An iced-over waterfall up what we call Mosquito Gulch, two days back. The ice is far too rotten to be climbed, and I lack the equipment and knowledge to do so. For now...
Something moved in overnight, which brought a cloak of heavy gray to the first light of morning. I am a sucker for the shades of Grey. The mist gave a damp chill, an illusion to how cold it really was. I grabbed extra layers in case. Best to be prepared.
It was not even early morning when the sun first tore through the murk. By ten, I was seeing blue above. The clouds slithered and danced along the mountainsides in the countenance of Chinese dragons. I marveled as they faded away like dreamtime phantasms in golden light. By noon, one had to wrinkle and squint and give a benefit of a doubt to find even the faintest suggestion of a cloud across the turquoise sky. The air was warm.
When describing the aspects of Byzantium that are the tiny towns, which dot our Sahel, Sempai will wax Norman Rockwell. I find this funny, given his big city-Atlanta-sensitivities and very open homosexuality. Some of the volunteers say things don't change much 'round here. I find myself thinking yes, but no.
Within the borders of the municipalities, one can find a certain sense of stasis. This is a given in small towns, be it rural North Carolina or a ranching station out on the far-flung badlands of eastern Colorado. Rural is rural in that regard.
And yet, this place is ever-changing. I watch-I like to watch-the sculpting of freeze of thaw. Of wind and snow. The changes wrought by rain and rockfall. Nothing is stays exactly the same.
I own up that I am not as well-traveled as I'd like. There are cats of whom I'm acquainted that have lived in far more places than me. Be that as it may, I believe I have found my place in the world, and, of all the places I have lived, this environment is, by far, the most dynamic.
My experiences is similar, in some ways. The town I live in now has shrunk by 2/3 since it's heyday in the early part of the 20th cent. after the mines died. It's now in relative stasis, population-wise. Yet, it changes, and there is little agreement about whether the changes are good or otherwise.
ReplyDeleteMy 'hometown' is in central Oregon, and was around 9K when I left after high school, now it's around 100K and unrecognisable to me.
I've lived all around the US, in Europe and Asia, and at my age I'm not sure I've ever found a place that felt like 'mine', for more than a few years.
Good for you, Robbie. Keep on keepin' on.
Thanx!
DeleteI was born in Denver, and the population's grown quite a bit in the last forty-two years. When we moved back from North Carolina we lived a few miles outside of Parker, which was the edge of eastern Colorado. The last time I was there was for my daughter's graduation and it was like southern Aurora, all strip malls and ticky-tacky track housing.
I've pretty well always felt I was a Colorado boy. On my mother's side of the family, we go back to the 1850's. However, when I went up to the mountains and got to this valley and this town, it was like getting hit with a two-ton heavy thing. There's just no other way to describe it.