Summer New (Park County Fair) Moon
Kate and I went to a fourth of July party at a friend of hers. The view from their deck (above) includes Pikes Peak in the very far distance. The general rule of urbanists is that the poor live in the place of least convenience. Here in the mountains that rule reverses and the wealthiest live on the peaks, or near them. Getting to their homes entails driving up and up and up, often the latter part of the way on gravel roads, then having a long driveway that also goes up and up and up.
This house has 6,000 square feet, cathedral ceilings, a wrap around deck, tables custom made from beetle kill pine. Its driveway is a one-car wide ribbon of asphalt that winds up from Pine Country Lane to a turn-around with a three-car garage and a vaulted doorway with a cast iron handle. The three floors all face this view. The main floor is at this level, bedrooms above and a floor with a music room on the level below, a walkout onto the grounds seen here.
Steve, husband to Kate’s friend Jamie, calls this, “Our little slice of heaven. Especially for a boy from the Bronx.” He amplified that last by talking about walking through the tunnel into Yankee Stadium and seeing green on the playing field. “Where I lived, it was all concrete. The green was remarkable. And now this.”
Parties are not my natural habitat. This one was no exception. I met a couple of people, Steve (not Jamie’s husband and one of three Steves at this party, two of them, including Jamie’s husband, named Steve Bernstein), an actuary, and Lou, a software engineer, in addition to Jamie and Steve. That’s an effective outing for me. Many of the people at the party were members of Congregation Beth Evergreen, so we’ll see them again and again. That’s the way I make friends, slowly and over time.
This loft is my natural habitat, books and maps, a computer, a place and time to write and read, to work on my Latin. This loft and these mountains. Becoming native to this place is, it occurs to me, identical in process to the way I make friends, slowly and over time: hiking the trails, driving the roads, being present as the seasons change, seeing the wildlife. I’m in no hurry for either one.
