Happy Halloween, Y'all!

Putting Myself in Time-Out

I've gotten quite a few inquiries wondering if my trip to Laramie was "successful".  I put that in quotes because success is such a chameleon of a word. My trip was successful in that I wasn't in a car accident, I didn't get food poisoning, or kidnapped, and I even returned home despite having a credit card.

The schism, in my mind, is that I had a dangerous case of expectations, and what the trip was like didn't meet my imagination head-on. Some of it was in the ball park because I certainly know what the drive to Wyoming is like, and I am all too familiar with the inside of a hotel room, but I couldn't settle down and write for hours in the room like I had hoped. Just hated sitting there at that little desk. It also didn't help that hotels use cleaning products that give me an allergic reaction. Benadryl apparently cannot be overpowered by caffeine, but I tried.

My mistake was thinking I could move writing to the forefront, after a lifetime of writing snippets and pages whenever and wherever I could. My writing time has always been so fragmented that it's hard to write anything that requires development. It took this attempt at a writing retreat to clarify the problem. Even in Laramie, I wrote in coffee places, in my car in the parking lots of parks, and while sitting in a picnic ground in a national forest. Occasionally I wrote in the room while on the bed surrounded by books and paper but I read more than I wrote.

Trying to write a novel this way is like trying to row a trawler.

I ended up feeling like I had banished myself to a long time-out. Go to your room, old lady, and think about what you just did. I did my thinking and will do things differently next time. For instance, send the rest of the household to Disneyland while I stay home and write.

A nice place to write.

Cheyenne, Wyoming

Sunday is a quiet day in Laramie, so I started out early with good coffee at the Coal Creek Coffee place in Laramie's historic downtown. After that, I wasn't sure what I wanted to do. When life is moving at a slower, less stressful pace, (like a dying turtle) the minutes seem to last longer and there are so many more hours in a day. Laramie could market itself as a town where time is as vast as the valley it inhabits. Or maybe it's not just the reduction in stress, but a touch of boredom mixed in too. Hotel rooms are boring, and not conducive to working even when it's writing disguised as work. I've written, but mostly in coffee places and while sitting at a couple of parks.

I wanted to check out the Happy Jack Road that runs from the summit in the Medicine Bow National Forest, to Cheyenne. It turned out to be a beautiful area. I could see the fabulous rock formations of Vedauwoo, the plains to the southeast, pinon pines and vast meadows. The Curt Dowdy State Park looked like a great place to camp.

It didn't take too long to get to Cheyenne. There are several nice parks with lakes in the town and the downtown has some new construction going on. My overall impression of Cheyenne is that it's much nicer than I previously thought. Not that anyone in Cheyenne ever cared what I believed.

I can't complain about the weather even though the renowned Wyoming wind hit 45 mph gusts today, which ain't nothing for Wyoming wind. However, I'm heading for home tomorrow and there are clouds building up in the north. Rumors of snow are being whispered, but none of the weather people seem to agree on their guessing about tomorrow's atmospheric mood up here. I've had my share of weather surprises in this state so I'm feeling a bit paranoid.

Speaking of weather, it was 16 years ago today that Colorado was hit by the blizzard of 1997. It was a bad one.

Cheyenne, Wyoming

Wyoming

Wyoming is Fossiliferous!

Vedauwoo

After being in the hotel room for several hours, I decided to go out to a coffee place for a break. On the way to the truck, I realized I had already had too much caffeine, and decided to go for a drive instead. I wanted to avoid the freeway but ended up taking I-80 east to Vedauwoo, about 17 miles away. It was balmy in Laramie when I left but, as is often the case in the west, an icy wind was blasting when I arrived at the park. It was pleasant there despite being at 8,000 feet, but I wished I had brought my coat instead of my fleece. (a rookie mistake not to take a selection of outerwear) There were two buses of elementary school students to keep me company as I admired the rock formations.

I had hoped to see beavers and moose but only saw some crows.

I thought the name Vedauwoo must derive from one of the Native American languages, but I was sadly mistaken. Turns out that it's a made-up name from a theatre production that was once put on in the canyon there. Further investigation shows that the word is anglicized from the Arapahoe word "bitto'o'wu", meaning, perhaps, earth, or earthborn, or earthborn spirit. Maybelle Land DeKay is the one who appropriated the word for her play.

About the play:  it "...had a cast of nearly 500 including nymphs, sprites, and a lusty elf, Indians, trappers, cowboys, the university dean and president" The was also a dinosaur with one line: "groan"."
(from an article by Roger Ludwig, September 10th, 2011)

The play, produced three times between 1928 and 1931, sounds like a hoot. Maybe someone should revive it for history's sake.

Going Laissez-faire in Laramie

It started in August around the time of my birthday. Steve arranged for me to have five days for a do-it-yourself writing retreat. Things kept happening that prevented me from taking the Thursday through Monday allotment of time that would mean I could go and do.... anything the hell I want! Woo Hoo! 

Sorry about that. Free time makes me giddy.

The retreat became now or never as the summer whittled away to nothing. This weekend was the only possible weekend left, so I decided to go for it. My budget has dwindled in inverse proportion to the distance my cat puts between herself and the bright light at the end of the tunnel. Stuff happens.

So I'm here in Laramie, Wyoming.

Trying to write.

Seriously. I am.

Good-bye Longmont

Hello Laramie. 

(Does this remind anyone of The Shining?)

Connectedness in a Crazy World

Connectedness is a relevant topic these days. From the overwhelming strands of connectedness through Facebook, to the Christmas letter you occasionally get from a friend who lives on the other side of the world, we sit on an interpersonal spiderweb of our own creation. I have friends and relatives who never get in touch. I wouldn't know if they're dead or alive if I didn't occasionally call them. These aren't people who are trying to dump me. I know that would seem to be the obvious conclusion, but we are interested in each other and there is affection between us in every case. I think old habits die hard and people are overly busy and fundamentally lazy. 

Then there is the connectedness of a different type. Nature, for instance. I feel a reassuring bond with the world (or earth, if you will) when I'm outdoors. Just going outside of my house and looking at the trees, the moon, the bats and birds, gives me a little jolt of connection and I'm better for doing so.

Writing is a connection to something bigger than myself. I'm a groveling neophyte standing before the alter of language, but at least I'm in the sanctuary.

Reading is a common way of feeling like part of a group. I wish we had a secret handshake so it wasn't necessary to always be carrying around a book. People who read see people who don't read as a very large and sad group. 

Family provides so much of your identity and connectedness you couldn't scare away with a shotgun. Entire nonfiction sections of the library seem dedicated to the trauma of family, but fiction is ripe with familial trauma as well as the beauty of a good family. Enough said.

A Rainy Day in Longmont

My titles are seldom interesting at all, but I detest the pun headlines that newspapers, and some bloggers, continue to indulge in. Sometimes my posts have an actual topic, making it easier to invent a title, but usually I'm rambling around inside my head and have to resort to something vague. If I haven't learned to focus on a topic by now, it's not likely to ever happen.

So it's raining today. Knocking the colors off the trees. The clouds are high and stretch as far as the eye can see, except over the foothills, so it's a pleasant enough rain event. (We like to refer to our weather as an "event" here in Colorado: rain event, hail event, snow event, water up to your armpits event)

Longmont's rush hour

I'm taking our sick cat, Emily, back to the vet this morning. If her lab work has improved since Friday, she might not have to have a feeding tube surgically....what is the right word? installed? attached? implanted? She has serious liver problems brought on by stress. I've said it before, people...stress kills!

Since I thought we were going to have to pull the plug on her last Friday, I'm very grateful she has a chance to recover. She's 10 or 11, which is not exactly old and not exactly young. Like me at 61.

Winter Breathing Down My Neck

The trees are turning colors and the leaves are piling up on the lawn. I can look at the calendar and know the time to prepare for snow is short, but it takes several icy mornings to actually kick me into gear. My plan was to start getting ready for winter today.

However, a drive in the country is cheaper than a shrink, so first I went for a drive on the Eastern Plains. I needed a beauty fix but mostly I took in the big sky. There were some pretty things but the flood-damaged land was all too apparent.

A nice blue heron near the river

The mighty South Platte River

Once home, I pruned plants and pulled frost-shriveled pumpkin vines and tomato plants out of the ground. Steve took down the white canopy that shades our side yard, forcing me to accept that the summer of 2013 is indeed just a memory. 

It felt good to do some productive work after a week of worrying about my sick cat who turned out to be very sick indeed, but not as sick as I first feared. It will take a weeks and maybe months to get her back to full health but that's a lot better than the alternative.

Winter is coming!

October's Wheels Grind Slowly Through the Mud

We're dealing with the aftermath of our disastrous flooding here in Colorado, and are handling it as well as can be humanly managed. There are so many stories of what happened to people, places, animals, and things that even a story addict like myself has had to build up a shell just to survive all the heart-wrenching tales. I know the feeling when your reality suddenly changes. Disbelief as your heart skips a beat, then another, then stutters along as you try to come to terms with unreality. It can be caused by the death of a loved one, your cancer diagnosis, a car accident, or economic ruin. And now we can add one I hadn't thought too much about until now: Your home is there, filled with your life's possessions, representing safety. Your beloved refuge from the hard world. The next day, hour, minute, your home is gone.

I just heard the story of someone's house disappearing overnight in the flood. The people had no real worry about losing their lovely three-story dream home. It was above a dry wash on the only level ground on the property, but the heavy rains had filled the gully with water for the first time in over ten years. They went to spend the night at a neighbor's house simply because the unusual sound of the rushing water was keeping them awake. They returned in the morning, planning to get ready to go to work, and the house had vanished. The powerful water had undercut the flat land the house was built upon, taking away both the house and the ground it was built on.

Mushrooms and green grass in abundance now.

Fall is here and winter is breathing down our soggy necks.

Who You Gonna Call?

This car is in the parking lot at my granddaughter's preschool. It might belong to one of the teachers. Makes me wonder exactly what they're being taught there. Maybe it's Longmont's version of Hogswart.