Today, the city operates almost as normal. All except for the thick hazy smoke the blankets us as we walk the streets, drive our highways, and walk around dazed. What happened just two afternoons ago has left many hundreds homeless and evacuated. The rest of us are in awe of the power and speed of nature.
You see, in Colorado, we have a relationship with our nature. Like the Na’vi, the indigenous race on the planet Pandora in the movie Avatar, its a part of us. We’re a part of it. It’s what drew me to Colorado when I started coming here often in my early years from Texas. Perhaps it was passed to me from my grandfather, who lived in the far northern reaches of Minnesota near the Canadian border. His livelihood was the forest, and although he worked for a paper company that inevitably cut down trees, he loved the forest. He was at home in the forest.
The same way he was at home out there, I am at home in these craggy forests and canyons. I’m mourning as I let go of a very small piece of the Colorado landscape. Let go of whatever I was hanging on to, maybe its mystique or its impenetrability. I have hiked these hills for many years. I will not stop sitting by the streams, studying the ants crawling on boulders, or listening to the aspens whistle in the mountain breeze. But today I’m sad.
Now we get a chance to see it’s resilience. Our resilience as humans. This is where love really can win. Ahhh, I like that.
A Business Guy's Guise 