Big Country

Slowly, out of the hot haze of the high plains, the Rocky Mountains emerged like foreboding clouds in the west.  We have been in the mountains for a few days now, and I am sitting in a coffee shop in Telluride CO.  Most of the group has fallen in love with one or more of the mountain towns we have been haunting - and to be honest, I don't blame them. I was a bigger fan of Salida and Gunnison than I am of Telluride.  Here's the thing - This town is full of people that are WAY to over-privledged.  Trustafarians.  Anyway, that is just the grumpy me speaking since, if I had the money (which I don't), I would be setting up shop in a place like this.  Aside from the expense and the people whose reality is on another plane than mine, this place is beautiful.  I met an older gentleman in Montrose who worked for Cummins Diesel engines, and he said that he had traveled all over the world, and the two most beautiful places, in his opinion, were Tibet and Telluride.  That seemed like a pretty damn good sales pitch.  I've never seen Tibet, but this guy was not selling me the Brooklyn Bridge about Telluride.  The town is nestled in a narrow valley, and surrounded by massive mountains in almost every direction.

This trip has taught me something about the worth of an object or an experience - it is directly proportional to the cost, whether it is money or, in this case, physical exertion.  I am still amazed that I pedaled myself to the Rocky Mountains.  I woke in the thin air at 10k feet a few days ago, crawled out of my home away from home, and it struck me again.  It happens every day, I realize how fortunate I am to be here, right now, not wanting to be anywhere else but now.  Kansas, Colorado, Kentucky, you name it, just here and now.  I don't do that enough in my life, and I hope that I will take that feeling with me, back to the "real world."  I spend too much time focusing on forward progress, institutional momentum as I like to say.Always moving forward, always up.  Here and now are places to get beyond.  Buying time in the future, paying with the present.  Not out here though.  I can drink in every moment anywhere from 5 - 40 mph.

The Rockies are breathtaking.  Have you ever looked at a scene, and it was so beautiful that it borders on painful?  I know that sounds funny, but the mountains are so massive, like sleeping giants, felled long ago.  It brings tears to my eyes.  The landscape is rugged, unforgiving, but it holds so much for you if you put in the effort, slow down to see it, make the journey the destination.  Anything from the smallest flower to the behemoth mountains erupting out of the valley floors.  It was amazing to see the change in the landscape, as the mountains heaved themselves from the high plains of eastern Colorado.

I mentioned that many places form the patchwork of my "home," the quilt that I have been stitching for 30 years now.  It is no wonder that a place like the Rockies has burrowed in under my skin, or anyone else's for that matter.  Some places, like the plains for example, need explanation, the Rockies are not that type of place.  What explanation is needed for wanting to live so close to heaven, taking flight without leaving the ground, surrounding yourself with vast wilderness, the stuff of life, of the world?  Like the plains, life here is a struggle, to be eked out of the landscape, but the rewards are more tangible, less hidden.  The other day Seth commented that he didn't think anyone could stay angry if they lived here.  They would wake up on the wrong side of the bed, but as soon as you walk outside and are bombarded by the majesty around you - poof - anger gone.  I think Seth is onto something there.  Who needs therapy, slap a snow covered peak in my backyard, you keep the pills.

I am going to leave you with a little Shakespeare this time, something that was flying through my head as I was pedaling closer and closer to heaven.


To all those brave enough to do something amazing, to push the boundaries -




"And gentlemen in England now-a-bed
    Shall think themselves accurs'd they were not here,
    And hold their manhoods cheap whiles any speaks
    That fought with us upon Saint Crispin's day."