Big things are coming

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July 26, 2014
          Day 87

There's something extra special about Colorado that I don't think many outsiders know about. 

When you land in Denver, you're not landing anywhere near the mountains.  In fact, the airport itself feels closer to Kansas or Nebraska than it does to Denver.  It's just way, way, way out there, and the mountains are still far off in the distance.

Once you get into the Denver metro area, you still have a drive before you start getting into higher elevations, and even then, you're still in what's often referred to as the front range.  But then it happens.  Huge mountains and gorgeous vistas begin appearing before you.  Snow-capped mountains--even in the 90+ heat of July--reveal their beauty high above you in the sky. 

Like my trip into the mountains, this entire year's worth of daily blog writing is my way of moving up slowly to my 40th birthday.  I chose to go through this journey from age 39 to 40 so publicly, because for me, my life is already quite public to begin with. 

"Life is like playing a violin solo in public, and learning the instrument
 as one goes along." --Samuel Butler

I've reached many mountaintops so far in life, but I didn't publish my first book until I was 37, and my second was published after turning 38.  I hope to have the third published before I'm 40.  I was a monk for four years, and planning to be a teacher of English Literature and Theology.  (I was also planning to be celibate!)  Seventeen years now after leaving the religious order, I've built a new life for myself, including a beautiful relationship for the past 12 years, a beautiful home in a beautiful town called Malverne, and just a beautiful life filled with great friends, great travel experiences, and many great memories.  My life is absolutely beautiful...but I do still have more mountains I want to climb.

The mountains I see up ahead of me are filled with new adventures just waiting for my arrival.  I don't know what 40 will look like, or even what the rest of 39 will look like for that matter, but I know I've been blessed with a beautifully scenic road so far.  The turns in the road have often surprised me, sometimes scared me, sometimes even upset me, but more often than not, they have completely delighted me. 

The road to the mountaintops I hope to reach with my writing career, and indeed with my life as a whole, is a long one.  Sometimes, the peaks still seem too far away to ever hope to reach.  Yet I keep on driving down this road anyway, and I enjoy the scenery as I go.  Maybe I'll get there, and maybe I won't, but either way, I'm grateful for the gift of the beautiful road I'm on right now.

Farewell, Colorado

July 23, 2014
          Day 84

And that was our vacation!

It's 9:18 AM local time here in the Rocky Mountains, and I'm about halfway done with my venti white chocolate mocha.  My suitcase lays open on the bed, and my clothes are in a pathetic little pile on the floor, waiting to be packed away again.

The journey back is still part of the journey, so we're not done yet.

2:21 PM local time in Denver.  We’re pretty early for our flight, and heard it’s about half an hour late.  Lovely. 

8:33 PM New York time.  We’re somewhere over Ohio...I think.  Hard toe over Ohio I think.   _______________________________________________________________________________________________ tell.  Our liftoff was a little more eventful than I’d prefer, as it seemed to take longer than it should have for us to get air born.  And turbulence welcomed us to the less than friendly skies soon afterward. 

Right now, Andy’s reading, as I was too just before opening up my Netbook to type this out, and we’re about an hour away from New York.  The sun will soon set behind us in the west, and the east coast of the United States awaits our arrival as we slowly drop in altitude.

We’ll be back at sea level once we land again in New York, and the Rocky Mountains will be several hours and maybe a couple thousand miles back behind us.  Our trip had its highs and lows, but mostly highs of course.  We drove up 10,000-mile peaks, close to two miles above sea level, and that was after landing in the mile-high city of Denver before that.  Hard to beat the heights we reached on this trip, but we always manage to find new fun in each new trip we take.

In the meantime, we are grateful for all we saw, heard, smelled, touched, and tasted on this trip. Colorado and Wyoming gave us much to appreciate, and much to think about.  As the sun slowly sets behind us on our journey, we already look forward to the new sunrises still ahead. 

11:45 PM in New York.  Home sweet home!

The trip is over, but the journey goes on...

Colorado, Day 4

July 21, 2014
          Day 82

One of the funniest things I've seen up here in the Rockies are signs that say, "Scenic Area" followed by a parking lot or pull-off area.  What's crazy and funny about this is, of course, the fact that everywhere you look, there are scenic areas!

Today we went to the beautiful ski resort area of Vail, Colorado, but of course even before and after that area, we were told to look around us through these signs.  Do people not look around?  Do they not see what's right in front of them?  Hmm.  Maybe that's our message for today.

Saint Augustine once said, "Men go abroad to wonder at the heights of mountains, at the huge waves of the sea, at the long courses of the rivers, at the vast compass of the ocean, at the circular motions of the stars, and they pass by themselves without wondering."

We have had a ton of amazing vistas reveal themselves to us in the past four days, and it's difficult to truly appreciate them the more they surround us.  It's constant.  Nature is constant.  Mountains and meadows and hawks and trees are all constantly revealing their beauty over and over again.  So the longer you look on them, the more you realize it is not they who are changing and growing, but instead it is us.  We are changed by their majesty, and we are grown by their beauty.

As we close out our fourth day here in Colorado, we are exhausted and overwhelmed.  We are exhausted by the driving and the doing, and we are overwhelmed by the size and scope of these mountains.  As we marvel at their heights, we are humbled by their scope.  We are just two small souls wandering over the many huge mountain tops in our rental car.

When we finally arrive back on Long Island this Wednesday night, we won't see any signs for scenic vistas on the parkway as we drive home.  Signs like that are rare, but if you think about it, they're also unnecessary.  We have so much worth seeing all around us everywhere we travel on this planet, and the revelations of the journey are always happening inside and not outside of us anyway.

So open your eyes.  Really open them.

And see the beauty all around you...without being told which way you should look.

Colorado, Day 2

Rocky Mountain National Park.  Gorgeousness abounds, though
those are the outhouses in the foreground. :)

July 19, 2014
          Day 80

Today we went high up into the mountains here in Colorado to Long's Peak and hiked around Bear Lake.  There are lots of stories to tell, but here's just a small one I think is funny.  Ironically, for the second day in a row, I'm going to discuss bathrooms.

In the parking lot before we began our walk, I ran into the bathroom quick to pee, not expecting perfection, but definitely not expecting what I saw.

The lid was down, which always makes me worry.  Was there a flushing problem the previous user didn't want to tell me about?  Or perhaps he just wanted to be polite somehow?  So I walk over and raise the seat, hoping it'd be clean.  Well, the good news right away was that there was nothing in the pot.  The bad news is, it was because the toilet literally had no bottom.  A simple glance downward showed me a giant mass of...  Well, a giant mass of bodily product about 10 feet down.  It was light enough to see much more than I'd like to, but dark enough to help me focus on something closer to the area all around me in the tiny bathroom.

But yeah, there I was up in the mountains, delighted with the amazing views all around me, yet reminded right away that being part of nature meant really, really accepting nature, if you know what I mean.

Soon enough, of course, I was back out in nature, enjoying the incredible snow-topped mountain vistas up above, and absorbing each and every bit of the day I could.  I stopped thinking about the bathroom adventure, and focused on the sightseeing adventure.  And yet of all the things I could have written about here, I chose to focus on the strangest, most mundane moment.

I think it's because it was the most profound reminder I could have been given that this beautiful state, these beautiful mountains, and yes, even this beautiful earth, are all grounded in beautiful reality.  No matter how high up we reach for the clouds, no matter how stunned we are by the beauty around us, and no matter how impressed and inspired we are by the movements of spirit, we've still got lots of shit, too.  And the shit's a reminder of perspective.

Today is the 17th anniversary of the day I left the religious life.  It's a day I recall each year to remember the freedom I have now.  An old monk I took care of a bit in my last year in the monastery once taught me, "If you don't take the bitter with the sweet, you can't tell the difference."

A massive literal shithole beneath the outhouse today kind of helped me appreciate the beauties of nature even more.  And the beauties of nature today also helped me appreciate all the shit I was trying not to think about.  The bitter and the sweet, and the difference appreciated.

Day 3 begins in a few hours, and it'll be a day marked by some pretty shitty feelings and some pretty amazing views.  But more on that tomorrow.