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“On the Rocks” French Mountain Cottage
Montgomery
Enosburg Falls
Newport
Welcome to The Northeast Kindgom of Vermont. Verdant rolling hills, farm after farm, sweet small towns with cow splat contests, and some of the nicest people around. They make hard cider and smoke meat and fish with corn cobbs. They have sugar shacks in dense maple forests and covered bridges spanning trout-filled rivers. Three thousand miles away, yet it feels like home.
This post is dedicated to Rupert. A very Good Man.
Sooo…
This is Denver, for the time being.
This coming Monday, it will be fourteen years since we parted, not a single regret.
Left the golden sun and scorching summers.
Left bone rattling thunderstorms and white-hot lightning in the black of night.
Left snow of every stripe.
Left ice skate on the apartment pavement all winter-long.
Left static electric shocks and my hair standing on end.
Left lapis, azure, cerulean, sapphire, and plain blue skies.
Left behind
but not lost.
A road map etched on my heart.
Right to everything
Left to everyone
I’ve ever loved
THERE.
Forever Mine.
.
Colleen Sohn
…
p.s. A link to info about the Huichol VW. Very cool…
Day Two of my Denver related posts, in honor of my Mama’s birthday! Happy, happy!
We’re starting at home on the giant rocks of my youth. The sight of many a photograph, much mischief, laughter, and games, even a kiss or two!
Close Encounters-type clouds greeted us in Boulder.
The Flatirons
and Chatauqua Park in all their splendor.
We’ll eat, drink, and be merry.
I’ll take a photo on the sly,
enjoy the light, and surprise my parents by ordering a side of green beans. The girl who flushed them down the toilet after sneaking them into her napkin, and after being discovered would thereafter cut them into small pieces and swallow like pills, has grown UP.
Boulder and the Pearl Street Mall, despite being far, far older than I,
remain quite the same. Beautiful brick facades,
the twice daily in their accuracy old clocks,
and eager buskers are just as I remember,
that sense of place that resonates.
Something to practice.
When I was little, and the trees in our yard were not so big, I loved gazing at the “castle” gleaming in the morning light from my bedroom window. When I see it now, I feel eight-years-old and giddy all over again. “The castle!”
Looking back to Boulder, the sky’s bark worse than its bite, at least that day.
Thomson Elementary – you were my school back when the doors were orange. I liked them better that way, more like the tigers we were.
Daddy takes me for a ride in his retirement present and drives like a teenager.
This is where I ran around barefoot, brown as a berry, and eager as the truth, from 1976 until 1993. My first home.
Hi there! I hope you are ready for a slew of Denver photos, peeps. Because they are a-comin’! Starting with a Friday afternoon adventure downtown and over the bridge, with my handsome brothers, walking, talking, lauging, and smiling.
I used to work in the tall building, the Republic Plaza, up above that second black line, on the 36th floor, with stellar views of the city and Front Range. It was a mortgage company, and I was in college, a full-time student, worker bee, and romantic, dating a certain cutie-pie who I am now beyond proud to call the hubster.
On the Sixteenth Street Mall with that fine contrast of old and new.
The piano player had a sweet voice and a light touch on the keys. I tipped her and got a dazzling smile.
A glass elevator with no Chocolate Factory in sight. Too bad.
We are headed just to the left of the church, to a place I spotted on my way to Grandma’s house, roaming the streets in my thumping-bass rental car.
I love architecture and bridges!
Everyone is reaching for the sky
And happy for sunshine.
The Platte River
The sculpture looks like a giant pile of intestines, but is cool, nonetheless.
Live wire, eek!
We’re all fine now.
Horsing around.
Finally made it.
The Colorado flag whips and snaps,
over a small French Bistrot,
Aaron tries the absinthe.
Chris is not so sure.
I am, however. Gimme! Gimme!
Sneaky sister.
I love my brothers!
…
Happy, happy 19th wedding anniversary to me and the hubster! I still get giddy when I think about us, truth be told. Our bright-as-a-penny love, better than just about anything good (kittens!) and sparkly (stars!) and fine (whiskey!). Yup, yup.
Glittering diamonds of dew; emerald leaves, needles, and moss; ripe ruby huckleberries; opalescent water and stone under a brilliant lapis lazuli sky. These are the many jewels of Opal Creek Ancient Forest Center, Mother Nature’s living, breathing cathedral of earth, water, sometimes fire, and air. Despite their glimmering and pristine character, they hardly encompass the magic and wonder of this truly special place.
As I am one who sees the beauty, power, and resilience of the natural world wherever I go, urban and rural settings alike, I thought I knew what to expect at the Opal Creek Ancient Forest Center – a grand place of primal waters and trees older than the nation I call home. After all, I’ve been to myriad forests and seen the majesty of trees towering above me. I’ve witnessed the scrappy plant proudly blossoming from a tiny crack in the sidewalk. I’ve seen water of such blindingly brilliant hues as to leave me speechless. Despite all of this, I was wholly unprepared for my experience at Opal Creek. The beauty and peace I felt was staggering and resonated deep in my bones. Every step, glance, and sound steeped in the sublime.
It all starts with the journey, literally and figuratively. We load the car here at home, drive south through the cacophony of morning rush hour before turning east. Already there is a shift. There are fewer cars, more trees, large stands of oaks peppered between farms, shopping centers, and even a prison. The landscape changes again as we make gains in elevation, and the grassy knolls turn into vast stands of evergreens. Their clean scent mingles with the dust of the dirt road under our wheels. We park the car, but we aren’t quite to the end of our journey. We walk three miles out of time. It could be the 1930’s of rustic wood cabins, gold panning, starlit skies, and cast iron. And in those places where there is no sound save the chirp of a camouflaged bird or the drip of of a watercourse borne of centuries, we might just be in America before it was, two nameless faces living off the land.
