Down Town
It's weird when you grow up and get busy and then like three weeks'll go by and you haven't talked to your big sister. You don't feel good about it, but it does happen. Hence, during our epic road trip around the American west, Lance and I weren't about to leave Colorado without driving down to the city to see Melissa Sherowski. She cooked a miraculous pasta feast for us, and then the next morning we ate bagels at St. Marks. There was a lot of eating involved, obviously. My sister and her lady Sarah—they're the bestest. I miss them already. Family unit!!
That nice mornin light through blue bottles at St. Marks.
High Country Summer Stuff
I grew up in Colorado’s high alpine in the resortiest of resort towns, where winter passed in a haze of powder days and other winter clichés, like building snow men and sledding and snow-shoeing and ice skating while drinking hot cocoa. I’m serious. And while no one is trying to disparage any of that stuff (because how could you?!), I went home for a visit last week and was hit in the face with how awesome the mountains are WITHOUT snow on the ground.
Family trip to the Maroon Bells!
The stars in the sky. The lights from the city and the humidity of the Northwest keep me from seeing, like, half the stars that I can glimpse back home in Colorado. But high atop Independence Pass near Aspen, I stood for at least an hour gaping into the blackest of black skies with such a crazy mess of stars that my little head almost exploded.
Wildflowers. There are a whole lot of things that CAN’T grow at high altitudes. The air is thin and the climate pretty inhospitable. Because of this, alpine wildflowers are so delicate and extraordinary, and when scattered across a meadow beneath a craggy, snow-patched peak are, well, life affirming.
Rivers and hot springs. Not like the lazy, meandering rivers of Oregon, high-country creeks require you to seek out hidden pools between large chunks of granite or discover through word of mouth where the natural hot springs are. Sure, it takes a little work—but the payoff is a setting both miraculous and crowd-free.
Trails. These things go everywhere in the high alpine, and whether by foot/horse/bike, you can follow them from town to town (Aspen to Crested Butte, for instance), or just up to a lonely glacial lake sitting like an aquamarine jewel in the crown of peaks.
Pine trees. The way they smell in the afternoon sun, the soft lining they leave on the forest floor, the shade and quiet they provide—all of it.
Afternoon thunderstorms. I miss those cataclysmic storms we had every afternoon in August when I was a kid—huge purple clouds would move in around 3 and you’d run for cover as thunder boomed back and forth off the peaks like a bowling ball.
My nephew the beastmaster.
Stories To Tell
Oh hi! Maybe you didn't notice but I went missing for eight days. You probably didn't. I know when other people leave I just keep doing normal life and then I'm all, you're back already?!
Aanyway, I have lots to tell about the mountains and the desert I saw, about the long lonely miles of highway between this and that, about whether or not we saw Kristen Stewart in a backwoods Utah swimming hole, about how quiet a canyon can be at sunset, about why horse-back riding is, maybe, the best way to meander through a valley of sage brush and aspen groves. Lots. But—I'ma just decompress for a day or two before I get into all that, okay?
Steamy
100-degree heat is only acceptable if it lasts for no longer than 48 hours and then on the third morning you wake up to a cool cloud cover and a quiet kinda misting rain that's so light it's just barely, barely there. That's how we do it in Oregon, anyway.
Pile up on the couch with the AC unit on high.
Pug geezer and pit bull, both champion layer-arounders.
A bumble bee in my California fuscha. Everything I do in my flower garden is for those li'l buzzers—they're having a hard time of it, you know.
Life and Death
I'm not good at funerals. Who is? Went to one recently for someone I did not know personally and remembered how hard it is to watch people you love hurtin on the inside and not be able to do nothing about it. For the next few days, I simmered on the subject of how important our people are to us—how they ARE us, to a certain extent, and I felt strangely lucky to have all my peeps gathered around me right now, whether in essence or in reality, keeping me honest and whole and stuff.
Reminds me of the below pic of someone's public art I came across one day on the Internets. Can't remember who shot it or who the artist is or really anything about it, but it's nice, right?
