The morning after we returned from the Great California Trip of 1975, I put Dan Fogelberg's "Wysteria" on the stereo. Just now, almost thirty years later, I finished listening to it on my iPod at work, and it is still the most beautiful, calming song.

How is it that some songs are so tightly tied to a time and place (sometimes a person)? But is that not the wonder of music, the feelings that it evokes and sustains? When I heard the song today, I thought back on the thousands of miles that we drove on that trip, the variety of Americana that we experienced along the way, and the friendships that we have to this day. It was, in three words, very cool indeed.