It's easy to fall into despair; things are going so rough. But here's to Mark, who believes in the future, and to the future researchers who may find value in A Delicious Country. Here's to readers who read books because they think the world is interesting and beautiful and worth understanding as best we can. Here's to all the people who have helped this project in so many ways (I just finished the acknowledgments; they went on for pages). Here's to the readers on this site who have kept me going. And here's to us all meeting in a bookstore sometime about a year from now, talking about Lawson and the Santee and the Sewee and the Catawbas and the Occaneechee and the Tuscarora and the Huguenots and Charleston settlers and dugout canoes and alligators roaring and biological specimens in the London Natural History Museum. Let's just all move forward as though that will all happen, right?
Working on a project like this, a project that takes years and if it generates money doesn't generate much, is finally a vote of confidence in the future. If it offers nothing else, it offers my effort as a token of belief that it's worth working hard to understand the world. It's worth sharing that understanding. And it's worth believing in the future. So anyhow thanks for believing in this project, and see you in a bookstore in a year or so.