After the Party

Well, it's been quite a summer for our little piece of Heaven, eh? Fire. Drought. Blazing heat. A murder or two. These kept Durango and southwestern Colorado in the spotlight here and there. But, of course, there were other things that drew the heavy eye of the media upon the region. And a few of the bigger of those this year had to do with cycling.

Changing of the guard

We push off -- four families disbursed across five boats and a few duckies -- and out onto the low-water mid-summer San Juan River.

And already it's day four.

Remembering fire

The Lightner Creek Fire from downtown Durango on June 27
(photo by Matt Kenna)

It's only early July, but already this is a fire year to remember.

We started this summer remembering ten years ago, when the Missionary Ridge and Valley fires ripped a path from the Animas Valley to Vallecito and beyond. I remember standing on the campus of the Fort, watching the fire advancing under a great volcanic plume, flames cresting the southern flank of Missionary Ridge and presenting the beast a clear line to town, while helicopters and slurry bombers gave it all they had. I remember the ash started to fall on us then. All the scene needed was The Doors singing "The End."

The Mountain View

The view from here is sweet. No doubt about it.

From my yard, I can watch the sun rise behind a long earthy arm, hairy with pinion and juniper and scrub oak. And it sets -- a view best taken in from our front porch -- behind a sweeping range of bluffs, bristling with ponderosa, bulging behind the far side of town. Every day these views flirt with me, distracting me, drawing my gaze, demanding my attention. Every night I feel it, out there, everywhere, unseen even as its presence permeates my home, my living room, my bedroom, my awareness.

Grandview Ridge

It's been on my local bucket list for a long time. Finally got up the highest point -- that big overhanging wave of white stone -- for a look around.

Cast away

Before the shipwreck

It wasn't how I'd intended to launch the river season. But somehow it was the perfect way to go into it: fully immersed.

Radio Free Durango

DJ G has no idea who I am. But he changed my life.

That's what can happen to you if, say, like I was, you were up in the wee hours of a late night, drinking your x-teenth cup of coffee, scribbling bleary wisdom upon each page in a interminable stack of term papers, while listening to KDUR through a pair of those enormous deejay-style headphones that blot out all of existence outside the sound force-fed into your head. And on that night, the sound being force-fed into my head was DJ G's "Beats & Rhymes, Etc." show.

Spring Training

It takes skill, this following baseball. I mean following a single game, in progress. It takes practice. It takes training. So while February at long-blessedly-last fades into the rebirth and reawakening that we call March, my favorite teams are at last in spring training -- The Red Sox in Fort Myers, Fla., the Rockies in Scottsdale, and Cubs in Mesa, Arizona. And that means that while they're in spring training, so am I.

Career man

Insight can come in strange places. Like, for example, during a make-believe game show about your life being played by a dozen and a half or so friends on your birthday, while you watch from a lawn-chair-of-honor on the sideline so you can occasionally arbitrate disputed answers.

Well, that was when this particular insight came to me, anyway.

New Millennium resolution

I know it's mid-January, but I'm still wondering what to resolve for this new year. At my age, I've made all the easy changes to my habits, and tried most of the hard ones. The bad practices I have now, I've come to accept, will color the palette of my personality for the duration.

But, of course, this year it may not matter what, or if, I resolve. As I'm sure you've heard, a pile of prophesiers foreshadow something special about 2012 -- particularly the upcoming winter solstice -- that may forever alter the nature of our tenancy here on Earth. A sort of Y2.012K.

Counting blessings

I am truly blessed this holiday season: I’ll be passing it in a cabin in the woods.