Friday, July 14, 2006
Colorado
There and back again
We drove straight there, in rather uneven shifts. We saw the sun rise over the Texas desert. To see one tree was exciting at that point. Our first mountain, Rabbit Foot, was quite small, but a welcome sight after hours across the desert. Our treck out of Texas took the better part of 12 hours.
After passing a volcano, and the interesting distant and flat-top mountains of New Mexico, we finally entered Colorado. It was literally all uphill from there. Our car had an incredibly difficult time keeping up pace. Apparently, someone decided long ago that the southern Colorado border should be marked by a drive on a very steep mountain highway.
We arrived in Colorado Springs after 17+ hours of driving, only to find out that every campsite in Colorado was full. Over 10 hours later, and a lot of driving around Colorado checking campsites, hotels, and motels, we found ourselves back in Colorado Springs at a very cheap, yet surprisingly clean motel.
The next day was filled with climbing the freestanding walls of rock at The Garden of the Gods, and then having Yerba Mate' tea and Soda water straight from the ground in the quaint town of Manitou Springs. That night, we slept in the car at a rest stop. The view in the morning was stunning.
For the better part of the week we stayed right on a creek, inside a canyon. Our tent was huge, and the leaks made for some fun nights. To top it off, we bought something too large for the car, had to strap it on top for the ride home, and happened to ride through the largest storm front I've ever seen. 9 hours of rain. Due to our strapping something to the top of the car, that 9 hours of our trip was also filled with leaks. It made our trip very memorable... we will always remember the leaks. Boulder Mountain Lodge comes highly recommended from us -especially a campsite on the creek. The creek sings you to sleep at night.
Surrounded by gods
Eldorado Canyon, just south of Boulder, was the site I liked most from our trip. Entering a canyon made us feel insignificant in size, as the ancient gods of lore (read: really tall rock walls) looked down upon us from above. Hiking up Rattlesnake Gulch, traveling past the ruins of a 100-year gone hotel, and resting at a mountain peak, gave us the sense of dwarfing even the mountains. It is a very strange feeling to look upon what just a couple of hours before seemed to be an ominous pillar of strength, to resting while looking at that same wall of rock as if it were something you could step on and crush. On an adjacent mountain, not half a mile from us, ran a train at higher altitude than we dared travel that day. The entire experience was breath-taking.
The drive through the moutains of the back highways to Estes Park was also stunning. And the childhood memories of watching the taffee roll on the machine were made real again. The mountains loomed, the deer acted as if they were as human as we, and the rocks watched us as if to both protect and threaten us all along the way.
Finding ourselves
Boulder proper left Nadine and I dumbstruck while we sat outside at the Pearl Street Mall and watched something we had never seen before. The street performers were fun, the music (even a piano) was great, but we had seen all that before. What amazed us, as we sat silently, was the sheer lack of pretense. We watched as people from every walk of life, from businessman to homeless, from parent to scholar, from musician to performer, each kept an unquestionable uniqueness about them, yet at the same time held a uniform sense of community. There were no walls between people. The only hint of pretense, that I'm not sure I can even call pretense, was in the teenagers who were still trying to find there identity. Yet even in their pretentiousness, it came across more as a searching, a desire to belong, and a respect for the journeys surrounding them.
We sat; we ate fallafel and shwarmas; we listened to literal heroes of literature and heart tell there stories; we moved to the rythhm of a drum circle; we explored a holistic pharmacy; we explored the many bookstores and unique thrift stores; and we found ourselves at home. From the beautiful secenery, to the authentic community, down to the matters of social justice, holsitic living, and vibrant spirituality, Nadine and I felt at home.
It's a small world
So there we were, finally touring the great holistic university of the west, Naropa. Nadine and I are both very interested in the types of study and degrees they offer at Naropa. Our tour guide even helped us to get a better feel for what it would be like living in Boulder. Being Jewish, she answered much of our curiosity of the Jewish community in the area as well.
The height of that day was when what we had talked about being unlikely yet highly ironic actually happened. As we walked into Naropa's office to start the tour, our next door neighbors were sitting just inside, waiting for the same tour. I think that made the tour that much more enjoyable. We later had a walk with them to an ornate indonesian tea house, were we parted ways.
Seeing red again
to clarify the subtitle, Colorado means the color red.
The eventual move of my brother and his family stirred up my parents to solidify the idea of moving closer to my father's office (in colorado Springs), which in turn helped Nadine and I finally make the decision to move to Boulder -which we had seriously considered for some time. January is soon around the corner, and we hope to be seeing the mounatins covered in snow as we settle into a new home around Boulder. Just a couple of months after the birth of Ender Michael, and a couple of weeks after Jonathan's 9th birthday, we will find ourselves at home once again. Perhaps this will be what finally pushes me to my new blog.
Though now few in number, I can honestly say that we will miss our friends here deeply. Some of them we already miss... some of them we have missed for a while. But the thought of being close to 1500 miles away somehow reinforces it.
Nethaneel will probably be missed the most. He was with us as we sat in awe of the streets of Boulder. He was with us as we climbed the heads of the gods. He was with us as we slept in the car, and as we lay in the water dripping from our tent (most especially on him). I wonder how it will be up there without him. He was with me and helped me as I struggled to free myself from the label I no longer represented, Christianity, and embraced my Jewishness. He has been with me as I sought my vocation, and have slowly thrown off cultural expectations and more clearly pursued who I want to become. He has been with Nadine and I both as we have struggled to find ourselves when we feel that we no longer belong here, but rather 1500 miles away. I could easily name others, but Nethaneel has been our closest friend, and will be dearly missed.
I hope to have some business endeavors left here. I hope to visit my friends here, as I produce several artists in this area, and keep a small recording studio going. I also hope to visit the first 30+ years of my life every now and then, taking a stroll down memory lane, in this place that has already changed so much from what I remember, but still holds shadows of how I came to be who I am.
Shalom.
