A friend asked me yesterday if I didn't feel afraid up here in the canyon all by myself. I never felt safer. And, with the exception of my years with Joel, I never felt more blessed. There isn't a sunset that doesn't deserve its own symphony, a sunrise that doesn't warrant its own poem. My new job, working with troubled and delinquent adolescents, has taken up much of my life lately, and I am rarely home in time to see the sun make its final pass over the Huachuca mountains. But my life, even before Joel, has been characterized by the presence of young people looking for something, looking for a place to belong. I don't pretend to have any answers for them, and the gifts they have left me as they enter adulthood have far surpassed any service I could provide. But I have had the privilege of standing on the side of the road that they travel and am grateful to be able to point the way. We are misfits, they and I, not quite fitting into a world that seems foreign. And what I have learned along the way, and what I have shared with them, is not the necessity of fitting in- why would I want them to? What I can share is a way to navigate in a world in which they might never fit and, not only be ok with it but, rather, to know that they are special and that their path is different. We all need to find a way to be in the world that doesn't conflict with the mainstream but that allows us to hold on to those things that make us unique. In adolescence that's a tall order. And so I spend my days with them and come home to this magical place where I finally fit so absolutely. .