Life in our senior years makes for relaxation and reflection…
Last week we visited the Stanley Hotel, which inspired Stephen King to write “The Shining.”
I now see his novel is a self-condemnation of Stephen King’s admitted alcoholism, after watching last night his teleplay version in a TV miniseries of “The Shining.”
When I read the novel as a teenager I didn’t know about the “evils” of alcoholism.
Kudos to Stephen King for making lots of money on his semiautobiography of the effects of alcoholism on families.
When I retired at age 45 from active corporate life, my wife and I had built a $1m investment portfolio. Now, at age 57, we’ve hit the $3m mark.
My body is tired, sore and aerobically out of shape. No cure for tinnitus, the constant buzzing and thumping sounds in my head torturing me while I’m awake, little to distract me from the sounds, even quiet conversation makes the buzzing/whistling louder over time.
So weird being here at this moment, my wife the only friend I communicate with daily, no goals, no plans, living day to day, ready to die.
Money does not make me happy.
Our cats are happy, it seems, free room and board, a place to warm in sunshine on the back porch…
…I don’t know how to have fun anymore, despite the funds to travel and see new places — Earth has lost its openness, too crowded with the presence of humans.
My thoughts have explored all interesting paths.
Decades more of wake-eat-sleep-repeat.
My boss at work said why don’t I spend part of the investment money on a new motorcycle or something like that. He can’t understand my innate feeling of not deserving to live, a feeling deeper than depression, a feeling most of us harbor that says we ought to share this garden paradise of a planet with fellow living things or better yet, remove humans to other planets and leave this one behind to evolve without us.
Doesn’t a planet like Earth deserve a human-free environment?
I live and wait to die. Patience is my only virtue. Decades to go before I sleep no more.
Some say I communicate with the dead, that I have a special connection with beings no longer living, especially their recently departed friends and relatives.
I never want to take away hope from people for whom maintaining a relationship with those they love most dearly gives them a reason to carry on.
However, I’ve never held or professed the belief that I communicate with the dead, much less the living.
Instead I see things the way they are.
Yesterday, over the dark, churning waters below the Estes Lake Dam, I tossed a two-pound test fishing line with a fly fishing lure the size of the end of my pinky finger, bouncing the lure on the surface of the water and occasionally letting it sink down.
Large trout, from one to two pounds, swam up curiously, looked at the lure, and swam away.
Long have the waters of the Upper Rocky Mountains flowed through the Estes Park valley.
But fish of the type I teased with my lure have not always lived here.
As I dragged the lure through the water, I noticed something much bigger swimming in the depths.
Perhaps it was a juvenile specimen of monster fish that swim in the depths above the dam.
I looked at my watch.
Friday, the 13th of September 2019, 8:02:17 a.m.
Do I believe in signs or symbols?
Not really.
But I accept that when popular imagery coincides with events in my life, I’m willing to share what happened and let others decide whether more than dark clouds on the horizon predict stormy weather.
I bounced the lure on the water a few dozen times to pique the curiosity of fish circling about.
A large object moved upstream several feet below the water’s surface.
A fly fishing guide worked with two customers several hundred meters downstream.
They seemed to catch nothing.
My brother in-law worked the waters at a bridge farther away, getting not even a nibble on his lure.
Suddenly, the fish I had been seeing, approximate 12-16 inches long, brown or hybrid rainbow trout, cleared out of the way.
The large object rose up from the depths like a submarine, its colour changing from light brown to light green to white with green-and-brown spots.
I looked downstream.
My fellow fishermen didn’t seem to notice, kept trying to catch fish, the guide pretending that his customers weren’t casting properly.
I knew better.
As the object rose, my thoughts were prepared to see an albino fish which can sometimes survive in the least likeliest places.
I wish I could tell you what I saw was a fish.
I don’t believe in the supernatural.
I let my lure sink down to the level of the object, which moved toward the lure out of mild curiosity.
A long fin extended from the object’s body and grasped the lure, holding the lure up to its face, twisting it around, trying to figure out what I was offering.
I’ve always known I’ve been more than a mere fisherman.
Whilst fishing in the past, I’ve watched cardinals fly up to me and sit on my extended fishing arm like landing on the limb of a tree.
Mosquitoes love my flesh and I’ve rarely sprayed my exposed body parts with repellant. I’m willing to share my life’s essence, my blood, with creatures who were born to live on the body liquid of others.
The large object in the water pulled down on the lure, jerking it strongly twice, as if to tell me a message.
I dared not pull up.
Twice more, the object let go of the lure, grabbed it again and gave it two tugs.
By then, a circle of trout had formed around the object.
I was numb with disbelief.
I looked around me and no person was close enough to share this moment with me.
The large object rolled over, exposing its underside, as if to tell me it trusted me.
Normally, I record all around me, able to describe in minute detail the objects I see, often able to give the Latin biological name for objects such as Acer rubrum for red maple, citing its unique characteristics.
The large object in the water below me defied description.
It was not just a fish but its body covering was scalelike. However, I can’t tell you if the scalelike appearance was really just short white shiny hairs pressed against the object’s body.
The object’s body was wider than most fish one would expect to see around Estes Park.
All of the object’s fins were elongated and jointed.
Its headlike protrusion swiveled only slightly more than fish in the area.
There was nothing anthropomorphic about the object — pulling down on a fish lure had no translatable message — how many times had I seen birds tap on the side of a tree and imagined them sending Morse code, knowing better?
The object rolled back over and sank out of sight.
I bobbed the lure in the water a few more times and only captured the attention of a trout or two.
Downstream, one of the fly fishing customers caught a small trout which the guide pulled in with a net, gently unhooked it and placed it back in the water.
My brother in-law looked in my direction as if to say it was time to go.
I didn’t want to leave the waters below the dam.
At the same time, I wasn’t sure if I wanted to see if the large object in the water had other plans for me and would spoil my disbelief in the supernatural.
Reluctantly, I coiled up my fishing line and took my brother in-law back to the cabin where my wife and sister in-law were cooking us breakfast, sans trout.
Strange things happen that usually have a logical explanation. Given enough time and scientific observation I would be able to solve the mystery of the object I thought I saw in the water.
I wouldn’t have told you this story except for the following.
Often, the small double bed my wife and I have shared in the cabin above Estes Park gets hot in the wee hours of the morning.
In those cases, I have gotten up and walked to another room with bunk beds to cool off before returning to curl up with my wife and sleep until dawn.
Outside the window of the bunk bed room are some variegated vines of Vinca major growing in the bottom of the window well.
This morning, in an overnight spurt of growth, the vines covered the bottom half of the window, with one vine having worked its way between the mesh screen and the glass window making what I can only describe as a hand holding up two fingers.
I had planned to go fishing below the dam this morning. I changed my plans.
I don’t believe in signs or symbols.
That doesn’t mean they don’t exist…
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…
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.
Another member of our traveling party wanted to visit the Air Force Academy…
Bottom of the bucket list achieved — reached summit of Pike’s Peak, driving most of the way up…
Whilst resting and relaxing beneath the inspiring Pike’s Peak this week, I’ve spent time observing people, including locals, tourists and local tourists.
In three days the population sample size has ranged from military rank promotions…
…to train riders…
…to actors…
…and eaters…
…with a large increase in homeless people roaming the streets, looking for free weed…
…the times, they are a’changing!
Bog, Swamp, River and Garden 