Snow Drifting…
It is one of those sternly cold mountain nights, where the air seems frozen to the stars which seem frozen to the steely blue, hovering clouds that promise morning snow.
There is a window at my back, sighing chilled air at my neck as I sit at a massive, pale wood table and write. If I turned around, if it were daylight, I would look out at a lovely snowy slope that drops onto pine and aspen tree forests and a distant rack of peaks lined up like grocery store bottles.
I came here to find the snow.
Stepping off the plane that delivered us home from South America last week, I was devastated to find that holiday ambiance was not, in fact, awaiting our return like a faithful subject. On the contrary, Minnesota had brazenly spurned the laws of nature that demand a White Christmas. And so, given the opportunity to voice my outrage by fleeing town for the compliantly snowy, unassuming charisma of Colorado’s Rocky Mountain enclaves, I all but leapt.
My reward has been a week spent wandering through small towns from the mouth of the state’s mountain range to the Utah border. Not the Vails or the Aspens, but the places with heart. The places where residents don’t seem to understand stocking hats are actually quite unattractive or that any bike beyond the 1952 cruiser was ever produced. The Almas and Tabernashes and Montroses, with town diners owned by gossips, newspapers that report bar scuffles and stolen parkas, cabins out of cell phone range and communal, 40 foot Christmas trees plopped smack in the center of Main Street, because this is apparently a perfectly reasonable roadblock.
Giddy over this extraordinary place – this festive fairyland that Gets It, that knows how to throw a proper holiday — I have implored my parents to turn up the same Christmas songs a dozen times in a row. I have unceasingly hummed this soundtrack to the rolling white fields and marching blue mountains, the iced over reservoirs and the dirt roads that curve and twist intriguingly out of sight.
En route to family planted across the stretch of Rockies, accompanied by family, I’ve snowshoed in the hushed morning and Nordic skied in the brittle afternoon sunlight. I have sighed at the unintentionally romantic fences whose wooden beams lean and bow under the weight of daily snow and years of service. I have walked through my own breath in the chill of night through towns so still the crunch of frozen snow beneath my feet seems ostentatious. I have been surrounded by the quiet spirituality and reverent silence that only a cape of unsullied snow delivers. In the lazy past few days, I have tucked away more than my fair share of quaint winter scenes and small town holiday cheer. More importantly, it is beginning to occur to me that the developing world does not have a monopoly on inspiring locales, admirable characters or humble priorities – an epiphany that will no doubt vastly entertain everyone over the age of 60 who ever lectured me on better exploring America the Beautiful.
Tomorrow, it will snow again. These small town nights will still be aglow with glittering strings of light and mountain side bonfires. And for all I’m worth, I will still adamantly believe that this charmingly colorless snow globe-incarnate defines Christmas.
But back in that seasonally challenged middle-American December, my favorite travel companion is working hard by day, laid up with a viral infection by night, preparing without me for real life Christmas.
The snow and magic and escape are here, but my heart is there despite it all. For once, I have no doubt it is time to go home.
Tags: Travel
