{"id":53811,"date":"2021-07-03T06:46:11","date_gmt":"2021-07-03T12:46:11","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.ancientrails.com\/?p=53811"},"modified":"2021-07-03T07:00:23","modified_gmt":"2021-07-03T13:00:23","slug":"back-in-the-mountains-again","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.ancientrails.com\/?p=53811","title":{"rendered":"Back in the Mountains Again"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Summer and the Shadow Mountain Moon<\/p>\n<p>Saturday gratefuls: Franny and the Jets. Alan, proud poppa. Jon, calmer. Downtown Denver. The 16th Street Mall. The new breakfast place. Beignets. Feeling a bit lost yesterday afternoon.<\/p>\n<p>Sparks of Joy and Awe: The Front Range last night with the Sun setting behind it as I drove home.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<figure id=\"attachment_53812\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-53812\" style=\"width: 309px\" class=\"wp-caption alignright\"><img decoding=\"async\" class=\"wp-image-53812\" src=\"http:\/\/www.ancientrails.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/07\/20200607_083130-420x560.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"309\" height=\"412\" \/><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-53812\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">June, 2019, our backyard<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>Back now, reabsorbed into the Mountains. Surprised yesterday to see a for sale sign on Holly and Eduardo&#8217;s house. They&#8217;re moving to Palm Springs, close to it. Eduardo got a new job with the same company, a commercial laundry. Sad to see them go.<\/p>\n<p>Holly told me that Jim and Roberta, who live next to them, got divorced and their house will be up for sale, too. We&#8217;ll find out how accurate the (seemingly) inflated estimates are for our house prices.<\/p>\n<p>Drove over to Evergreen yesterday AM and had breakfast with Alan. Cheri, his wife, has organized a big July 4 music festival for Evergreen. She also did one for Memorial Day. A lot of work. Good for the town.<\/p>\n<p>The continuous rains we&#8217;ve had have greened up the Mountains. All the Plants look happy, watered, vibrant.<\/p>\n<p>Elk Meadow, which I passed on the way to breakfast yesterday, was the first tract of land protected by a community land trust based in Evergreen. It&#8217;s big. The namesake Animals lay down in the grass, others wandered, eating. Highway signs say Watch for Elk. Scan the Roadside.<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignleft wp-image-53813\" src=\"http:\/\/www.ancientrails.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/07\/20190607_095536-420x747.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"256\" height=\"455\" \/>Got my x-rays back. No cancer, at least in these views. Whew. In the dry and matter of fact way of these reports: &#8220;<em>X-rays show no acute changes; just old degenerative changes to lumbar spine and right hip.<\/em>&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>That&#8217;s me. An old degenerate. P.T. starts next week.<\/p>\n<p>Still busy with this and that. Mostly. Yesterday afternoon though I&#8217;d paid all the bills, had breakfast with Alan, napped. Nothing really to do until 5 pm when I would leave for Dazzle Jazz in downtown Denver. Got to feeling displaced, a bit down. X-ray findings, while not terrible, reminded me of my own mortality. Which seems more real now with Kate&#8217;s death.<\/p>\n<p>Also, Dr. Thompson told me not to take anti-inflammatories because of &#8220;your vascular disease.&#8221; Oh. I haven&#8217;t taken them for years, but that was because of kidney disease. I have atherosclerosis, my Midwest U.S. diet hasn&#8217;t helped. Since mom and dad both had strokes a reminder of the vascular disease sent me down a short rabbit hole.<\/p>\n<p>Steadied. Sure, I&#8217;ll die. When? Don&#8217;t know. Today? Well, if so&#8230;<\/p>\n<figure id=\"attachment_45757\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-45757\" style=\"width: 420px\" class=\"wp-caption alignright\"><img decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-thumbnail wp-image-45757\" src=\"http:\/\/www.ancientrails.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/11\/20170827_153614-e1509542782908-420x329.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"420\" height=\"329\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.ancientrails.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/11\/20170827_153614-e1509542782908-420x329.jpg 420w, https:\/\/www.ancientrails.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/11\/20170827_153614-e1509542782908-744x583.jpg 744w, https:\/\/www.ancientrails.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/11\/20170827_153614-e1509542782908-768x602.jpg 768w, https:\/\/www.ancientrails.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/11\/20170827_153614-e1509542782908-1200x940.jpg 1200w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 420px) 100vw, 420px\" \/><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-45757\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Jon and Kate in his new house. The kitchen looks very different now.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>Alan&#8217;s daughter Franny is a jazz singer with a band called the Jets. They played an Amy Winehouse set yesterday. Dazzle Jazz @ Baurs. I saw her there three years ago when she decided to give up music and had a farewell show. Felt like I&#8217;d seen the end, so I wanted to see the beginning. She&#8217;s young.<\/p>\n<p>Invited Jon. We had dinner, enjoyed the show. The band took a while to gel, but when they got there, it was good. Being there was therapeutic for me. Saw a lot of CBE&#8217;ers and had time with Jon. He&#8217;s on a beta blocker now which seems to have calmed him down. A good thing.<\/p>\n<p>I can now find my way out of Denver without GPS. That feels good. It&#8217;s taken a while since I&#8217;m not in Denver often. The Mountains, as Jen pointed out long ago, line the western horizon. Angle toward them and you get outta town.<\/p>\n<p>As I drove home last night, the setting sun backlit the Front Range, giving it a paper cutout look with jagged peaks in black against a blueblack and white sky. Beautiful, poignant.<\/p>\n<p>When I turned off 470 onto 285, my favorite sign shone up ahead: Watch for Rocks and Wildlife. That&#8217;s home.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Summer and the Shadow Mountain Moon Saturday gratefuls: Franny and the Jets. Alan, proud poppa. Jon, calmer. Downtown Denver. The 16th Street Mall. The new breakfast place. Beignets. Feeling a bit lost yesterday afternoon. Sparks of Joy and Awe: The Front Range last night with the Sun setting behind it as I drove home. &nbsp; &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/www.ancientrails.com\/?p=53811\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Back in the Mountains Again<\/span> <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4390,65,11,127,4381,4312,4252,4317,3996],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-53811","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-denver","category-family","category-friends","category-health","category-judaism","category-mountains-2","category-music-2","category-shadow-mountain","category-third-phase-2"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ancientrails.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/53811","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ancientrails.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ancientrails.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ancientrails.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ancientrails.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=53811"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.ancientrails.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/53811\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":53816,"href":"https:\/\/www.ancientrails.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/53811\/revisions\/53816"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ancientrails.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=53811"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ancientrails.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=53811"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ancientrails.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=53811"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}