which ups my cool-factor a smidge and at the end of the day, none of that matters a bit when it is 4 in the morning and you are walking across a gray dim valley covered in ash with a low misty cloud hovering overhead.  Think: The Road by Cormac McCarthy.  As if all of this wasn't enough, throw in this song to the mix and you will be covered in goosebumps for the next 3 weeks.

2.  Solsbury Hill, Peter Gabriel:  Sunrise.  I am standing on the rim of the volcano.  I use the term rim loosely.  A better phrase might be: where the two cliffs that plummet to my potential doom meet in crumbling ashy rock.  I have to sit, because standing is the scariest thing I could possibly imagine.  Ever.  Behind me is the valley I have just traversed.  In front (and down, down, down): the cracked center of the volcano where a steady stream of sulfurous smoke climbs straight up into the sky.  Behind the smoke: sunrise.

3. Be Here Now, Mason Jennings:  To be honest, I am arrested in fear.  Within 10 feet of leaving the "guard rail" behind I can't move another step.  I would like to pretend that at this moment I made the decision to face my fears and circumnavigate the entire volcano.  I did not.  What I decided to do, was stop sitting on the crumbliest part of the whole thing and move a couple feet more to where it was a little safer.  I use the term safer loosely.  The first 5 minutes went a little something like this:  just a little more, ok, too far, too scary, too alone...just a little more, ok, farther, a little less scary, just as alone.  And then I hit my first peak.  My first vista.  Suddenly the sunrise was 4 shades of red deeper and I knew that there would be no turning back.  I was here.  Now.

4. All My Days, Alexi Murdoch:  If I focus on the music, I don't think about the danger.  If I don't think about the danger, my head doesn't spin.  If my head doesn't spin, I don't topple off the volcano.  I mean seriously?  "Topple off the volcano?"  I'm not kidding...I feel like a dinosaur is going to pop out at any moment...that or Tom Hanks (anyone? anyone?)  Dawn is an amazing time of day.  You know what else is amazing? Volcanoes.  I am obviously an 8 year-old again.

5. Living in Twilight, The Weepies:  This song came on shuffle right as I was returning to start: about an hour later.  I am beaming from ear to ear.  I have never done something that felt so.....so.....

Perfect.

Be here now
no other place to be
all the doubts that linger
just set them free
and let good things happen
let the future come
into each moment
like a rising sun

sun comes up and we start again
sun comes up and we start again
sun comes up and we start again
sun comes up and we start again
sun comes up and we start again
  sun comes up and we start again  

(Mt. Bromo, Eastern Java, Indonesia)