So I have spent a good portion of the past two weeks staring wistfully out of car windows, letting the spring green of aspen and the shape of familiar mountains fill up my eyes and nostrils. And staring off into skies more blue than can still be called blue. And contemplating the way the leaves of box elders move in mountain breezes, and how sun feels through a tent in the morning before you’ve opened your eyes, and how coffee made from filtered stream-water tastes even more like the earth you’ve just slept on. And watching shadows creep up the slopes of red hills until there is no thought in my head but some undefined sensation of lightness, weightlessness and well-being. And how great the highways and mountain passes of Colorado sound under my tires against a soundtrack of Rufus Wainwright, Bob Dylan, Paul Simon, and John Denver.
In short, I’m sunburned and my legs hurt from hiking and there’s a crick in my back from sleeping on the ground and my hair hasn’t been combed in the three days since I got it wet at the hot springs in Steamboat. Too much time in the sun out here starts to turn me into Neruda or Whitman or Dillard and I can’t stop breathing in this perfect dry cool bug-less air, and all the crisp stars. And everything I try to write becomes a rambling list of names and nouns and sensations.
Monday night at Reudi Reservoir, one of my favorite places in Colorado because it is just a palate of elemental primary colors – red rock, green pines, white clouds and sails on the boats on the lake, and a blue sky that can only be described as quivering or sonic or electric – I said to my sister that, I have a lot of travel ahead of me this summer, to some very beautiful places. But, looking out over the lake and the sun casting shafts of light across the open space of the canyon, I honestly do not think I will be anywhere as beautiful as that spot.
I hate comparing places to each other. It isn’t necessary. But these parts of earth, this northern Colorado country, I know so well, and the word love barely begins to express it. It is belonging. And peace. And a sense that even if everything else in my life and heart is in turmoil or confusion, a few days of just looking at this landscape can make me whole again. God is everywhere, and I have no option but to cup my hands to my chest and lift them up in a motion of prayer and release and praise and a hope of being filled.
2 comments:
Jen: absolutely loved this post, as it spoke so much of my own heart on Colorado. Much better written than I could have done it myself. Thank you.
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