And this – wedding bells for my sweet little-no-more cousin and his lovely bride last Saturday. My goodness, Williams Peak Ranch is the most beautiful setting I’ve ever seen to exchange vows.
We had a grand time – fun and silly and chatty and so much L O V E. Here’s to a lifetime of happiness!
One week ago, in the great state of Colorado, we took three whole days off from housework. No painting, sawing, digging, cleaning, washing, shoveling, building, or destroying. It hardly seemed believable, zooting the Mini down our sleepy street before the sun had fully risen. Westward we drove, snaking through the canyons and park lands, highways 24 and 9 and 40. Clouds low and clinging, hushing the bold landscapes of granite, evergreen, sage, and tumbleweed, a nod to Portland, an old chapter blanketing this new one.
There are pages older than Portland, too – disparate parts merging and diverging, all these stories in one lifetime. Lake Dillon, glittering and beautiful, I watched it as a child, over days, seasons, and years, barefoot and happy on Ptarmigan Mountain. So much is different now, so many more people, so many more houses, so many more cars, but that lake and my memories of it, remain unchanged. I like that.
We stayed at the Hot Sulphur Springs, not-at-all fancy but wonderful, the smell lingering, in my hair, on my skin, until Wednesday. Of the nineteen pools, we had two favorites, soaking and floating for hours upon hours, daylight to the glow of sunset to darkness and stars. We loosened every muscle and forgot every care, at least for a while. We met a doe and her fawn at our window, bid them good moring and good day, conversed with a boy full of curiosity, befriending the tiniest of snakes. I laughed and dipped my toes in the Colorado. The two of us slept like the dead. And you bet we had a slice of pie, our backsides parked on a curb like a couple of kids.
And nature, always dazzling, the bees feasting on thistle, and that tiny creature (a vole?), recent lunch for some bird of prey, nose and whiskers still intact.
Homeward bound and the beautiful Gore Range. A shame to my native state, I am not a Bronco fan, AT ALL, and would rather make a fence out of skis than actually ski. But I will cheer on a burro race in Leadville and feast on burrito after burrito, any where, any time. This was in Buena Vista. Indeed.
I decided it is better to scream. Silence is the real crime against humanity.
Nadezhda Mandelstam
…
Happy Birthday Grandpa and Mari!
Tags: Quoting
The world is big, and I want to have a good look at it before it gets dark.
John Muir
Tags: Quoting
Another glad to be back post for you! We saw Dolly Parton at Red Rocks on Wesdnesday, rolling along home at 1:15 in the AM Thursday morning, a late, late, late night for this pair who is usually in bed before ten.
Hoot and holler was it worth it! I got an awesome hat! I got to see a concert at Red Rocks, the first in twenty-one years. Though I thought it was Pearl Jam we last saw before remembering it was actually Lyle Lovett on the day Jerry Garcia died. He soulfully sang Friend of the Devil to wild applause as his first song, and it made a deep impression, just not a chronological one.
Like much of the past seven months since our return, it brought a whole host of memories streaming back, hanging out with friends, waiting for the music to start, watching wild lightning, getting dumped on, burning in the heat. The shows, of course, the shows! My very first was INXS, in 1986, fifteen years old, thinking I was so cool. Then all the bands: Big Head Todd and the Monsters, the Doobie Brothers, Sinead O’Connor, The Sugarcubes, New Order, P.I.L., Harry Connick Jr., Pearl Jam, and that Lyle Lovett show, too. All of them like it weren’t no thang, when, dammit, it’s Red Rocks – the greatest concert venue in the world! Beautiful, magical, insert a million top-shelf adjectives. Oh, yes.
And then there was Dolly. My goodness, Dolly Parton, seventy years old and kicking ass on the concert stage! Her heart and mind, warm, open, and funny, telling stories. No other band, just her small troupe of fellas that have been with her forever. She played a saxophone, strummed guitar and banjo, picked a dulcimer, blew the harmonica, and tickled the ivories – so many instruments! Her voice the best instrument of all, clear and beautiful and fine. The woman is a national treasure.
