Farewell, Colorado!

Source of Bounty

Inside my thoughts, as in most of us in one form or another, live creatures who never see the light of day.

They live under rocks, inside volcano tubes, under the ocean, beneath the stairs, inside wheel wells, hidden in clothes dryer vents, sleeping in pocket lint and earwax, always just out of sight but feeding the imagination of weary travelers, scared children and isolated elderly.

The most sensitive of us are as close to companions for these creatures who know neither goodness nor malice as can be expected for these creatures live for themselves only, unaware of anything or anyone else in the universe.

No story I can tell will stop the creatures from existing, will not prevent their benefiting us or hindering us.

Yet we will live with them anyway.

Regardless of how well we know them (or think we do), their behaviour never ceases to amaze us when they contradict all we expect of them or when we feel we can predict their next move.

Their influence upon us varies with ocean tides, stock market swings and parliamentary elections.

In the same moment, they may inadvertently encourage us to help a little old lady push a grocery buggy through a supermarket and shove out of the way a kind, young parent caring for two children whilst shopping on a stretched budget.

The creatures use every means available for transport and reproduction. To them, we look like mere transport media, temporary waystations. To them, we look like feeding stations and baby creature crèches/nurseries.

The creatures have no heart, no soul, no introspection, no remorse.

Some of us feel the creatures cause chills curdling our insides.

Some of us die before realising what the creatures have done to us.

We may drop $5 in a tip jar to help a cashier make a living wage.

Or drink a $75 shot of Octomore to our health.

We may praise Donald Trump and Elizabeth Warren in the same breath and equal proportions but vote the Green Party during the national presidential election.

We may know global warming is a real concern, unable to discern to what extent our species contributes to the planet’s rising heat, yet not worry whether or how much we reduce/reuse/recycle.

The creatures care nothing about our concerns, do not laugh with us, vote with us, cry with us, think with us.

However, everything we do happens because of them.

They kill without mercy.

They feed upon both the weak and the strong.

We drink, breathe and eat them without hesitating.

The hairs on our arms are covered with them.

The liquid film on our eyeballs is filled with them.

The neurochemical processes we call thoughts are accelerated and slowed down by them.

Sure, amongst us are fellow humans so foul, so seemingly intent upon our suffering and destruction that we can think of nothing more but to call them evil, even if what they do is heavenly in comparison to the creatures.

They, like the kindest and most generous amongst us, are here because of the creatures.

The creatures have no beginning and no end, no inside or outside, living nowhere and everywhere at the same time.

If we can do nothing about them, then no story with a setup, conflict, climax, conclusion and moral can include them.

We cannot escape them, cannot rid the universe of them, cannot hide from them.

Their existence ties us all together, our deepest, hidden thoughts available for all the world to see, our best and worst moments meshed into one.

We prosper and perish because of them but no award show will give credit to the creatures, no billionaire will praise them, no destitute person condemn them.

The worst horror story we can tell will not include them.

The best religious experience will not exalt them.

Yet there they are, in the morning frost…

…and a chalkboard advert…

A place called home

We travelers — a group of four — enjoy the warmth and hospitality of random travelers as well as those who host us when we’re eating or preparing to sleep.

Our accommodations are modest, neither luxurious nor bare.

In our travels, we suffer no inconvenience that prevents us from our pedestrian pleasures of food, shelter, clothing, shopping and sightseeing.

Our views are close as well as wide, a covered outdoor gas grille juxtaposing the Stanley Hotel, high mountains surrounding us in all directions, for example.

So it was I found myself yesterday preparing to pack our rental SUV and heard the honk of a loud truck horn across the street.

A Manitou Springs sanitation crew was waiting for homeowners up the hill from us to haul down two flights of red-and-brown stone stairs their garbage in white plastic bags.

The sanitation truck driver saw me and held out his forefinger, indicating he’d be over to my place in a moment.

I looked in the driveway of our rental cottage and found three rubbish bins, one a bit older and away from the other two newer bins.

As the sanitation truck stopped at the cabin, I quickly rolled the bins to the two guys dumping the trash at the back of the truck.

When the sanitation crew leader grabbed the older bin from me, he peered inside and gave me a questioning look.

He tipped the bin in my location. Inside the bin were a few small plastic shopping bags; old, tattered clothes; and ripped, weathered shoes.

I shrugged my shoulders to indicate they weren’t mine so the crew leader went ahead and dumped the contents of the bin into the truck.

Later, I noticed a very thin homeless guy walk by our cabin, then slow down to look in the direction of where the older bin had been. He was wearing a T-shirt covered in mud stains, a pair of barely held together, excessively-shredded blue jeans and a pair of flattened flip-flops, his long hair tangled in knots and pointing in all directions. Either he just returned from an outdoor music festival or lived along the creek like the fellows I’d seen whilst fishing earlier in the week.

I wonder: was the homeless guy and perhaps others using the older bin as a relatively dry, animal-free storage locker for their clothes and belongings, maybe even food?

Some say home is where the heart is.

Home can also be where you have a place to store your belongings, no matter how insecure, no matter how temporarily, just like the wanderers and fortune seekers who’ve hiked these hills for millennia.