Migration

Mal and I have spent the past two days together. Simply in the car. The first driving to Canyon City to run errands, today on a whim because no one, not a single person was here at Sweet. We took a bypass back route from Crested Butte, Gunnison 230 or something of the like, through the mountains, cascading pines and aspen. We stopped the car at one point, just past a turnoff slightly down the mountain with campfire rings to our left. She turned off the car. The echo of silence brought a buzzing to my ears. I hung my head out the window, looked up to try and spot the swarms of bugs overhead that she pointed out. The toothpicks of white aspen trunks, a wilderness of fantasy beauty like I haven’t seen in a long time. She called the silence absolute. It was true.

We saw “The Ruggeds”. An amazing spit of mountain in the distance. Close to the formations in Utah that I’ve seen in the past. Fingers pointed to the sky. Something majestic, something eerie. We named things. She named things – the wildflowers mostly. So many yellows and reds and purples on steep slopes pointing up towards blues better than most ocean waters. It was magic. My heart again, wishes to swell and explode with what I saw today.

I sit outside, after a day you wish would only close with perfection that would match. There is a moment when I am truly happy.

We arrived at Crested Butte – a small mountain town that exclaimates just over a hill on HW 50. Packed full of bustle and painted color on wood siding. Like that eclectic kitchen that trendy 20 somethings dream of. There’s a trifold of buildings, perfectly angled along the perspective of the highway, a school, middle school no doubt, with playing fields. Three young men form a square, one tosses a Frisbee to an older man with white hair who misses, bends down like an old man to retrieve it. Marcia says be careful who you call old around here. It’s a safety cliché I’ve heard a few times. She’s young. Amazingly, amazingly young.

We sit across from each other at dinner. A Chinese place with empty cafeteria fridge carts, usually seen in dorms to house salad bars. The waitress is sitting behind the sushi bar with salmon still in its warehouse package, watching TV in a language native to her own. We say we’re sitting outside, on my request – something I made a pact to do today. Have an opinion, make direction. After she brings the settings outside, we decide its too windy and carry everything back inside to a nook just off the entrance.I say I'm too fickle about atmosphere. Marcia then tells her to turn down the TV. She hopes without too much demand. She fears they might spit in her food. We haven’t ordered yet.

She wears her sunglasses at the table. I’m sitting on the side where all the light is pouring in through the pane lacking the colored glass on the top half to block the intensive glare. She asks later if its bothering me – her sunglasses. I say no. And its not. I just took notice is all.

I say I might have to go in everywhere to avoid dancing outside the stores. There’s a girl in the shop, short, brown belt on blue pants, t-shirt tucked in. She’s talking to the shop owner, so it appears. There’s a dialogue between her and the girl working behind the counter, the one that tells another woman browsing that she likes her shirt, it’s very “faded” in color. It is. I smile at the fact that this is why people live in Crested Butte.
Where in the east are you from? Says the girl with the belt.
Virginia.
They go on, narrowing down large geographic to small, based on navigational points. They come to some agreement, a common settle without real understanding. The girl with the belt explains that she came here for a class and never left. A wilderness EMT class. Shop owner selling her photos on the wall asks, “What do you do with that?”
I ask Marcia if she’s seen the Trilobite fossils. I know she’s listening.

The Thai place I talked to Kate about is indeed not closed. It may still not be that great, but its not closed. It’s just past that stretch of Salida road I know, then you merge off the right, heading toward Monarch Pass, the quiet ski town with cleverly designed ad signs. I ask Marcia why I brought the subject up, I honestly couldn’t remember.

John Denver wrote “Leaving on a Jet Plane”. We listened to it on the final stretch to Sweetwater. He also wrote that song about West Virginia (country roads take me home/to a place I belong) which I never really thought about being one place. Marcia said to call her out on being an old sap after listening to a few songs of Three Dog Night…(the world is black, the world is white) after she got on her soapbox. There’s no melody in music today, she said. I agreed, wondering in my head if there’s really any stock in age when making such an argument. But I wondered about melody. I wondered about melody. I wonder what we tap our feet to these days and wonder what foot we choose to tap to.