Today can be summarized in geographic segments: Boulder, Loveland Pass, Silverthorn, and Frisco. Or it can be summarized with the popular cliche’ of mountain towns: “It’s not the altitude, it’s the attitude.” As an Asheville girl and an eternal optimist, I agree with this, and yet… 5-12,000 feet does something to you.
We had some good old fashioned good attitudes today, I must admit. But something freaky was going on too. After spending the best part of an hour in a collective trance with the kids at an AHHHmazing puzzle shop on Pearl Street (I want to marry you, Liberty Puzzles!), Ben asked to sit on the promenade and “take in the happy vibe”. I know, right? Between Boulder and the climb through Clear Creek Canyon, Lia was annotating her summer reading book with diligence hoping it might land her a scholarship to the University of Colorado. And even though all my toiletries exploded on me when I opened them, and the whole family had the altitude wobbles atop Loveland Pass, we kept looking around us gleefully saying, “I love it here.”
Bob’s love for this place was obviously different than our wide-eyed, oxygen-deficient tourist grins. He accommodated Lia’s and my demands to stop on the shoulders of various highways for a photo of the Flat Iron mountains or the rapids of Clear Creek. He was patient as we ambled through the shops in Boulder and Frisco’s quiet village, but his remembrances of old landmarks from his youthful days in Summit County were classic “past-meets-present” kind of magic. The kids would ask, “Tell us about what it was like when you lived here? Was Grandma upset when you left college to come here? Is this you favorite place in the world?” And it led to many awesome conversations about choices, and priorities, and even touched some times on destiny. Like I said, there’s something freaky in the thin air here, and I don’t mean what comes from the dispensaries.
If we flew home tomorrow I would say “what an awesome vacation!” Inside jokes, hotel room dancing, curious map reading, not to mention a good microbrew in the sunny shadow of the Rockies. But this is only Day 3 of this adventure, with more mountain air to help breathe it all in tomorrow.
Car Full of Carpenters 