And the Open World

By Steve Carr

I’m mostly an outdoor guy, but by mid-January reading beside a fire becomes my friend again. Like many of you, I grew up reading books. Books I cradled in my hands, each with its unique heft, texture, and even smell. Real pages, paper-thin yet teeming. My eager fingers often raced ahead of the last words on the page, because I was excited for what the turn would reveal. 

Those were good times. Long after “lights out” I’d be burrowed under covers, flashlight perched under my chin, reading how Encyclopedia Brown solved the mystery of the stolen cash or how a boy, Sam, just my age, lived on his own in a hollowed-out tree by a stream in the woods at the side of a mountain…and down the rabbit hole I plunged.