Getting Out and Up

In this busy busy month that we just had Alder and I had the car exactly one day. Which meant a morning of lunch making and supply gathering. Then we headed not too far out of town for the day. Denver is a perfectly wonderful city to live in without a car, between the bike and the bus we can get just about every where. But part of living in Colorado is to be in the mountains, at least part of the time. So it wasn’t even a real thought that got us up to the top of Berthoud Pass last week, just Alder and I.

We both needed it badly. We needed the cool air, the quiet, the alone time without other people around us. We hiked and we talked. We crept silently along trying to get close to chipmunks, we stepped over trees and guessed at their ages. We found mud and stones, thought about walking to Mexico and then Canada (we were on the Continental Divide Trail).

{flower picture collage}

Inspired by Bringing Reggio Emilia Home we brought a jar with us to collect our day. It isn’t truly a coherent project, nor is it really legal to pick wildflowers, but after years of being a dutiful steward of the land I broke for a moment. The colors were too bright, the mica too shiny not to want to bottle it up for later.

One of the essays that has guided my thoughts on children, I read it years before I was married, is in the book The Geography of Childhood, in it Nabhan tells of a family trip to the Grand Canyon and how his children were more interested in the ants and other things close by. Usually I am right there with Alder, down on the ground introducing myself to the ants. But this trip to the mountains it was the vistas that sated me, they were what I didn’t know I craved until I was there. Now I can’t wait to get back up in the mountains.