Colorado

Boulder, Colorado 1980. I had moved there from a small town in Georgia to attend school at the University of Colorado. CU. Buffalo country. In the foothills of the Rocky Mountains, it was like no place I had ever seen before. A hippie college town on the edge of a massive mountain range. Snow-capped peaks stretched off into the distance.

Late that summer, my parents had given me their blessings, $500, and a one-way plane ticket to Denver. Everything I owned or needed was in the pack on my back. And it turned out I needed the camping gear and sleeping bag immediately. The dorms were full, so the first few nights I slept under the stars, tucked back into the shrubbery along the chapel wall. Nobody bothered me or even seemed to notice. Just another long haired kid with a backpack.

Through a friend of a friend, I got a job working the night shift at Hanson ski boot factory. I’d go in at 10 PM, running a big injection molding machine, pouring the plastic boot shells. Nobody there was over twenty-five years old and just about everyone was in Colorado for one reason. To ski. So that’s what we did. Get off work at 6 AM, pile into someone’s car, and head up into the mountains for a morning of fresh powder. The first ones there when the lifts opened, the only tracks before us were ski patrol, policing the morning runs. Skiing well took practice, but also a positive mindset, the confidence to stay out in front of your skis, pushing but in control. Proactive courage. I skipped a lot of classes but became proficient on moguls, adding to my belief that adventure trumped trigonometry.

I also found a place to live. Six of us in a three-bedroom house. Jerry and Cecil were a black belt in Taekwondo, and an ex-college football lineman, respectively, and doormen/bouncers in the local discotheque at the Sheraton Hotel. Not my music of choice, but disco ruled the airwaves, and Saturday Night Fever was everywhere. Housemates Sam and Jenny were from Chicago and competitive disco dancers themselves with no other visible means of support or employment. And then there was Clint, part-time house painter and petty thief. Clint never paid for anything, would walk out of the supermarket with a jacket full of steaks. Looked like the Michelin Man but never got caught. He’d fill up his truck at the gas station, then drive away without paying. It made me very nervous to go anywhere with him.

An automobile was a luxury beyond my means. But I did manage to buy a Honda moped for $75 that I used to get to work, get around town. Dead of winter, below zero, snow piled up ten feet high on the side of the road by the snow plows, I’d be buzzing through the night, face and hands numbed by the cold. Just the memory gives me frostbite now, but at the time it seemed normal. I was happy not to be walking.

Then the next year, a few weeks before Fall semester, I got a call from my parents. My grandfather, best friend and lifelong companion, was very sick, and couldn’t live alone anymore. Could I come home and move in for a while, help take care of him? Of course I could…

A few days before my flight back to Georgia, a friend and I backpacked up into Rocky Mountain National Park. End of Summer, there was still snow above the tree line, where we made camp beside an alpine lake. We had brought our fly rods and caught cutthroat trout for dinner, grilled over coals with just butter and lemon. The fire cracked and popped and we slept that night surrounded by mountain peaks under a star packed sky. Next day we hiked back down through the aspens and laurel to the river valley floor. With the sun setting, a herd of over five hundred caribou was spread out along the water, grazing on the lush green grass. Their soft lowing echoed off the valley walls. I stopped, took off my pack, and sat for a few minutes, just taking it all in. The setting, the past year, the promise of the future.

Twelve months had flown by, a year of adventure, new skills, fast friends. My grandfather had lived a long full life, of meaningful work, genuine kindness, and adventures of his own. I was happy to be going home to spend this last chapter with the man who had always given our family so much time and love. And I was taking with me the realization that if I had faith, a little proactive courage, and put in the work, everything was going to be ok. I could do this.