Raven's Roads
Living an interesting life: the travels and musings
of motorcycling author Linda R. Moore

Apr 27, 2007

Thinking Out Loud: Human crossing

Filed in BX Convention 2007, Thinking Out Loud

A gentle breeze blows, taking the edge off the heat of the sun. In this ten foot square, surrounded on two sides by thick soon-to-blossom jasmine, it is peaceful and quiet and gentle. I sit, listening to the sound of a bird singing, the creak of branches against the trellis. I look upwards into a baby blue sky, and see a plane passing by high overhead.

Not so long ago, I too was on a plane, rushing through airports with all their noise and chaos and fuss. Tired, I caterpulted from San Francisco to Chicago and thence to Charleston; then after a precious few short days, I went back again via DC–exhausted, but so much more relaxed. In between, you see, I attended my fourth anniversary convention of Book Crossing's life. Attending was worth every last scrap of sleeplessness.

I was introduced to Book Crossing four and a half years ago when a friend passed on the link. It was love at first sight, and I signed up immediately, delighted by a site that stood for sharing and serendipity and just plain fun. I am an “old-timer” there, now, finding a sense of community that has become rare elsewhere. As the community grew and the trolls found their way in, that community has continued; it just shifted to other online locales or shifted shape within Book Crossing itself.

For me, these conventions are a festival of friendship and delight. While I don't make a point of trying to meet everyone–I have forged strong friendships and I want to spend as much time with those friends as I can–I still manage to meet a lot of people just by wandering by with a big grin on my face. It's hard to explain to outsiders how much I love these “strangers” whom I only see “in real life” at best a couple of times a year–and sometimes only once every few years. We come from all over the world; we often only know one another as screen names until, finally, we make that physical connection and our individual lives change. And yet we are undoubtedly real–we have come to care what is going on in one another's lives, we have shared losses and successes, we have laughed until the tears stream over things that, if you had to ask, you would not understand.

I'm no stranger to internet life. I've been running sites and communities since 1996 and I met my husband online. (The two do in fact have something to do with one another.) While early comments on meeting this perfect stranger in California had to do with axe-wielding maniacs and risk-taking, I guess that goes with the terrain. I've had very few poor experiences with meeting people in this so-called “real life.” I've had none at all with Book Crossers.

We pick up books and leave them in the wilds–next to historical markers, in fountains, under the sheltering butts of 20' tall pink goddesses. We call this Book Crossing. But it's the human aspect of all of this that it's really all about–the part that makes it so special.

It is the human crossing.