Peeks

Visiting friends is one of the motifs of this summer.  I have no real timelines besides the rallies, so I sort of drift from one friend to another.

My first stop was at some friends from TX that we met while Geocaching.  They moved to the amusing and funky town of Fairplay, CO, to a nice house with a spectacular view of South Park, the wide grassy basin between the mountains.  First order of business was their 11 year old son’s basket ball game. The ageless smell of sweaty sneakers, encouraging shouts, and the egalitarian inclusion of all and any that want to play.  There are so few students that boys and girls play together, and the enthusiasm for fun clearly outstrips the need to be the winners.

Then, it is her last belly dancing class.  

 I’ve always wanted to learn this, probably for the outfit more than anything: tons of jewelry, flowers in the hair and the low riding skirt with jingling coins.  Z comes out with a turban, her black hair braided with silver, flash and glitz everywhere, and her coin belt buzzes with each step.  Z is more fun than I can explain.  She is exotically beautiful, and well padded, and moves through life with huge energy and amusement, talking a blue streak in her deep voice, and laughing at the absurdities of the world.  She incites me to be out of control, we are a dangerous pair.

I bravely (foolishly?) get up and start learning to belly dance, in my Capri  pants and t-shirt, while the 8 others do their moves.  Eastern music fills the simple hall of an old church in Alma CO; at 10,000 feet it boasts the highest bar in the US.  We are soon getting a workout.  In my old life, I would never have just joined in like that, but I enjoyed every minute.  After that, still in full regalia, we head for the bar, where everyone knows everyone, children sit at the bar with sodas, and our outfits are only a mild and short lived curiosity.  After much laughter and carrying on, Z decides to visit the recently reopened Haunted Hotel.

Built during the mining heydays, it is a huge shingle block, with great beams in the foyer and massive false columns in the bar.  There are so many ghosts, it seems, that the new owner has had it cleansed. Well, except for the bar. The ghost buster woman walked in there and saw so many spirits having spirits that she nearly gave up.  Only a few rooms are really ready for occupancy, they have a new chef from New Orleans, and it’s all very hopeful.  Z, still dressed in her finery and I appear at the bar, and the 6-8 people there turn and see us.  Astonishment. Is Z the ghost of some long ago exotic miner concubine?   Z rolls out the laughs and the fun and they relax, sort of.  We are so clearly fearless and rowdy that it is a little hard for them to know what to think.  Then we go off hunting ghosts, deep in the basement, dirt floors, a century of junk, with only one tiny LED to see by.  Z is hoping to “see” something, but between my lack of belief and her jangly coin belt, no spirits appear. Then we go upstairs and explore, one bedroom belonged to a famous lady of the night, her nude portrait and her “certificate” are on display in the lobby.  The story is that if you make love in that room, her ghost, incensed, will begin throwing things around the room.  But we are on a noisy roll and the spirits stay hidden.

Next day, I head for one of my oldest friends.  Penny and I attended the same kindergarten, but only got to know each other in the 7^th grade at Concord Academy, a private girl’s school.  She and her husband have been living out here in CO for many years tucked up in the grassy parks of the Front Range near Evergreen.  She has horses, which I visit with and muck out, and brush. There is no better creature on earth.

Penny and I steep ourselves like two tea bags in the luxury of catching up and examining our lives with someone who knows us so well, there is nothing to explain.  We compare living out west, with our shared past of staid New England upbringing, pour over our more recent lives and troubles and joys. 

Her house has two dogs, two cats besides the 4 horses, and just outside across a little creek a family of coyotes is growing up. Since Pepe is deaf and too friendly, I have to keep her close. One of the adults is crippled enough to be looking for easy pickings.  The magpies and the crows are merciless, diving at the coyotes and making a huge racket, and we often see the adults walking in the meadows boldly.  Two adolescent elk with velvet antlers blunder through the fences on their way up higher, and the neighbors all have tons of horses too.

Her daughter shows reining horses, and we drove down to Denver to watch. Reining is like dressage for western style riders: there are 11 different patterns of large and small circles, spins, and sliding halts.  The riders are judged on the exactness and correctness of each move. For a parent anxiously hoping the child does well it is nerve wracking, but the huge arena is nearly empty, and the classes are very small.  Since the contestants go individually, it can take a long time for a class, and unless you are really up on the details, it is pretty boring.  Penny’s daughter has had a difficult time finding her way to adulthood, it’s not an easy path for anyone, and she has had some additional stumbling blocks to over come. She rides extremely well, and has a stunning and clever black horse and finishes second after a ride off, to a professional trainer.  My daughter and I did horse showing together for a long time, and it was interesting to revisit the nerves and drama of young females struggling in this high powered competitive world.  When you are competing on a horse, you have to keep your own nerves under control or the horse will pick up on your fears and become afraid (what saber tooth tiger, where?).  Sports of any type are terrific for kids if well managed, and for girls the horse world is a great emotional arena to learn in.

The coyote family, tired of our constant spying, has moved the pups, and Penny and I have sorted through many things.  We will probably regroup at Ellen’s ranch in Montana later in the summer, the three “old bags” as we called ourselves back in our teenage years.

It is interesting to revisit these bits of my past, and nice to see that much of it has not changed, even though it is a long time since I did basketball or horse shows with my kids. 

I also got a taste of two radically different communities. Fairplay has retained a lot of the rowdy, anything goes flavor of its mining days, it reminds me a lot of Wales, the small MA town where I spend much of my adult life.  Short on money, not a fertile place for pretensions, and long on supporting children and having fun.  Evergreen is the high priced spread, where ranchettes have grown up on the old high mountain pasture ranches. It is spectacular, as is a lot of CO, and has Denver at its feet for work.

Next stop is an Airstream Rally, in Howard, CO with some of the Denver unit folks, many of whom I know from past rallies. 

The theme is pirates, and although few of the others dress up, you can be confident that I was decked out in my buccaneerish finery, slinging Arrgg’s with the best of them.  We had a pirate joke telling contest, which I won and other fun stuff, and I made some new friends among the Airstream crowd.   I returned from the rally with Patti and Tom, old Airstream friends from way back, and am parked in the street in front of their house in Lafayette, CO.  We just had Chinese take out, and I’m snug in my trailer in the chilly rainy evening.