• Category Archives Colorado

  • Calming

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    Beltane                                                              Emergence Moon

    The first wave of emotions has passed. I feel present now. Those onions and leeks which I did not plant yesterday will go in on Monday and Tuesday instead, along with some fertilizer for the daffodils. Big life decisions take a while to incorporate and this one is not done with me, I know. But for today, it is.

    Kate and I are going into the Cowles Center to see the Inferno danced by the James Sewell Ballet. Several years ago, when the writing stalled, I spent a year reading the classics, among them Dante’s Divine Comedy. This is one of the masterworks of western civilization, especially its depiction of Dante and Virgil’s journey through the Inferno. I did read on, finishing the trilogy with the Purgatorio and the Paradiso. It’s ironic, and I’m hardly original in observing this, that the Inferno is what has held reader’s attentions the most over the years. Damnation interests us more than redemption.

     


    Art and Culture Colorado Feelings

  • A Gentle Tsunami

    Posted on by Charles 1 Comment

    Beltane                                                                      Emergence

    I’ve put myself into a shocked, off center state by our decision to move. Assimilating the idea and its consequences have left me lackadaisical about Latin, less interested in the garden, a schlump relative to writing except for this blog. This won’t last long. It’s a response to the gentle but powerful emotional tsunami washing up on my Minnesota shore, a flood that I realize will wash most of what has been my life here back out to sea. And, it’s premonitory, a reality in the distance, yet it has enough force to rock me.

    I’m letting it, right now, take me out of the now and buffet me with imagined sequelae, some wonderful, some sad, some exhilarating, some anxiety producing.

    Wonderful. Living near the grandkids, the Rockies, the West. More faces at holidays and birthdays. A new place to absorb, to see, to learn, to become part of.

    Sad. Saying good-bye to the Woollies, this house and its gardens, the Walker, the MIA, the Guthrie, the memories of 40 years.

    Exhilarating. Writing in a new natural environment, one that will give me years of stimulation as will the lived history of the region. Staghounds in our future, dogs of the West.  A new home and land.

    Anxiety producing. You know. Packing, unpacking. Money. Adapting to a new place. Finding medical care, insurance.

    All this swirls around, causing emotional collisions that spark off each other, create radiants of feeling. It’s the early days of a love affair, one that will go the distance. God, how great, how frightening, is that?


    Colorado Family Feelings Third Phase

  • The Circus Is Leaving Town

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    Beltane                                                            Emergence Moon

    A slow moving mountain. Or, a slow move to the mountains. Sitting here contemplating my study, its hundreds of books and file folders, computer equipment, desks, chairs. I feel overwhelmed at the thought of pruning, organizing, decluttering for selling the house and actually moving. That’s one reason we’re giving ourselves two years or so to move.

    Two years might encompass the remaining lifespan of Vega and Rigel. We really don’t know since they’re hybrids, but we suspect 7-8 years and 2016 is 7 years plus. That’s a factor though not a determining one. Hell, who knows, it could encompass our lifespan, too, though I don’t imagine it will.

    Talk about liminal space. Between now and then we are no longer fully here and definitely not fully there. I imagine a huge circus tent with many ropes and stakes and poles. Each stake must be pulled.  Each rope removed. The poles must be taken down and the canvas rolled up. The canvas is our life in Minnesota and its attendant material possessions.

    The stakes are friends, the MIA and the Walker, the Sierra Club Northstar Chapter, the background relationships developed over years of work in the church and in politics and in neighborhoods. The ropes are the emotional ties that bind us to places, to our years lived here, to our sense of ourselves as Minnesotans. The poles are those key relationships like the Woolly Mammoths, Anne, the docents, the folks Kate and I have worked with in multiple capacities: our vet, our doctors, our financial consultants.

    All this must, in some way, be stored and the canvas packed. All these things will change once we reach our new destination. Our life will no longer be a Minnesota based life, but a Colorado based one. The friends will remain, of course, as will all the institutions and professionals, the places and their attached memories, but we will have stretched the ease and physical distance with many beyond the breaking point. It will not, of course, be possible to know which ones will suffer the most until time has passed. But all will suffer some, most will suffer a lot.

    Feeling overwhelmed, of course, comes from imagining that the tent and its supports must be packed and moved for a train leaving tomorrow. That’s not the case. We have time and will use it well. It’s just that, well, right now, it’s a lot.

     


    Colorado Family Feelings Friends Third Phase Travel Woolly Mammoths

  • The Herd Thins

    Posted on by Charles 1 Comment

    Beltane                                                              Emergence Moon

    Jim Johnson began the Woolly diaspora by his cowboy pivot made on the plains of South Dakota. Paul Strickland returned for good to an often frequented spot in Maine. Mario Odegard is an episodic emigre’, spending months at a time in different places, usually warmer than Minnesota.

    Now, probably around this time in 2016, Kate and I will join the Woolly dispersal with a move to Colorado. This was a difficult decision, one made over a period of several years and made at first with reluctance, but now with growing excitement and anticipation.

    We both want to move while we’re still able to develop an independent life for ourselves in a new setting. We will begin hunting for a place within an hour or so of Denver, something with acreage enough for dogs, yet still in broadband realm.

    I plan to attend Woolly retreats and to continue hosting a meeting at some point during the year, too. Getting back to Minnesota will be important to me because the Woolly’s are important. They have changed my life for the better and it is with deep regret that I will leave them behind for most of the year.

    Still, life’s realities change as we age and the call of family is a strong call. To care for and perhaps be cared for, that’s a profound life commitment and one to which we’re responding.


    Colorado Family Woolly Mammoths