Carol sat looking over the John Blatnik Bridge at the beautiful night skyline of Duluth, Minnesota. He was there for the weekend only to audition for the Duluth Superior Symphony Orchestra. He had played the flute professionally for over ten years and had grown tired of the town he had been living in when a friend told him about the opening with this symphony. Carol wondered what it would be like living in Duluth, a city he had never been to before but was finding beautiful and almost welcoming on this brief trip. He never liked auditions, and part of him scolded him for being there. He thought he should be grateful to have consistent professional work as a musician, but still he couldn’t resist the pull toward something new.

The next morning he stood at the large arcadia door in his comfortable room in one of the hotels Duluth. He warmed up with one of his favorite passages from Mozart’s Magic Flute. He thought about his audition pieces an played through those before returning to some of his favorite works just to keep his mind in a playful mood and not become too serious.

That thought always struck Carol as funny, a serious flutist. It just didn’t seem to fit although in actuality he knew plenty of serious flutists in his lifetime. After the audition Carol went immediately to the Lester Park Trail, which he had read about as a popular hiking path. He made it his practice to always go somewhere peaceful, and with flowing water if possible, after an audition or any stressful meeting to calm his nerves. He refused to think about how it went because he knew he was in an overly critical position and could not objectively look at it. So instead, he sat along the river and played his flute to invisible nymphs.