You Really Can't Go Home Again
I mean, you can, but it gets weird...
I just got back from spending a week in Colorado, land of blue skies, and Colorado Rocky Mountain High, which these days is literal. I don’t partake, but there were times it didn’t feel like an option-inevitably, somewhere between point A and point B, it’s fragrance would waft across our path. It didn’t matter where we were-public parks, mountainsides, outside the grocery store, next to a fire station-it was ubiquitous. I wonder if there is such a thing as state smell? The blue skies part is still literal, but mostly once you leave Denver.
I am a Colorado girl through and through. It will always be home even though I haven’t lived there for over thirty years. Each time I go back it gets a little harder. It wasn’t so bad when we landed this time because we arrived in the middle of the night and beelined for our Holiday Inn. It was too dark, and I was too tired to be stunned by my surroundings. In the morning I was still too sleep fogged to think much, and anxious to get to the mountains, and to a Starbucks (‘cause some things shouldn’t be called coffee-I’m looking at you hotel coffee) to notice much beyond the incredible traffic pulsing across the city.
I don’t know if it was the drop in cortisol and adrenaline after battling seven lanes of semi trucks and Trump stickers, or the fact that once the road cleared, the sky cleared, and my brain woke up, I realized I was in Colorado. I was home. You know how you read in some novels that “tears came unbidden”? I guess that’s a thing because without warning, and completely full of caffeine, I was doing my best to not let on just how much I was crying. Then, I just let it happen.
Once I got that out of my system, we were on our way to Longmont, first stop to grab a bite and we hit the jackpot. Found a little place called Jefe’s. We shared the best home made chips and salsa (a forty year old family recipe) and I had the absolute best Ahi taco. The Paloma was pretty darn good too. Icing on the Longmont cake was finding a signed copy of Wade In The Water, by Tracy K. Smith, in a great little used book shop. From there we made it into Loveland and wandered the Benson Sculpture Garden. If you are ever in that neck of the woods, this is a must see. You can walk this park for hours and not see the same piece twice, plus, it doesn’t cost a dime. That’s the way to keep art accessible.
We stayed over in Loveland for an early morning meeting in Ft. Collins the next day. Once that was in the books we hightailed it to Steamboat Springs for the remainder of our stay. Most folks hit ski country when there is actually snow but I prefer off season visits to avoid crowds, chaos, and falling on my butt. Plus, Colorado in autumn is glorious. We spent the next few days going slow. I turned off my phone, didn’t check social media, and only glanced at texts to make sure my family wasn’t trying to hunt us down. They weren’t.
It takes me awhile to unclench the old stress muscles, but having the best Old Fashioned of my life at Sauvage got me over the hump and on to enjoying all there was to offer. Don’t believe me? Here’s proof…
I only wish I could have eaten there because the food coming out of the kitchen looked amazing. Curse you allergies. That said, watching the bartender work was akin to watching a master artist at work. Truthfully, there wasn’t a bad place to eat in Steamboat, but another standout was Creekside. We stopped in for a drink and liked it so much we went back for brunch the next day.
Before this turns into a travelogue I’ll cut to the chase. Things change. Once we hit the mountains Colorado looked like Colorado to me. Seeing for miles gives me a chance to breathe again. But seeing for miles looks different, even in Colorado-there wasn’t a place where there weren’t power lines, or poles, or something man made poking out of the ground. Drives where I remembered speculating how people lived and stayed warm without electricity were now laced with power lines and other evidences of progress’ encroachment. The only saving grace was that we didn’t have a cell provider that covered that particular area so cell service wasn’t an option. That doesn’t excuse them from the sloppy service back home though…
One of my favorite Miranda Lambert songs is The House That Built Me. It twists my heart every time. Maybe that twist has more longing in it than just homesickness, but that’s a different post. Anyway, we moved a lot when I was growing up so it isn’t a house that brings me home, but a place. Even places change, and like the song says, we move on, and do the best we can…
I didn’t do much writing while we were there. Words would drift in and out, but nothing stuck or felt necessary. Not until we hit Denver the night before we were leaving. We found our hotel, returned our rental car, rubbed our low backs and said good-bye to bad suspension, and hopped on the A Line to ride into downtown for one last dinner in CO. This one ride into town twisted my heart like that Miranda Lambert song, but it was profound sadness and not homesickness that stunned me into tearless silence. Ultimately, that's what made the words come.
And now a poem
As always, I’m sharing something new, something a little rough around the edges. This piece is tentatively called "Oh, Give Me a Home”…
Riding the A Line, Pipe organs, and playgrounds, Stolen factories, Tagged and bagged, There is nothing Native About the names they Call themselves, Race street, Airplanes, Black Lives Matter fence, High street, And Chango’s garage, Old steel, old bricks, And nowhere to live but an old tent, By the highway, Click it or ticket And downtown, baby, A-1, and Union Station, Everything's been done before, You weren't the first, Central Park, weed on the corner, Trash on the edges, Excavation, and buildings Bigger than Buttes, Shrines to who we think we are, And not who we've become, Debutante wannabe’s Singing in a public bathroom Dying to be discovered, In downtown Denver, And so-called security Wearing a bowler hat as An old man rocks himself to sleep, On a bench, Wearing a sequined fedora, Downhill scooters, Shipping container art, Pay here, park here, pour more Cement, there aren't enough Murals to disguise, Smog obscuring the mountains, Shade your cars, shade your eyes, Hydrate, park and ride, Check your phone, shake your head, Drug deals just outside, The Catholic charities, Cranes and clouds, And cardboard beds, Solar panel field, it's another stop, Don't pick up hitchhikers By the correctional facility, Don't block the doors, Better catch the sunset Before all the lights come on, There are no more stars here, Where Cain slay Abel, And home on the range is nothing more than Old school country music, TV cowboys, and football stars, There are No buffalo here, only houses And houses And houses, and houses, And houses, and houses, and houses And houses, and houses, and houses, and houses, And houses, and houses, and houses, and houses, and houses, And houses, and houses, and houses, and houses, and houses, and houses, And houses, and houses, and houses, and houses, and houses, and houses, And houses, and houses, and houses, and houses, and houses, and houses, And houses, and houses, and houses, and houses, and houses, and houses, And houses, and houses, and houses, and 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So, the formatting on this is all wrong but you get the idea, even in this layout. I still get a hollowed out gut feeling when I think of that train ride…if you think I overdid it on the ‘houses’, you need to take a trip to the burbs of DenvergraduallymergingwithColoradoSprings.
That’s all for now from this Colorado girl-I still love it, warts and all.
Eiríni se séna,
Susan
P. S. The hot springs in Steamboat are magnificent…
Susan, your sentiments you shared with your poetry describing home after home after home after home, scratch that; make it houses after houses after houses, definitely hit home. Pun intended. Every time I return to Southern California I remember the way it used to be 60 years ago, even 35 years ago, when you could see from the highway to the beach and there was only seagrass and ice plants in between. Now everything from one county to another place is row after row after row of tile covered homes. It is a bit of a gut wrenching feeling. Thank you for the travel logue and the perspective through your eyes.
😭🥃