Home is Where Your Heart Sings

   I never thought that moving to the City would make me feel like I have come home. There are a lot of similarities to Grand Junction, Colorado and Albany, New York. The area here sets in a Basin between the mountains. This area is much smaller than Albany but it reminds me of it. Albany has the Heldeberg Mountains and the Adirondacks. Junction has the Grand Mesa, Colorado National Monument, and the Book Cliffs.

 The Book Cliffs are a series of desert mountains and cliffs in Western Colorado and Eastern Utah. They are Cretaceous Sandstone and they cap many of the South-facing buttes and appear similar to a shelf of books. Perhaps the most famous is Mount Garfield at the edge of Palisade, in the Grand Valley known for it peach orchards, and the City of Grand Junction. The cliffs range for nearly two hundred miles, and begin where the Colorado River descends South through Debeque canyon into the Grand Valley to Price Utah. On a very clear day off on the horizon to the south you can see the snowcaps of the San Juans and the Telluride ski area.

   The Grand Mesa is a large mesa in Western Colorado. Having an area of about 500 square miles, it stretches for about 40 miles. It is the largest flat-topped mountain in the entire world. The Mesa ranges about 6000 ft. above the surrounding river valleys, including the Grand Valley to the west at about 11,000 feet, and reaching a maximum elevation of 11,333 feet at Crater Lake. It is a home to  Wild Colorado Mustangs.

     We are currently under contract for a home almost in the shadow of Mount Garfield. It has been so many years since I have lived in a City. At first I was very tentative to the idea and even skeptical, for the majority of my life I have been extremely anti-society. A loner, not a joiner. Don't get me wrong I still prefer the wilderness to gatherings of people. However we are attempting to integrate into life a bit more. The only thing that being a loner gets you is solitude and loneliness. It has it's place, the wilderness in Colorado is clean, crisp, concise an clear. Cities are noisy, congested, polluted, and often dirty. The new us is finding river walks, hiking trails, and adventure almost in the city limits.

   A sleepy University town in it's awakening stages. The similarities to Eugene, Oregon are striking. Only this town is in it's early stages of growth, and soon will blossom into the Big College town it is destined to become. It has the normal growing pains. The need for an extensive trail system looping the town, with designated bike paths. They will have to figure out how to deal with the students, traffic and bikes all together in the downtown core. I hope they work it out. The area has promise and can grow into an exciting place.

   Did I ever think that it would awaken feelings of my hometown? The answer is a resounding No! Don't know how these feelings crept up on me. I know when I was young I spent time around colleges, taking creative writing classes and wearing big thick sweaters in the fall. It made me feel more writerish. Funny how we all have our way of envisioning our success. It is good to be older than younger. House hunting has recently put us in some situations where we have had to drop in on college students and their living arrangements. It reminds me of ski towns and crash pads of ski enthusiasts (a reverent term for ski bums.) While being exciting and fun, living day to day to chase sunsets and snowflakes, doesn't lend to retirement or security in life very well. I guess you trade off everything in life. These days I wear a uniform and work at a large Plumbing and Heating business to afford my dream retirement home. Gone are the days of my many backpacks and sleeping bags in search of adventure. My adventure comes from my pages and seeing where they will take me. I hope that this adventure is a promising as those of my youth. I guess you will just have to stick around and see.

   I'm excited for the new beginning and to think that this respite in life comes out of the concern for our Goldie, Golden, Gracie. Since moving here she has settled in well and has her routine of chasing the local cats who parade through our yard. We have promised to get her a kittie, her very own tiger cat to match her color, when we move into our new home. Since real estate deals fall apart at a whim, I am hoping this one goes through. I  have just the spot for my motor home that will take us to the ocean. I will have a balcony to have morning tea on and watch the sun light up Mount Garfield and to scheme about writing adventures. A much mellower and mild rebel of sorts. I have yet to explore the writing scene in Grand Junction, a bit too busy getting established. Never enough time to do the things you really love.

My Girl Gracie!

 
 

 A Song that Evokes Home For Me.
"Coming Up Close," 'Til Tuesday'

False Summits

A Must Read!

Summits And Secrets-Kurt Diemberger

Om Mani Padme Hum - Om Mani Padme Hum - engraved on a stone tablet - Om Mani Padme Hum.
 Over and over again.
 'Oh, thou Jewel in the Lotus!'
 The prayer of those who worship Buddha. Just a prayer.

 This stone tablet here comes from Nepal; from the foot of Dhaulagiri - from one of the stone monuments one continually meets by the wayside, fashioned out of the mountain's slate.
 'Oh, thou Jewel in the Lotus!'
 Somebody who wanted to use that form of prayer engraved the letters of those words and laid the tablet there, next to all the others bearing the same inscription.

 It is supposed to be unlucky to remove one of those prayer-tablets; no native of Nepal would ever even think of doing such a thing. One of the climbers on the 1959 expedition had brought this one home with him.
 Later he began to have misgivings. One day he brought it to me, which was a sensible solution.

Om Mani Padme Hum - just a prayer.
Sometimes it seems to come right out of the stone.

Kurt Diemberger


A Prayer Song
 "Om Mani Padme Hum," Deva Premal

False Summits in life as in climbing are extremely frustrating you must push past them to obtain the goal. Summiting is the hardest thing to accomplish I can't tell you the number of times I have had to turn back just short of the summit. Don't be discouraged try again! I wouldn't be writing this blog if I didn't get back up dust off the cob webs and go at it again.

In going where you have to go, and doing what you have to do, and seeing what you have to see, you dull and blunt the instrument you write with. But I would rather have it bent and dulled and know I had to put it on the grindstone again and hammer it into shape and put a whetstone to it, and know that I had something to write about, than to have it bright and shining and nothing to say, or smooth and well oiled in the closet, but unused.

ERNEST HEMINGWAY, preface, The First Forty-Nine Stories

Read more at http://www.notable-quotes.com/h/hemingway_ernest.html#KQkt3JwAw3XB5Mkt.99

My friend Bobaloo and I always liked to ski Solitude Ski Area in Big Cottonwood Canyon in Utah. He related a story about a particular slope he liked to ski that was out of bounds. If he had gotten caught skiing it he would have been reprimanded for the action. After a very heavy snow storm, he slipped on to the slope and laid down a set of tracks. On his next run up he picked up his radio and said, "Blue Leader this is Bobaloo, there is a suspicious set of tracks to the right of the lift out of bounds." The Blue Leader responded, "That's a closed area, I want you to go over and search the area thoroughly Bobaloo." He did, he skied it half the morning. We laughed often about the incident.

"Believe," Cher

A Walk In The Park

My flights of Fantasy are impossible to control once you let them flow. I started making a mental list of my prerequisites today while I was on Red Mountain in Aspen looking down on Aspen Mountain. I thought of my early years listening to my grandfather talking about Whiteface Mountain in New York State. I started skiing Gore and Whiteface in high school and quickly graduated to Vermont Mountains. Places like Killington, Stowe, Mad River, and Glen Ellen. In the early days it wasn't enough to just ski them. It was a challenge to get a free day pass or figure out a way to ski for free some how. Some of our early trickery was to Ski Glen Ellen early where they would let you take a free run up top to test the conditions. If you wore heavy ski clothes you could take off your coat and tell the lift op that you were too hot and your ticket was on your coat below. They would buy it for a about a half day. Then you could leave and drive to Mad River and buy two $2.50 ride tickets and ski the bumps there. The moguls used to get as big as Volkswagens parked sideways. Voila, a complete day of skiing for chump change. It didn't take much undergraduate work to realize that skiing in the East was a cruel hoax. Time to graduate.
The West, discovered on a ski trip in Fast Eddy's (The Bucklemeister's) Micro bus with the bursting Orange Suns in the window. The trip brought us through Colorado, Utah and Wyoming. It also brought us home with a Van load of Coors Beer. I was hopelessly hooked on deep powder and steep ski runs. So much so that I moved West to pursue my dreams. Life is funny though because I originally was on my way to Big Sky Montana. A ski bum's true ski dream. Except that as I was leaving a gas station wash room in Dillon Colorado I happened upon a friend named Angela. She informed me she lived with Mary and Melissa and they had jobs at Arapahoe Basin and a condominium. It was the late 70's and times were much more free then. A quick overnight visit and I had a season's ski pass and a home with the girls. I had hit the ski lottery. During that season I had the opportunity to get to Big Cottonwood Canyon in Utah. The home of Solitude and Brighton. I would revisit there many times for the grandeur that they were. A ski patrolman friend who had fallen in love with Utah was kind enough to take me under his wing and show me all the powder stashes he knew. Although that Little Cottonwood Canyon is much steeper and grander, Big Cottonwood Canyon had unknown places.
One of these was Honeycomb Canyon. The Powder Stash of all Stashes, I lost my mind (or what little I had left any way.) I was hooked I visited and revisited there as often as I could. Like all great places and most cities the rest of the world discovered it and (my suburbia) stash grew into a popular place.
There are many places that you ski and while you are skiing you realize that you are just a visitor. You can find your way back but it is always just for the moment and then the moment is gone. You change or deep inside it changes you. You touched it, caressed it, put down tracks on it and the wind and snow will fill then in and you were never there. Was it just a dream? A beautiful romantic love affair that only you experienced. How do you share it? Do you speak of it respectfully among friends they way you would of a great lover? Do you go through life never talking about it again? Now that I am older I still have no answers only the fond memory of the freedom and liberty to pursue my dreams.
Honeycomb Canyon, Big Cottonwood Canyon, Utah

It is funny in life that certain songs and lyrics become Anthems to you and when you are young and making life decisions the words almost speak to you. I remember a room mate of mine telling me that if a Played Bob Dylan late at night when I came home after a night out drinking that he would break all of my Dylan Albums. Listening to this song, I was a young college student again struggling with trying to stay in College and get my degree or be free and ski. I stayed and got my education buy flew to the hills as soon as I was able.
"What About Me," Quicksilver Messenger Service