IN THIS EDITION
- Lorellum Fantastica: The Seven Scholars return with new lore—and Seven Banes
- Travelogue: Cinnamon Pass near Lake City, Colorado
- Movie Journey: The Prince of Egypt (1998)
- Pupdate: Glamour shots with fall colors
When this Journal is published, I’ll be driving 14 hours back to Colorado from Texas. Perhaps you’re traveling back home as well. Or perhaps you’re already home, relaxing (or recovering!) after Thanksgiving weekend.
As promised, I have a report on my first Halloween in my house. Around 6:30, I opened the door to my first ever trick-or-treater, a caped and masked teenage boy. He challenged me to a rock-paper-scissors game with two pieces of candy as the wager. Bewildered, but intrigued, I accepted and subsequently won. He threw two pieces of candy into my bucket, then dashed off before I could say any more. That’s right—I started the night with more candy than I had started with.
So, that was Halloween. We’ve just had Thanksgiving. And Christmas season starts tomorrow—are you ready?
Lorellum Fantastica
Seven Scholars. Seven odysseys to recover lost lore. And, at the end of it all, Seven Banes.
What is Lorellum Fantastica?
Travelogue
Cinnamon Pass is where I fell in love with the mountains.
When I was a child, my family took a a camping trip to Colorado. My father selected a site in National Forest near Durango, towards the southwest corner of the state. During the trip, we took ATVs up through Silverton and along the Alpine Loop, a famous off-roading trail in the San Juan Mountains.
Our penultimate destination that day was Cinnamon Pass, and I recall it clearly. I wandered up a small crest (just to the left of the sign in the photo), sat down amongst mountain wildflowers and a gentle breeze, and gazed out upon the summer mountains beneath a bluebird sky. A born and raised Texan, used to living in lands as hot and flat as a frying pan, I was in awe.
This month, I camped out with my dad at the tail end of his annual elk hunt. We had great weather and took an unplanned drive up to Cinnamon Pass, where I took this photo. With a snowstorm coming in the following day, it’s highly likely that we were the last people on Cinnamon Pass in 2025.
And I’m happy to say this place is just as magical as when I first encountered it.
Movie Journey
The Prince of Egypt (1998)
The first animated film from Dreamworks Animation, the same studio that put out Shrek and How to Train Your Dragon. But you wouldn’t know that from watching this film—not with its gorgeous cinematography and incredible musical soundtrack. While it follows the origin story of Moses from the Bible, it focuses on telling a good story as opposed to evangelizing. A frequently-watched classic from my childhood, it still held up for me, two decades later. One of the best film openings I’ve ever seen. Deliver Us is still stuck in my head, weeks later.
Pupdate
Autumn is the best time to go hiking in Colorado. In addition to the cooler weather, there’s fall colors everywhere: most notably the aspen trees, whose leaves burst with a fiery yellow hue (as seen in the above photo). On a hike near Evergreen, the pups were kind enough to let me snap a glamour shot. We might put this one on a Christmas card!
I always love hearing from my readers—if there’s something you want to say about anything in the Journal, you can either reply directly to this email or visit the website to leave a comment.
Thanks as always for reading, and see you next month!
