Grasshopper New Media Presents...

Last summer, Nancy and I drove on the Blue Ridge Parkway. It runs for nearly 500 miles through Virginia and adjoining states.

It isn’t a quick way to anywhere. The speed limit is 45. It is two lanes. Because it runs through the mountains, there are few straight places.

It isn’t a predicable way. You can’t see around the curves and over the hills. You are constantly surprised by flowers and views and fog and animals.

It isn’t a busy way. In a couple of hours of driving you may meet 10 cars.

And all along the road are mileposts. They are actual posts, carved with numbers. By themselves the numbers mean little. There are no indicators of how far it is to any attractions, where you started the day, whether you will make it to the next stop.

And yet, knowing where you are tells you something about what went into this road. It is a reminder that someone built this and tends this and makes it available.

The last post on GNMParents.com was the 1,000th post. A number of people have poured their lives and hearts and struggles and delights and dreams and nightmares into a few paragraphs one thousand times. (Actually, most of us have written far more and have thrown it away.) Since the site started, there have been different publishers, different contributors, different photographers, different schedules.

This is like a Blue Ridge Parkway of parenting. You have to slow down to read. You never know exactly what is coming around the next curve, the next hill. There aren’t a lot of people commenting on any one post.

However, the view is incredible. Running along the ridges of the mountains of parenting, occasionally the fog clears and you see that you are part of an amazing group of people involved in changing the world one family, one child, one post at a time.

And even when you go back to the expressway or the clutter of the mall, you take the parkway with you.

1000 posts is just a milepost. But it’s a marker on a road that is, well, amazing.