Landscape was here long before we were even dreamed of. It watched us arrive.
—-Robert MacFarlane, The Wild Places
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This weekend, Greg and I pack the car, and head to Paonia, on the western slope of Colorado. As we lumber up the steep angle of the Continental Divide in our 22-year-old Tundra, crossing at the Eisenhower Tunnel—nearly 2 miles long with an of elevation 11,158 feet and the highest tunnel in the U.S.—I think how much I take the mountains for granted.
I don’t mean overlooked. What I mean Is real, true, unquestionable. The mountains are fixed in my life. They claimed me as kin long ago and now they are the center from which the rest of me extends. Taking them for granted means all of this has been settled between us long ago.
On this trip we climb two more passes--Vail (10,662’) and McClure Pass (8763’)—before spilling out onto the high desert near Paonia. Colorado has over 15 mountain ranges and 58 peaks that are over 14,000 feet tall and the most mountain passes of any state in the U.S. I try to count but lose track at 100.
When Greg and I lived for a few years in the prairie town on the Front Range, the familiar view of the mountains to the west was abruptly cut off, obscured by variations in the rolling plain. I lived in a world of houses and highways. I could not locate myself in this world, could not hear the beat of my heart. I longed for the scent of pine and the earthy smell of the deep woods, craved the wildness of the mountains and the me I felt there.
This is what I am thinking as I the truck rolls up and down between craggy peaks and deep river valleys, among igniting aspen and past red buttes before we spill out into the sagebrush and mesas: how long l have lived in the presence of mountains.
So long, sometimes I forget there are other horizons, other vistas.
In Paonia—or more accurately the mesa near Crawford where we stay—we get the sky back. My view on the mountain is filtered through trees, abruptly cut off by the tall bodies of lodgepole and ponderosa of the deep woods. At the mesa house, Greg and I spend as much time as we can watching the light shift the faces of clouds, marveling at the expanse of deep blue sky arcing overhead. Mornings, I rise in the half-light to watch the sunrise burn a red line on the horizon. Here on the edge of fall, the light comes easily still, shaking off night like slipping a silk robe from its shoulders. At the other end of the day, which comes sooner now, the wide curve of sky spills its cup of stars.
On the Autumn Equinox, clouds trail the mountains to the east where I can see a dusting of fresh snow. There has been rain in the night, but then the light breaks over the mountains, igniting clouds. It is a startling, diffuse light, a gauzy spectacle with streams of illumination driving toward earth.
For a few days, Greg and I are in love with sky and with light. The mesa house seems the perfect place to mark the passing of summer and welcome, in one final hurrah, these now dwindling days, the tipping point toward deep snow and silence on the mountain. Our time is Paonia is so deeply welcoming (not just by land, but by people) that we think what it would be like to live here. Denver-born Greg misses open spaces and I confess, I occasionally yearn for the vista—being able to see from here to there, from the house to the horizon. But thinking about Paonia, I wonder what my mountain self would feel like at a lower elevation, in a place where pine trees are replaced by juniper, willow and aspen by sagebrush.
It is a lovely fantasy to imagine ourselves on the mesa—to live in that kind of light—and Greg and I talk about it all the way home.
Perhaps for now it is enough that the equinox brings us to a place where the sky, where light is a presence in each day. The sun carves silhouettes over the mesas and buttes stretching out toward the horizon in a kind of prayer. It says land is a supple dream and we are its fortunate shadows.
And thank you for reading.
Big love,
Karen
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So delicious. Thank you. I love light shaking off the night like a silk robe from its shoulders.
“the wide cut of sky tips its cup of stars.” ✨ damn that’s gorgeous.