There are four known roads into Happy Thoughts Travel Fast, although none appear on the same map. The first passes through Acaire, a great forest surrounded by a low red wall. At its center rises a mountain with three peaks, two thickly wooded and one completely bare. A perfectly still lake rests below them, fed by springs no one has ever found. Travelers are instructed to enter beneath one of two pointed arches, one for those arriving on foot and another for those arriving on horseback. This is largely ceremonial. The horses of nearby Frivole are so light that no one can ride them, and most travelers end up walking beside them, holding conversations of surprising depth.
The second road travels a cloud. The third begins with a stream. The fourth can only be seen in a mirage. All four eventually reach Golden Mountain, although the mountain rearranges itself according to the expectations of the traveler. Those who arrive in hope see its rose-filled village first. Those who arrive in sorry see the redwoods. Those who have become overly impressed with their own intelligence usually encounter the mayor.
The Brazilian visitor arrived by stream. She had stopped beside it to scatter breadcrumbs over the water when a silver fish rose to the surface and asked whether she had made a reservation. She said she had not. The fish consulted a waterlogged register, found her name written there in green ink, and informed her that she was already late, but since she was expected, all was well.
She followed him beneath the surface. The stream opened into the Kingdom of Clear Waters, where luminous fish moved through rooms furnished with shells, polished stones, river grasses, and several fine chairs that would have been more useful had any of the inhabitants possessed legs. A little court had gathered beneath a chandelier of air bubbles. They were discussing whether thoughts could swim.
"Happy ones can," said the Brazilian visitor. "The others tend to sink."
This was entered into the official record.
The fish escorted her through an underwater passage that rose directly into the golden lake. When she stepped ashore, she was completely dry except for one sleeve and discovered a tiny talking rag doll in her pocket who insisted she had been there all along.
The visitor did not argue. She came from a literary country where a quiet farm could contain a talking doll, a learned corncob, a rhinoceros, a forest of spirits, and an underwater kingdom. She understood that the distance between an ordinary house and an impossible world was sometimes no greater than the distance between the kitchen and the stream.
At HTTF, she found roses growing through the windows of the houses and wild cattle sleeping beneath trees filled with golden fruit. The villagers told her that the fruit was inedible, but excellent company. At sunset, the fruit began recounting stories it had overheard from travelers resting beneath the branches.
She left laughing because HTTF had confirmed something her stories had taught her long ago: the world was far more alive than adults generally admitted, and ordinary objects were only waiting for someone polite enough to speak to them.
The French visitor arrived from the direction of Thélème.
He had expected Golden Mountain to possess a proper entrance, but instead found six round towers arranged around a rose garden, with the river running along the northern wall. One tower contained books in Greek. Another held books in Latin, French, Italian, and Spanish. A smaller room had been reserved for books written in languages not yet invented.
There were no clocks.
No bells announced breakfast, work, prayer, sleep, or anything else. The inhabitants ate when they were hungry, read when they were curious, slept when they were tired, and dressed beautifully for reasons entirely their own. Above the doorway someone had written:
ENTER FREELY. LEAVE MORE LIKE YOURSELF.
The French visitor approved of the architecture but questioned the grammar. The mayor explained that the sentence had been written during the early years of the blog, when punctuation was plentiful but proofreading was not.
At supper, great platters appeared, followed by wine, fruit, cheeses, cakes, philosophical objections, several affectionate disagreements, and a small golden cow who wandered across the table eating the floral arrangements. No one removed her because she appeared to be enjoying herself.
The French visitor had come carrying the old Rabelaisian suspicion that excessive solemnity was often vanity wearing ceremonial robes. In HTTF he encountered splendor without obedience, cultivation without stiffness, and intelligence that had retained its appetite.
He left laughing because he had discovered a place in which liberty had not produced isolation. It had produced hospitality. Everyone was free to do as they pleased, and what pleased them most was making room for one another.
The Indian visitor followed a monsoon cloud.
He had encountered it resting against the side of a mountain and asked whether it would carry a message to Golden Lake. The cloud, accustomed to such requests, agreed. It rose over river valleys, flowering hills, temples, forests, and cities, growing darker and more magnificent as it traveled.
The visitor followed beneath it until the road climbed toward Alakā, the splendid city of longing, built high among the mountains where exiled lovers send messages through the sky. Palaces shone through the mist. Rain fell like strings of pearls. Vines climbed the terraces, and the wind carried the fragrance of wet earth and distant flowers. It was lovely, he thought.
His message contained only four words:
I have not forgotten.
The cloud intended to deliver them privately. Clouds, however, possess a very broad understanding of privacy. When it reached HTTF, it rained the message all over the entire rose-filled village.
For several minutes, everyone remembered someone.
The baker remembered his first teacher. The mayor remembered a brother with whom he had quarreled many years before. A woman standing beside the goldenstones remembered the sound of her mother singing in another room. Even the little statues brought by the banished princess seemed to turn their ancient faces toward a place beyond the mountain.
The Indian visitor understood then that happy thoughts were not merely cheerful thoughts. Some carried longing. Some carried grief. Some crossed enormous distances because love had given them a destination.
When the rain stopped, the villagers began writing letters. Those who had no address entrusted theirs to the next cloud.
He left laughing because his four-word message had reached several hundred unintended recipients and, somehow, every one of them had been the right person.
The Japanese visitor arrived through Hōrai.
At first, HTTF appeared to her as a blue distance in which sea and sky had become indistinguishable. Palace roofs curved like pale moons within a luminous haze. Flowers did not fade. Fruit remained upon the trees, and tiny bowls of rice replenished themselves until the person eating desired no more.
Yet the greatest wonder was the atmosphere.
It seemed older than ordinary air. It carried the faint presence of innumerable lives, thoughts, losses, hopes, gestures, and affections, all blended into one immense translucency. Those who breathed it began to experience time differently. A childhood afternoon might return for several seconds. A forgotten face might appear in the reflection of a cup. A thought left unfinished fifty years earlier might calmly complete itself in a single afternoon.
She walked along the shore of Golden Lake in a milky light that never dazzled. At the mountain’s edge, she found the weathered grey sandstones left by former visitors. Nothing about them appeared magical. Rain had softened their surfaces. Lichen grew over the inscriptions. Several had sunk slightly into the earth; felt but not seen.
She placed a small stone among them.
The mayor offered to have her name carved upon it.
She declined.
She understood that a place did not need to remain unchanged in order to endure. Hōrai itself survived in fragments, in pictures, poems, dreams, and those rare patches of atmosphere where people still remembered how to see it. HTTF lived in much the same way. Its posts appeared and disappeared. Its pictures traveled without explanation. Readers came from countries the author had never visited and carried small pieces of it home.
The Japanese visitor left laughing very softly. At first, it sounded like water passing over stones. Then the villagers heard something brighter within it, the quiet pleasure of discovering that impermanence had not destroyed the place. It had taught the place how to travel.
On the evening when all four visitors departed, the mayor climbed to the edge of Golden Mountain and asked what splendor they had encountered.
The Brazilian visitor spoke of a world awake with personality. The French visitor spoke of freedom made generous. The Indian visitor spoke of feeling given a destination. The Japanese visitor spoke of beauty that survived by changing form. The mayor listened carefully, then ordered four new roads added to the official map. By morning, all four roads had vanished.
This caused considerable concern among the cartographers, who had worked through the night and expected recognition. The mayor attempted to console them by declaring the disappearance an artistic accomplishment. They remained unconvinced until laughter drifted down from Golden Mountain, crossed the lake, entered the rose-filled village, and found them standing beside their useless map.
One by one, they began to laugh too.
That is why visitors to Happy Thoughts Travel Fast often leave laughing. It is not because everything they encounter is cheerful. It is because the place returns something they believed they had left behind: curiosity, liberty, tenderness, wonder, or the abandoned possibility that life might still contain a hidden road.
No traveler takes the same road home, but every traveler carries one away.
