Travel Returns

I like the way the sky looks in Colorado. The ceilings are high. The clouds pile up with quiet drama and somehow there's always a snow capped peak in the distance all backlit by the sun. The sky is also very blue, very often. Do you Colorado people even appreciate this?!

I also like the neighborhood of Park Hill in Denver—where my sister lives, where all the houses are made solidly of brick in the fashion of an old plains city accustomed to wildfires. I like how when a snowstorm comes in the night (long after you fall asleep) and also leaves in the night (long before you've woken up), you can peek out onto a quiet row of houses blanketed with powder and feel transported straight back to the 50s or something.

I'm up in the mountains now writing to you from a sunny kitchen table (and wheezing with the altitude). But I gotta go! More later, I promise.

Mid-Winter Mini Escape

When I was just a little bear cub in the mountains of Colorado, I had no idea that I'd someday grow up to live in one of the year-round-awesomest and yet life-givingly-dismal-and-mold-farming-during-the-winter cities in the country. But here I am—Portland. And around about February, escape becomes advisable—nay, ESSENTIAL, to mental survival.

So ... after gambling all my remaining frequent flyer miles, I was in Aspen at the home of one T. Byrnes putting on my snowboard boots after almost way too long. We rode Ajax through cold and ice, and then aprés-ed at Little Nell. Too much fun to elaborate.

Gondy laps with Trish—they're good for one's spirit.

Ricky's room. You know yr ballin when you have your own cider-making station.

For those who don't know, the term "aprés" is a French euphemism for "drinking after riding." It's a nice way to end up in your snowboard clothes past dark.

This ain't vintage—the spirit of the poma lift is alive and well at Snowmass.

A 22-foot vert ramp made out of snow. Scccarrry.

One of those moons that makes you shoot a blurry pic with your cell phone while driving 80 on the freeway.

On Holiday

My stocking this year consisted of this: wool socks (I used to be “whatever” about socks until I started wearing the fine wicking Merino ones and now I’m a hardliner about them), goat’s milk soap and a wee tin of lip balm, deodorant (you laugh—but this was actually on my list!), broad-spectrum sunscreen, and (obviously) chocolate. This is a very grown-ass woman set of gifts, and I’m not even ashamed about that. And I love my mom for knowing this about me.

Despite the natural seismic tremors of tensions that every family feels (I think?) when compressed together into one house and timeframe, I get to know my parents better every time I go home on holiday. My very favorite thing is when they tell some previously un-recounted anecdote from their pre-“me” life. Like, who ARE these people who gave birth to me?

I got up before sunrise one morning and caught a ride into town with mom and dad on their way to work. I was alone, sitting on a swiftly moving chairlift by 8:30 a.m. The sun was still behind the mountain and all was blue, ’cept for a little pink puff of cold-fog effervescing in the minus-3 degree air. It was a deeply cold, deeply pure moment that I immediately stuck in my cap of fine, pure moments from this year.

I don’t know what’s up with this guy’s jacket but I’d gladly take these chubby Bernese pups off his hands, immediately.

Nephew Patrick—whom I played with extensively—making his bed like a good boy. Now can he come do mine?

Red skies in the morning, sailors take warning.  

My parents’ dog Fergus. He wears diapers to bed at night—I shit you not!

There and back

Two weeks of traveling and now I'm back home again. There is nothing better than your own bed. That's the truth. But I'm already missing the road a little bit. And missing my family. And missing the snow—that kinda cold makes you feel alive. Anyway, a few snapshots of a Colorado Christmas—lots of snowboarding, wine, sugar in all its forms, and Dexter on Netflix.

Christmas day was extra sparkly this year.

Nephew Patrick and his army of dragons. Seen How To Train Your Dragon? So good—that's no joke.

We went hotdoggin' every single day.

Pretty, pretty.

Playing. It's good for ya.