October by Way of Colorado

The cold cast of Autumn’s tendency toward more Wintery aspirations has set across the foothills of Loveland, Colorado. Two nights ago we rallied ’round a newborn fire, dusk, as the wind began to pick up and lick the flames easily up our log cabin blaze. Watching those goldeny brown parachutes fill the sky, whisked away by the smoke and send me on my way attitude of an evening gust, I felt transported to some other childhood. The smell of Autumn always takes me back to 15 years old and I imagine it always will, but this new setting, our first real time spent living in the sunsetting shadow of the Rocky Mountains, kept me from being sucked back into my own memory’s state of mind.

Old Man Winter was howling his best attempt at blowing us over now, and the falling sky had was exchanging leaves for small bits of snow, getting caught in everyone’s hair like crowns slowly forming on us all. This was the first good, real snowfall, where you can enjoy it, watch the stuff flake into piles and a thin blanket, the air goes dull silent as the sounds of any world around you goes quiet and the moonlight beams off the ground, the Earth becoming like a glowy moon herself. We survived through the fire as long as we could but when our boots froze through, a retreat to the inner belly of a voluptuous tin mother was well welcomed. Night would fall, the heater humming us through dreams of whats, wheres and whenevers that life might entice us with.

In the morning we would celebrate Tristan’s 8th birthday. An axe and sword, handmade of some hard and light wood, arrived in the mail. A rock tumbler, a card game, banana bread cake with chocolate icing and all done up like Champ would ensue.

I spend most mornings working on the bus or trying to bring some dollars in to continue supporting the somewhat endless work this old girl needs. In the afternoons we drive into town to pick up supplies — propane, water, firewood, an occasional six pack — and by the time the sun is resting on the tip of the Front Range we’re ablaze with the night again. There’s plenty of time to think about what the purpose of all of this movement is, to allow yourself to be stunned by the idea that you’re here, of all places, right here. We go bowling because it seems like something to do. Bowling on a Friday night in Loveland, Colorado. Why not? What else is there to do? We get lost in corn mazes and buy pumpkins we may never carve but we picked them ourselves and that seems like all the reason you need to have a set of the big orange sitting outside of your window.

We’ve another week here at least, Halloween is coming up fast, the leaves are changing now but soon they’ll be nothing but changed. I’d love to stay another month but living in an ice cube neither seems fair to our tank of a home nor is the idea of murder by cabin fever one I’d recommend to myself and son. It would be so easy to just pick up and have nothing to decide between but the border or the coast. Times will do their best to tell.