7.5.13

telluride

i wrote this almost a year ago when i was staying at the ranch alone, doing yoga in the mornings, writing all day, hiking in the mountains and catching fish for breakfast.  things have changed, things have stayed the same.  i love you.
 

"In a town always changing she called things by their old names.  The grocery store, no matter the new owner, would always be called Rose’s.   The Ah Haa School of the Arts lived in the old Depot.  It didn’t matter what restaurant was in the Sofio’s building; that place remained Sofio’s. That restaurant on the corner where Telluride Sports employed her mother back in the day always felt like Telluride Sports.  The big purple house on main street where she was born she still referred to as the “old pharmacists place”, how her father referred to it.

 It was men sitting on barstools talking in bars who taught her to speak.  These habits of naming and slang died hard and so even when the men got older, and the old timers disappeared from the small, ever-changing town, she called their places by the proper names.   

Most people around these days probably had no idea what she meant, but the old timers knew and their memory and the memory of the original place names kept the town alive for her.  The town from before - when it was small and sleepy and only a few lucky people even knew the name Telluride

These old men had lived through that evolution, the good old days into the prosperous days, into these days; when everyone knew the name Telluride and associated it with skiing, and celebrities and status.  This handful left knew it for something more, and knew each other for being a part of it and that passed for community to her so she clung to it.  She’d been moved around too much to carry on the conversations of community members at the far side of a long life in one spot.  She herself could never recall the evolution of a place and a life lived with a small group of people.  Her place memories were scattered and the people she’d shared them with diverse and varied.

That was all ok with her, but coming home still felt like home, especially if she ignored what changed the place to the best of her ability. The mountains remained the same and no matter the changes taking place in the town below, the mountains stood still in her heart; the first landmark in her life."