It was so foggy the black night I drove home across bleak Illinois prairies and into dark Illinois woods. The thick fog obscured red tail lights, white snow-packed ice, even stop signs. West central Illinois is a different sort of place, a place where the folklore of a lost America lies just beyond the mind's eye, slowly dying.
I had been to the home of Silver Dollar City artist Joe Benjamin. Joe had talked of his pen-and-ink art while his wife Jan dished up bowls of chili. We sat in their house a long while, me interviewing Joe, as a chilly February sun did its best to melt piles of snow in the yard. Here we were, in a wintry Illinois small town, only a couple of hours from where I had grown up. We had met in the Ozarks the autumn before and I had fallen in love with Joe's art, all homey lines and traditional images. StateoftheOzarks was a fledgling project back then and I was hustling, hustling to develop arts and crafts stories for the website. Even today, framed pieces of Joe's work grace my walls in his memory.
After the chili came plates of chocolate cake with slowly melting vanilla ice cream. Chocolate cake with ice cream reminds me of home even now, but back then, home was only a couple hours drive away. After I had packed up my equipment, a handful of new art pieces, and said my goodbyes to Joe and Jan, I called my mom, confident she would pick up and we would talk of the day, my interview, the art, and my plans for the upcoming articles. I was grateful for her voice on the line, the warmth of a home full of homey arts and crafts, and a plate of something good to eat when I walked in the front door. Had I known how quickly the clock was ticking, counting down to a day when all that would be gone, I'm not sure I could have continued forward.
Back then, some 17 years ago, the decision to launch StateoftheOzarks was a questionable one. I did not have a business plan. I believed in my abilities to write, to photograph, to interview, to create websites and good graphic design. Beyond that, the choice was simply a leap of faith. "How are you going to make money?" The question, while fair, was leveled with a helping of skepticism. In my family, one did not simply launch businesses when one could instead get a good degree from a good university in order to land a good job with a good retirement plan. Sensible security was the order of the day. Entrepreneurism was for someone else entirely.
The chilly afternoon sun on the February snow did as one would expect. The winter woods of western Illinois are ghostly places at sundown, places made even more ghostly by the now-billowing fog. Had I been thinking, I would have gotten on the road earlier. Then again, it has never been in my nature to cut a conversation short, particularly when cake is involved. By the time I turned my truck homeward, the sun was beyond the black cornfield horizon and mist was creeping steadily out of icy ravines.
I took a chance, driving home that black, foggy night, and have taken many such chances since. The biggest gamble was starting StateoftheOzarks, writing the playbook for the company as I went. It was not until a number of years later, waking from months of grief following my mom's passing, that retrospective fear gripped me, making my stomach clench.
Had I not chosen to take a strange dark path, had I not chosen to leave the apparent safety of all I had previously known, had I not gambled the game dangerously, I would have lost everything. In the wake of my mom's passing, I would have been bereft of open doors. It is unlikely I would be here to write, today, in my own warm house, as my dogs snore cozily from the couch. A reminder, over and again, to be grateful for walking away, for finding a new path, even in the lonely night. It is with gratitude that I look back, back to chocolate cake, slowly melting ice cream, and thick, black fog.
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