A bouquet of clumsy words: you know that place between sleep and awake where you’re still dreaming but it’s slowly slipping? I wish we could feel like that more often. I also wish I could click my fingers three times and be transported to anywhere I like. I wish that people didn’t always say ‘just wondering’ when you both know there was a real reason behind them asking. And I wish I could get lost in the stars.
e.e. cummings
Tags: Quoting
I see, Rob. I see Rob.
Old pals.
Up early and and late, late, late. A delinquent blog poster. Yup. This was our super fun Saturday the 11th. Fluid day it was, waking to blue bird skies and thinking we would embark on a mountain view filled hike near Boulder, Juniper bedecked in a brand new backpack of her own. Sadly, the northern latitudes had ideas of their own, with a Portland style low ceiling of clouds, so much so that even the Flatirons were obscured from view. So we tramped around with the masses on the Pearl Street Mall instead and enjoyed some of the best tacos ever, at, wait for it – T/ACO. Mushroom, barbacoa, pork belly, and carnitas, oh my!
Juniper was a champion crowd doggie, wanting to make friends with everyone who made eye contact, human and canine alike, sniffing her heart out along Boulder Creek before heading to our next destination, my dear friend Rob’s fine photography on display at Bin 46 in Longmont (Go, go, go!). It was happy hour, and we acted appropriately, sipping a dry rose like it was summer, nibbling on some of the best burrata and wild trout spread. We enjoyed the art, of course, and best of all, the company, before wandering the streets of Longmont, decades since we had last and appreciating all of the changes. I must also add that we are now those people, on the patio on a chilly day so we can eat with our pooch. There are worse things.
p.s.
Happy Saint Patrick’s Day and Happy Birthday to my Great Aunt Mary, who would have been 109 today!
Tags: Colorado
I want to feel both the beauty and the pain of the age we are living in. I want to survive my life without becoming numb. I want to speak and comprehend words of wounding without having these words become the landscape where I dwell. I want to possess a light touch that can elevate darkness to the realm of stars.
Terry Tempest Williams
Tags: Quoting
Look at the sky: that is for you. Look at each person’s face as you pass them on the street: those faces are for you. And the street itself, and the ground under the street, and the ball of fire underneath the ground: all these things are for you.
Miranda July
Tags: Quoting
You may be wondering if this is going to turn into a doggie blog. It might rabbit, it just might. Nah. That said, we are in serious doggie mode here. Our schedule has been upended, with us more regimented, rising earlier, so we can get at least an hour walk in every day, though Juniper sometimes behaves as though it’s only been fifteen minutes, darting around the yard like a race horse before deciding she is REALLY hungry and devouring her food in a minute flat. She’s energetic like that.
Our choice of books has been augmented to include everything dog, heavy on the Cesar Millan. We our doing our best to be calm-assertive pack leaders. She is doing her best to keep us guessing, well behaved dream doggie to a spazzy-zig-zaggy pup in the blink of an eye. She’s goofy like that.
But that’s not all I want to talk about, partially to prove that we are not all dog, all the time, and partially because it’s what is on my mind. I am pretty sure I have already mentioned this, but because I am human and rather fallible, I’m going to act like I didn’t. Part of what I love about Colorado Springs, besides its close proximity to near and dear ones and New Mexico, is that it reminds us of all the places we have ever lived.
Much like me, the hubster, and our new pup, our fair city is quirky, complete with a Keep Colorado Springs Lame bumper sticker. Our house is blocks away from a very Powell Boulevard-esque street. It is a five mile bike ride from downtown (though it would have been a treacherous one in Pittsburgh) in a very walkable city, for which we thank goodness, because we are going to cover every inch of it with our sweet Juniper Beulah. Palmer Park is almost equidistant as Mount Tabor was, complete with a snow capped mountain in the background! Capacious Red Rocks Park and Bear Creek serve as fine Forest Park and Frick Park stand-ins, swapping geologic wonders of granite and sandstone for dense woods and towering trees.
Though Portland reigns supreme in this category, we have some super organic food and grocers and stellar local restaurants. One of our favorites, insert spooky sound effect, even has the number 503 in its name. Whaaat?! Though it refers to an address, not the area code of our favorite rainy city. But still.
It is a collection of hills and dales and flat plains, coal mines slipped in and amongst a perfect grid and bowl of spaghetti collection of senseless winding streets, the best and the worst of East and West Side Portland and the whole of Southwestern Pennsylvania.
It is blue collar and higher ed, an hour from every beauty imaginable, save the stellar Oregon coast.
It is HOME, and we are so happy to be here.
Tags: Colorado Springs, Juniper Beulah, Pike's Peak, Pittsburgh, Portland
