Cold brew indeed. The weekend of storytelling wound to a close tonight with a cool farewell breeze under an Oregon sky.

We crowded in borrowed sweatshirts over board games and picnic tables, aching for a campfire, with local beer and faraway dreams, braced against a surprise chill, clinging to the warm glow of a weekend that reminded us how very human we humans can be.

“Empathy” may be a tired word — it means too much and not enough. But on this night, in a milling crowd of ordinary weirdos, we reflected on a weekend where we came to see the simple power of a person understood: “Huh, I can only imagine how that must feel”