I had just emerged victorious from a particularly challenging period of my life and was in the mood to party.

It was back in the 70s during my Kerouac on the road rucksack revolution days ­ — cold, rainy nights beneath highway overpasses, Albuquerque refuge mission, Depression-era hoboes warming their hands around trash-can fires.

I was reading Kerouac’s Desolation Angels about when he was a fire lookout in the Cascades and the Skagit River Valley of the Pacific Northwest. So that’s where I decided to go, looking for a home on the road.

It turned out to be like a miracle move. After a few nights in a hippie commune, I got a job as a logger with a big chain saw and a room in an old hotel next to a hippie/logger bar. I’d made it… IT… a home on the road. I felt like I was on top of the world and was in the mood to party and so I went to the hippie commune where there was always a party going on and joined in with a group who were throwing the I CHING.

My sign came up as MOUNTAINS AND VALLEYS.

I was up now, but I would have to go back down into the valley again.

That’s where I felt like I was last Thursday morning — down in the I CHING valley. That week’s edition of Thursday’s Columns had just hit the newsstands and I was already thinking about what to write about for this week’s “Our Story” column.

I scanned the news for ideas. What was going on “out there” in the world beyond our fenced-in backyard and cozy home in the suburbs of Denver with its idyllic views of the snow-capped Rockies to the west like on cans of Coors beer?

I scrolled through some of the approved news sites on the internet. Over morning coffee, cats on our laps, Culley Jane told me what was on the front page of the Denver Post.

It was like waking up underneath a highway overpass on a gray rainy dismal day, down in the I CHING valley.

Literally depressing.

An honorably discharged soldier with a Purple Heart is wrestled to the pavement by ICE in San Bernardino. An official National Security Strategy report is released by the White House explaining the need and the plan to dominate those fortunate enough to be living in our “sphere of influence.” A Venezuelan oil tanker is seized on the high seas.

I remembered a golden rule from my old newspaper days — lead with what bleeds.

Barefoot children in freezing Gaza mud.

You have to be careful when writing from down there in the I CHING valley. You don’t want to pull others down there with you.

That’s when my iPhone pinged, like a call to meal in a Zen monastery, announcing the arrival of an email. It was from Joan Hug-Valeriote, who lives in Canada and reads my Thursday columns.

I first connected with Joan through Culley Jane. They first met in a Paris youth hostel in the early 70s when they were both out there exploring other worlds. A few years ago they reconnected via the internet.

Joan and her Swiss husband, Andreas, were married in a town along the Rhine and Culley Jane was there.

After a time in Switzerland, Joan was anxious to get back home to her large extended Canadian family. As for Andreas, he was happy for the chance to emigrate out of post-war Europe.

Now, after all these years, after living in many parts of the world, they’re still together up there in Canada. Andreas writes about his adventures working for international corporations and plays  in the town band. Joan plays in the town band too and quilts as art and is reading a book about atoms and God and energy and sometimes marches with protestors in front of government buildings.

Reading Joan’s email, I felt myself rising like a balloon up out of the I CHING valley. It was great! That, too, was going on beyond the wood fence enclosing the legal property where we live in our cozy home. That too was news. Maybe the biggest story in the world.

I wrote an email back to Joan: “Can I use your email as a Letter to the Editor?”

“Sure,” she replied. “But, why?”

I wrote back: “Maybe that’s what I’ll write next week’s column about.”