Pete Freeks

Beyond here there’s no map. How you get there is where you’ll arrive; how, dawn by dawn, you can see your way clear: in pond, sky, just as woods you walk through give to fields. And rivers: beyond all burning, you’ll cross on bridges you’ve long lugged with you. Whatever your route, go lightly, toward light. Once you give away all save necessity, all’s mostly well: what you used to believe you owned is nothing, nothing beside how you’ve come to feel. You’ve no need now to give in or give out: the way you’re going your body seems willing. Slowly as it may otherwise tell you, whatever it comes to you’re bound to know. Philip Booth, "Heading Out" (from Selves)   Happy IPSD 2021! I think Charles Peterson would have understood and appreciated Booth's sentiment. "How you get there is where you'll arrive" has become a catchphrase for many of us over the past year and is certainly more relevant than it has ever been for all of us.  A few weeks ago, I asked Pete Freeks the world over to respond to Booth's companion poem "Provisions" and select a single Pete and tin of tobacco they might take with them into an unknown future. I feel honored to share these stories and hope  today you'll pass the peace by raising your favorite Pete in fellowship with them and with pipe smokers across the globe.   RALLE PERERA Sweden     ROB GUTTRIDGE Philip Booth’s poem evoked the quandary of what should be packed, what left behind, for any journey into the unknown. Your request rang several bells for me; I won’t address them all, nor will I suggest that you are quite like the Bellman in another, older poem (I’m sure you’ve read it, but perhaps not recently) although you (like him) are enjoining us all to embark together on this challenge. The attached photo places a few objects in front of a relevant page of Lewis Carroll’s "The Hunting of the Snark", from the edition illustrated by Ralph Steadman 100 years after its original publication circa 1875. The pipe is a System Standard 302, probably around 40 years old, recently restored by Steve Laug and new to me; I suppose that it will become a part of my own estate, someday. My hands like to hold it; my eyes like to look at it; and it functions as it should. The jar holds tobacco hand-blended by the (now-departed) friend who got me back into pipe-smoking after a 30-year hiatus: Steven Books, who finally opened his own shop, House of Calabash, a few minutes’ walk from my home. I’ve never in my life smoked anything better than his own blends, and for that, and many, many other reasons, I miss that guy, a lot.   TRUETT SMITH Lead Copywriter / Laudisi Enterprises I would take a Peterson Deluxe System Sandblasted 12.5, hands down, no question about it: I’ve always loved the 12.5 (and its 317 and 221 siblings)…