The Secret Is

That I haven't driven on the mainland.

Until now.

Somewhere in Kansas.

Boulder Is A Love Story

And Boulder is the ravishing red-roofed University of Colorado, and the pushed up piles of rocks called the Flatirons.  It's the meadows and trails of Chautauqua Park, and the Rocky Mountains towering behind.  Boulder is the Pearl Street Mall with its jugglers and drummers and savers of the world, shoe shops and breweries and frisbees and food.  It's breakfast at Dot's Diner,

and The Walnut Cafe, thunder and lightning and hiking trails.  It's preachers on boxes and heaven and hell.  Uncles and cousins and brothers and kids.  Past tense and present tense and on into forever tense.  

Boulder is a love story.

And Boulder is the ravishing red-roofed University of Colorado,

the one Gary chose because Playboy magazine called it the number one party school in the nation that year.  The one he graduated from, but couldn't bear to leave, so he stayed another year and graduated again.  He might never have left if there had been an ocean nearby.  Might never have left this place that is always showing up on some list somewhere of The Most Beautiful College Campuses in the Nation.  This mowed and mulched and manicured place where all the buildings match.  Where the new buildings look like the old buildings, and all of them are Colorado sandstone.  The love story started here, but our daughter and grandson had never seen it.

So when we drive down the mountain from Breckenridge, the first thing we do when we get to Boulder 

is pay homage to the sacred site of the CU campus.  

And even though it's hot, and everyone's tired, and no one's eaten lunch, 

we wander around that sprawling place for hours.

This place Gary chose, and our son chose, and my brother and my sister-in-law and my niece chose.  

This place that is so much a part of the story of our family.  

This place that sits in the shadow of the pushed up piles of rocks called the Flatirons.

Those piles of rocks that Gary and everyone else who comes to Boulder can't stop taking pictures of.  The ones our son took pictures of in the spring and the summer and the fall and the winter, then put them in frames, and wrapped them up for our Christmas.  The ones we bought artsy black and white photos of one year that we taped up in bubble wrap, carried home on the plane, and hung on our wall.  Those piles of rocks that Gary got up before dawn for, again and again, to try and capture in just the right light on his real camera.  Not the camera in his phone.  Because the Flatirons are the symbol of Boulder.  They sit there in the meadows of Chautauqua Park telling you exactly where you are.

And the meadows of Chautauqua Park are where we go hiking with Jennifer and Brayden.

We walk the easy loop trail through fields of wildflowers and towering pine trees.

And when we look out to the East we see the red roofs of CU.  

And when we look to the West we see the beginning of the Rocky Mountains.

Which is where we take our daughter and our grandson on one of the most beautiful drives in the nation.  Because their one request while they are in Boulder is to visit a National Park.  And the Rocky Mountain National Park is where the famous Trail Ridge Road is.  That long and winding road with the sheer drop-offs on both sides, and not quite enough guardrails.  The one with the vast and stunning vistas of snowcapped mountains all along the way.  

And it's unclear if the stunning vistas are the reason for the trip, or if it's the guy at the top of the road with a stamp, waiting to fill in the blank spot in grandson Brayden's National Parks Passport Book.  Things become clearer once I see Brayden's stamp, because suddenly I have Passport Book envy.  And soon Gary and I have our own National Parks Passport Book with a Rocky Mountain National Park stamp inside.  

Because this particular human has a tiny little weakness for tidy little places to check things off a list.  

Humans will be humans.

And there is no better place to see humans being humans than the Pearl Street Mall in downtown Boulder.  

The place Gary never seems to get tired of, no matter how many times we go there.  

The place you can see jugglers and drummers and folded up men.

  There are earnest young girls and men dressed in robes, asking for your help please, 

to try and change the world.  

There are frisbees and shoe shops and breweries and fudge.  

And The Cheesecake Factory, where you go for some lunch, 

with your purple-shirted Uncle and his lovely wife Lynn.

And as you walk down the mall, and make your way through the crowd, 

it's hard to avoid the preacher who's sending everyone to hell.

Which is sort of where we find ourselves next.  Because after we say goodbye to Jennifer and Brayden, Gary doesn't want to say goodbye to Boulder.  So we do a quick search, take what we can get, and move to an Airbnb that Gary soon dubs 'the hell hole'.  Because when we arrive we discover that our young and clueless host has recently sold most of his furniture.  And his 'fully stocked kitchen' is missing a few things.  Like a toaster and a frying pan, a dish drainer and a sponge.  There's no soap in the bathroom and no comfy chairs.  I will leave you to imagine the toilet and the frig, keeping in mind that this was the rug:

To be fair, the young and clueless host of hell did apologize for the bare butted poster on the living room wall. And he did leave a bottle of cheap pink wine sweating on the counter for us, and some tiny frozen lobsters he said we could eat.  But we still wanted to run as fast as we could.  Until we slowed ourselves down, and thought it all through, and decided to go shopping instead.  We went to the thrift stores and bought a toaster, a frying pan, a dish drainer and a sponge.  We bought soap for the bathroom and a $9 chair.  And when we told our clueless host what we had done, he apologized profusely and told us we could stay one more night for free.  But even after one more night Gary wasn't ready to leave Boulder.  So we did a quick search, spent more than we should, packed up our bags and moved a few blocks down the road.  To heaven.

Which is sort of what our little cabin in Chautauqua felt like.  The toilet and the frig were sparkling clean, and there was a toaster, a frying pan, a dish drainer and a sponge.  And a screened in porch where you could sit with your thoughts, and your beverage of choice, and look out at the meadows and mountains. 

And on our last day in Boulder we walked through those meadows, and climbed up one of those mountains.  We climbed to the top of Flatiron number one, a hike we have done before.  But somehow this time it felt extra hard.  Maybe I was dehydrated, or I'm just getting old, or we went at the wrong time of day.  But I did make it up.  We both did.  And stayed up there a while looking out.  At this place Gary's loved for longer than he has me.  Where one day he wants some of his ashes to be.

There's a story we tell about another hike.  We call it the epic hike.  It's the one where my brother, my husband and my son climb a 'fourteener' in Rocky Mountain National Park.  They climb to the top of Longs Peak.  There are narrow ledges, loose rocks and steep cliffs on the way.  There's a boulder field with no path, and a summit without a trail.  There are bull's eyes painted on the rocks that everyone aims for as they find their own way to the top.  They all reach the summit, and as they start back down, a thunderstorm rolls in, and traps them above the trees.  Sixty people have died on Longs Peak over the years.  But my husband and my brother and my son do not.  They just hunker down, and wait out the storm, and find their own paths back down. 

We go to a concert in Boulder one night, in the old auditorium at Chautauqua.  That ancient wooden building, with the cracks between the boards that let in the air and the light.  And here we both are, after twenty one years, still trying to figure it out.  Here we both are, sitting side by side, in the light and the music and the air.  On our own epic hike, through the boulders and rocks, trying to keep the same bull's eye in sight.  And when the thunderstorms roll in, we just hunker down, and find our way home when they're over.  You Turn Me Into Somebody Loved, was the last and best song that night.

Happy 21 years Kalanikau

July 1994 - July 2015