A Trip - Down Memory Lane

Today I ventured out for a drive in the mountains to see the turning of the leaves. I haven't done this is quite some time. Since I started traveling to Europe 3 1/2 years ago, and since I got my job close to home, I rarely drive very far.

Yesterday I visited friends in Cheyenne and once I was on the road again, it felt good and the day was perfect so I decided to sightsee right in my own backyard. I decided that a trip up to Sunshine to check out the house where I lived when I was married was a perfect destination. The large 4 Mile forest fire was up there and had burned Sunshine and I wasn't sure what I would find. I started out early and missed a lot of the Sunday driving traffic so the trip to Boulder was nice and when I got to Boulder all kinds of memories came flooding back. So it was quite the trip down memory lane.

I visited Boulder in 1966 with my aunt and uncle and cousins and fell in love with it and decided that was the only college I wanted to go to. I studied more in high school and was admitted 41 years ago and my dream began. The "Journey to Mitzi" had quite a start in school in Boulder. Today I relived it, I passed places where I went with friends for ice cream in the winter, where I worked when I met some of the most important people in my life including my exhusband and my dear friend in Albuquerque. I passed all the places I used to play and work. I drove up Sunshine Canyon and the drive was beautiful and then around a bend everything was gone, black and bleak. There were places where the fire only was on one side of the road and places where it was on both. As I took the fork in the road to our small town of Sunshine there seemed to be little that had changed on that dirt road. And then I saw signs of the fire, but not whole empty fields, instead the ground was black and the trunks of trees were charred. Some were gone and it was different and then not so different. The house where I lived was still standing, but the ground up the mountain to it was black. I drove to the end of the road and it seemed the homes were okay but there were signs of damage to the trees and ground. I'm not sure how that happened. On one side road there was a sign that said "residents only, please no media or reporters". It is obvious that much is being done to return to life as before.

While driving through that 'memory' a very strange thing happened. I always have music on but really don't pay a lot of attention to it. Suddenly as I was driving past my house up the road to where my inlaws had lived I noticed that the song "Annie's Song" by John Denver was playing. This was quite significant, it is one of the 2 songs I got married to. I just couldn't walk down the aisle to "Here Comes the Bride", I guess I've always needed to be a bit different. So my songs were "Annie's Song" and "Evergreen" and there, back in my past, I was hearing our song. A coincidence? Perhaps...and perhaps not! My ex husband died 12 years ago, almost to this day from my memory. The day in my past was touching, healing and reaffirming to my present life.

The trees were magnificent! The colors beautiful and the day was cool. I drove up Boulder Canyon after my trip up Sunshine Canyon and it too was beautiful. A year ago César and I were in the fall leaves in Germany at Neuschwanstein Castle and I thought I would miss that. But being close to home and seeing 'my trees' and 'my streams' just an hour drive away, was delightful. Autumn is a beautiful time and I'm glad we got a taste of it in Colorado before winter arrives!

One doesn't need to fly across the world for a wonderful adventure!