Where I've Been
Each time I left this place at the end of a contract, I believed I would return in a few years but sobbed until I couldn’t see The Mountain in the rearview mirror any more. In the past few weeks, whenever my brother drove me there and back, I stayed dry-eyed. Whenever I drove myself, tears began to flow before I got halfway there.
For years I’ve understood I’m very unlikely to ever live at this place again. Much of my stuff remained in storage there, waiting. I’ve been sorting through it all. My brother and his partner have gone above and beyond to help me get through everything. They have swept out dust, counted things, measured things, hefted things, lent me use of a pickup truck, taken multiple loads to recycling or thrift stores, fed me, set me up with everything I needed, given me all the support they could and squeezed in a few small tastes of the mountains. It would have been much harder without them.
It has been strange, like being the executor going through someone’s estate after they die, but it’s my estate and I’m still kicking. It hasn’t hurt as much as I thought it would, but it does hurt some, especially the part about cementing that I’m gone for the rest of my life.
In case you don’t know the view, the photos were taken on the mesa looking over Garden of the Gods to Pike’s Peak at Colorado Springs. The city isn’t what I love. This is what I love. Garden of the Gods is holy ground, a place of power and a place of truce for multiple Native American (First Nation) tribes. All the ingredients in the Lakota medicine chest can be found in it. Being within a few miles feels in my soul like standing knee-deep in a powerful river.
Behind it is Pike’s Peak, the first of the Rocky Mountains visible to settlers moving westward near its latitude. You can see it easily 70 miles to the north in Denver. I used to drive toward it for work every morning, seeing dawn paint it in soft pastel colors.
When you are in The Springs, everything and everyone seems oriented to The Mountain. It makes the area’s weather. During monsoon season in summer, mornings begin cloudless. By midday a tiny puffball of cloud forms directly over the peak. Through the afternoon, the puffball grows and grows until it is a bank of thick dark clouds. In late afternoon to early evening, the clouds sweep down from The Mountain to storm over part of the area, sometimes furious with hail as well as rain and lightning. After half an hour or so the storm is over. The first Saturday I was in Colorado Springs for a contract, such a storm caused 26 lightning strikes around the city.
Everyone watches The Mountain at every opportunity to see what it is doing.
I’ve only been to the summit of Pike’s Peak once. My family came on vacation when I was in my teens. We drove up the road to the top, were there only briefly (astounded to be freezing on what had been a hot summer day below) and then came down. I don’t feel compelled to go to the top. The feel of the place is what reaches me.
Each time I lived at Colorado Springs I wasn’t well, but being there made being ill more tolerable.
My overwhelming personal project was to go through my stuff in Colorado, get rid of most of it, and retrieve some of it—to home, which means to the life my wife and I share. For a number of reasons, our life is in the UK.
I miss this place. I love this place.
I love my wife so very much more.
P.S.—After I get over jet lag, I should be back to a more usual pace here. Thanks for being patient while I dealt with this.
The only change I see in 27 years is your hair color! I know how you feel about your special place - I have several of them, too. Fortunately, one of them is 15 minutes away. Those places of power are the hardest to give up. I am becoming more and more content to just stay in my backyard and enjoy the new bugs and birds that visit as I add native prairie plants, or some favorite ornamentals to the landscape. I've been to the Garden of the Gods and Pikes Peak with an old friend. The wildfires around Colorado Springs were pretty bad before my visit. I've downsized several times and it's painful, yet freeing. Some things I regret tossing. Most things I've never thought about since. Though we leave behind the places of healing, we take what they've given with us, to create our own Gardens of the Gods. It's better to have loved and lost, than to have never loved at all, as the adage goes. Memories in quiet moments bring these places back to us.
Thanks for sharing, Bonnie. I've been doing the same decluttering, downsizing, but without help and without much success, AND I've been to the top of Pike's Peak, so I could totally feel what you are going through. Best wishes for return home and the rest of life.