Before there was AVAIA, there was a story.

Where part of the journey began

Before AVAIA had a name, before its conversations and systems existed in their present form, there was a father, a son named Bailand, and a mountain trail that would never mean the same thing again. The View From Above is part of that beginning: an early telling of the same search for understanding, healing, and perspective that would, years later, become AVAIA.

About the Book

On May 25, 2017, Dorian Johnson’s son Bailand hiked up Molly’s Peak in Cub River Canyon, near Preston, Idaho. He did not return. The View From Above is Dorian’s account of that loss, and of returning a year later to hike the same trail as a memorial. Co-written with Danielle Palmer, it follows his restorative process through grief — not toward resolution, but toward grace — and the role virtue played in that healing. Published in 2021, it’s available in paperback and audiobook.

Why It Is Here

AVAIA did not begin as an idea for a website or an artificial-intelligence system. Its roots are personal. The View From Above represents an earlier part of that journey — part of the experience, questioning, reflection, and search for perspective that preceded what AVAIA would eventually become.

The Chemistry of Virtue existed then too, in an early form — the same idea of virtues working together like elements on a table, years before AVAIA gave it the shape it has today. AVAIA itself did not exist yet. What it would become grew out of roots like this one.

This isn’t the story of AVAIA. But it is part of the story of where AVAIA came from.