Ever get sick of your hometown?
In other years at this time Beret and I have been off to Bolivia, or at least the Black Hills, taking advantage of our kids’ teen absences to trek to sacred places such as we visited in our “BC” era. This year our adventures have taken us no farther than didgeridoo concerts in the MRI tube (me for seizure, Beret for spine) — and I’ve never really been into electronica. We did get away for the 4th of July, which was lovely but too damn short. As Beret and I rolled back into town from the Colorado high country that Sunday morning, the air on the Front Range lay flat with ozone. Our newspaper awaited with its daily dose of what Thomas Piketty calls the “dialogue of the deaf,” where “each camp justifies its own intellectual laziness by pointing to the laziness of the other,” amplified by the trombones and bunting of Independence Day. Because really, what better authority can one cite for the virtue of selfishness than Thomas Jefferson? And what better way to abate the emissions of your SUV than to install a good clean bumper sticker?
I decided the day was fracked, and there was no point even in taking my customary Sunday hike. I’ve walked or jogged the same trail system west of our house, twice a week, for 17 years, and I know every rock and root of it. But our dog Kaisha kept giving me “How about NOW?” looks, every ten seconds or so. Eventually I caved.
Still pissed off, I let her drag me up the steep path up the mesa to our south, reaching a promontory we call the Alien Landing Site. From there the Flatirons thrust up to the west and the rim of Boulder Valley curves its panorama to the east. Moisture from last fall’s flooding is still cycling from land to sky and back again, with periodic intense rains keeping this summer cool and humid by Colorado standards. And the foliage has just exploded. Prairie grasses are four feet high. Sweetpea and sunflower stalks stagger under the weight of their blossoms. Pollen drifts on the air and smears on the sandstone. The transitional space between suburb and mountain lays out soft, velveteen, and pungent, calling lovers of all species to fever in its private folds.
Kaisha and I crested the trail, and my heart opened with the grief one feels after the passing of a fight with a spouse. I realized, or remembered, that you don’t need the Inca Trail to find the sacred. Sometimes you just have to follow your dog.