One’s imagination is a splendid and glorious thing. When we were kids, our imagination took us places we could never have gone in the real world. But our imagination gave us wings to fly, mighty seas to cross, and glory beyond summer days. As we get older we can often lose our ability to dream, to create, and to fly beyond the realm of the mundane-ness of life. The creation of my alter ego the Zac-Myster, is now, and will always be, a homage to what could and can be, adulthood’s soaring imagination.
In the Beginning: One day I came upon my good friend Derek and his lovely wife Mia at our local watering hole. Perched upon Derek’s head was a beige and brown hat that simply read “Zac Brown Band.” Now, since that encounter, I coveted that hat like no other. Time and time again I urged my friend to part with said hat, to which I was met with a chorus of ‘hell nos.’ Finally one day my friend walked up to me and relinquished his hat into my grateful hands with one stipulation; the hat was to be worn on my next grand adventure, wherever that may take me. I agreed wholeheartedly and thus the Zac-Myster’s adventures began.
The Breath of Life: Within a few days, of that particular day, when Zac became mine, I began to train for my next long-distance hike. I walked along the mighty Santa Fe with my new hat placed firmly on my head. I had stopped along the way to take some photographs and decided to try to take a selfie of me in my awesome, new hat. But, as per usual, my head seemed to take up the entire frame; in the most gigantic pumpkin-like fashion. I really wanted to take a pic of my hat to show my friend that I was keeping my word. As I prepared for my next sojourn, the hat he had given me would go everywhere with me and was an intricate part of my daily routine. And then I had an epiphany. I removed my hat and set it into the frame and snapped a photo of it sitting alone with Santa Fe River shining behind him. And so it began. I started to take pictures of my hat wherever I might be and posted them to Facebook. Before long I had named him the Zac-Myster and I, even unbeknownst to me at the time, began to breathe life into him. He was no longer just an inanimate object, he was no longer just a hat; he was my best friend and my most faithful companion. As I traveled along winding country roads and climbed tall mountains, he was with me. As I experienced the wind of the sea and the shine of the sun, so did he. And thus an ordinary hat, with no special talents or seemingly, a place in the world, began to have a life of its own. And that is how The Zac-Myster came into existence. Although we went on many an adventure together, he has since been retired and sits in a place of honor in my son's house and watches happily as my son comes home from his many travels, just like his mom.
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