Driving from Boulder to Howard in an electric I was learning on the fly, finding, naturally, a mile does not equal a mile. There's a simple lesson there, learned in the exchange between 15-passenger van to an electric, on a route previously unmet, in a rush to land, but in a game to make the oscillating green ball perfectly center the digital hole of efficiency - the lesson that a mile does not equate a mile nor a year equate a year, and how all of this is made up, from the car I reserved to the car I got, from the Memorial to the absence. G.A.I. played as I wove the Arkansas. Made me sad. Head and the Heart, sadder still.
I'm observing, childlike, the mushroom cloud like an explosion at the end of the highway, the shapes of the mountain tops, the myriad prisons, the way people drive both casually, daintily, and then suddenly, severely. And it's like, Look [self], I'm an adult, I have free will, I haven't read the news in hours, look at Sangre de Cristo - life is ok. I tell myself, and feel, though she keeps popping up, and an immediate welling. A sad panic.
I've got 20 miles left on the electric when I land at the Yanko's farm. This is both fortunate & incredible, because it's almost 20 miles to the next charge. I feel powerful. Tomorrow I'll be anxious, when the screen goes red and reads, "Deaccelerating," and reduces speed in conservation on the bends to Salida where there will be few-to-hardly shoulders.
It’s my first time here. I'm pleased to have an "and" in the trip. It won't be the time I came back to say Goodbye, only. It'll be Memorial and Arrival. Memorial and Witness. And, hopefully not Memorial and Distraction. Though ok for a finite, I know full well my distractions come semi-permanent. She comes out to greet me and she feels like I've come home. It could be Colorado. It could be Devon. It could be that there's stead to land at that feels safe when the person I loved most interestingly, and maybe most of all is gone.
I'm on the Yanko schedule now. A kind-militant, for matter-of-fact-and-need over rigid. Its boundaries comfort the aimlessness of me. I think, for the same reasons I loved the structure of haiku or iambic pentameter. I'm a before-work runner there, before she works bakery & I work bank. We meet between our doors in the dark. She's charged an extra waist-light for me. The gesture feels like a blanket. The first morning I feel heavy quadded at any slight deviation from flat, but each run thereafter feels normal; she complimented me in a way I could hear, regarding. We pass horses left to roam on BLM; she calls for them, has followed their winters, their pregnancies, points out the severe swayback of the broodmare. There's a dapple gray that stands like an apparition or a symbol. Each morning, we turn left or right and run 10-13 miles; see gravestones, campsites, horses, tarantula, river. It doesn't get boring. Feels like temporary professional, training camp, or kin.
After, I follow her to Salida to work from The Silver Whisker. I'd been intimately aware of its cultivation. It's a fortunate thing to witness what it takes to start a business. Incredible that relationships stay intact, training ensues, start lines are made & races finished. Since this isn't their first time it might not be obvious, the amount of juggling & energy depletion, how it takes from every aspect of living. They're really really good at it, and when someone is, it's easy to dismiss what it took and takes. A reminder I think we all need all the time, that we have absolutely no clue what someone's life is like. I appreciated seeing this kind of grit. The way youth work. The way customers engage & act. It was easy for me to romanticize because the fucking bakery bakes good shit, and the air is thin, and the training is go left or right or climb this, it all felt streamlined. But I know what it took and takes. And also, I probably do not.
I'd get out for a short run at lunch & if I was lucky she'd come with and we'd have cold colas as we cooled in the shade of the bakery after.
We'd caravan back to the stead & Nathan would be prepping dinner - this long romantic drawl of prep & soak & bake & fry. Everything thoughtful, piquant. Dev would pull out a beautiful book of recipes (...you know those people who have beautiful books? Not the ones curated for coffee table with nice photographs and it's about feng shui & styling & color theory - fuck those books - rather, the kind purchased from the chef whose meal you ate and couldn't forget - real lived, earned & dined so you can point to the recipe you ate, the cocktail you tried - books in ode to the living, that are dirty from fingerprints following - those kinds of beautiful books...here is where you might think: it's a fucking cookbook Courtney...); so, she'd pull a beautiful book out, a cocktail one, choose a favorite, generally tiki in style, select chilled vessels from the freezer, set cutting board, ingredients, and proceed to concoct cocktails without reference to book. Performative in that the book wasn't needed. A cat might braid or watch. I might watch the cat watch the concoct. It was, as you can tell, just an art performance for me, and that I got to drink it after, I mean, cum on. And then there was Nathan making dinner. Inspired by each meal, the tomahawks, the kale cake, I'd photograph in angles, and, feeling like a kid at the parents table, scolded in underhand, in a perhaps jest, for the phone at the table. And this was nightly. And I'd take those photos all over again.
So, of course we ran out of Orgeat.
One black, cold morning she took me to Marshall Pass. I was capable enough to run at 10,842 ft elev. as a born, raised & continued sea leveler. I think this was an offering; one only made possible by Devon. What's cool is she started us in the dark and the sky lightened and then a burst of yellow so aggressive it must have inspired the color's name - YELLing in color that makes you O (& silently [W]oo), and groves of aspen with knots like eyes, and to run amidst that, with presence of mind, with privacy, with dark to light, with capability, my my - a gift.
One evening, after work, we had drinks at Liberty Hall pre-Shavano. The service, the craft - delightful. Had a Hustle & Bustle (Mezcal, Aperol, grapefruit, lime, turmeric, orange). To dinner, where she wined & dined me, the setting at Shavano surreal: the server a talented runner who'd won the Leadville Marathon, the couple sat beside us regulars of the Silver Whisker, Silver Whisker baguette on the menu, and the owner gliding about with Will Goodge at his side. Perhaps it was the Mezcal from Liberty, but it felt like a small big world and everyone was attractive. I deferred to Dev as she has a refined tongue and I appreciate everything save for babaganoush or weak coffee. We had the grilled ribeye with a fat blanket of chimichurri, roasted beets with kale, pistachio, orange, feta & horseradish, pan fried potatoes with rosemary, garlic, creme fraiche & scallions and a bottle of red I've sadly forgotten, but which is definitely between the years of 2020-2024 & was chosen for its robustness.
Such were the cycle of the days. In observance. Memorial and Witness. In memory. Memorial and Arrival. Dev keeps talking about Glenmorangie. Memorial and Distraction. I could have stayed in that pocket of safety & presence & inspiration for longer.
Colorado is a kind of Home for me, curated in youth, hurt, haunt, escape, drunk bike rides & the legs that grew from each. It's the feeling I look for elsewhere. When I'm there, I can be more present and can also float above myself in observation, and see easily, abundantly, that I am more me. I'm happy that it exists at all. There was a person it hinged on, that helped build it. A person full of collections & traditions, that added routine & depth to my life. A person that forced me to talk. She's gone, and everything changes & I'm afraid, but then there's the Yankos, and I feel hopeful, that a mile does not equate a mile and a loss does not mean lost.
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