Discovering Beauty in Everyday Life

Old red barn in the late fall sun, Southern Colorado.

Winter Aspen Tangled in a Blue Southern Colorado Sky

Hello? Hello?? I may be cut off at any moment! Here's what has happened! I was minding my own business on an off-brand bus going from Denver to Moffat Colorado, when we stopped in Fairplay (read South Park) for a rest stop. I got up, left the bus, purchased a coffee, and boarded again. Something seemed a little off, yes, but still it was familiar enough. Imagine my shock, when over to my left I spied a phantom shadow of another bus! I glanced toward the front of my bus, and there sat my sixth grade gym teacher with a famous particle physicist. Help! I yelled. Clearly unheard, I looked around in desperate dismay. At last, up in the mid-center of my field of view, was a dim and fading Emergency Exit sign. I roused myself and lurched my way toward the dimming red sign. As I careened forward I spotted a second bus on a right bend in the road. I leaped through the fading door. There I was pulling out of the Fairplay parking lot as though no time had passed! Yet as we wen

Remember those nights so black the stars come right down to the horizon,  Nights drugged with the smell of evergreen,  A grey wolf howling in the distance. Yes, there’s a campfire and a #10 tin can with a hole cut out for ventilation,  and a pile of new twigs snapped from under the low pine boughs where the rain doesn’t soak though to the core. Green sticks whittled from the mountain willows, Embers toasting marshmallows. Not too close, now. Watch it! Don’t touch it. Blow it out! Charcoal bubbling and broken by molten inside cream.  We wake up in a blue-white sunrise full of birds and dew and mountain dandelion, drinking cold water from the rocky  creek, smelling the fresh stream splashing and breaking in the early sun.  

Late autumn:  leaving the Colorado San Louis Valley and heading towards Denver

Shy and demure, our pilot has again successfully landed the 1900 Beechcraft Plane at Denver International Airport.  I especially love the red step stool. 

He told me he'd be here by now!  I hope he isn't caught in that pressure inversion over the interstate.

It's noon in Crestone.   Mule Deer, protected by muted colors, pauses to observe an admirer, .

There’s a dry and powdery snow here, The trees on the mountains are sifted with it. Wintry sun reflects on the pale chamisa, Chamisa, sticky when a person gets too close. I packed a suitcase full of past promises I thought I couldn't do without, But I lost it through an inattentive baggage handler. What happened to those worn and threaded schemes? Where are the lamps that lit those epic trails, Casting away a conquest here a pipe-dream there? What happened to ‘I cannot live without you’? Change came stumbling down the road, trampling and singing.

I’ll take a dollars worth of regular, please Yes ma’am. Windshield? Thanks. Where you going on a dollars worth? I guess I’ll go as far as it’ll take me. Want to fill up the can in the trunk? Ok. Why not. No harm. You know that old cottonwood over by Carson’s pace? Caught a trout up there the other day near the North Fork Junction. You take care now. Might as well.

I grew up in a house in Colorado.  We had a mud puddle, a yard and a patch of iris that came up every year, regardless.  Things are not that different here in Central Park, so I discover.

I promise this is my last comment about Crestone and Southern Colorado for awhile! But I have to point out that Crestone is 40 miles from Alamosa, which is very small. Here is the Alamosa Airport Tarmac and Runway, as seen from the departure lounge. We waited and waited. It was cold and snowy. The plane finally arrived. I dawdled. Perhaps a small fear? Perhaps simply waiting my turn? Here are the passengers ahead of me boarding. Mind you, this plane is the one that flies over the craggy, rocky, stony, snowcapped 14,000 foot peaks. Yes, this  is the entire plane.  And that's the runway, too.

Crestone Colorado lies up against the Sangre De Cristo Mountains on the Eastern side of the San Luis Valley. The quiet capatures reality. I’m a Westerner by birth and a City dweller by happenstance. In a quiet place, nature listens. Deer Listening at a Window Junco Listening for a seed

 One   ....  Two... Three!

What is a wide, closed space?  Do people use commas anymore?  Grammar! I'm a "take it for granted" sort of person.   Just this afternoon I took for granted that I might look out the window of my Brother's home in Crestone and watch the sun go down.  It was going down very well, and so I took a picture while I still had enought light.   Nothing that anti-granted happened, and here's what I saw: but here's what my camera saw:

There's no way to create your particular tree in a photo.  A christmas tree is simply too personal.  Here's one in my friends home, as yet untrimmed,  filling the room with the fragrances of time.