I caught this image on a webcam this morning and it certainly brought back a lot of memories. Inevitably, after a wonderful week or two in the mountains, one has to pack up the car and head home. Left behind will be the sun-splashed peaks, the beckoning trails, the campfires and fish fries, the icy creeks, the sweet mountain air. Ahead lie the plains, the endless miles, the heat, and home.
Leaving the mountains, you keep watching in the mirrors or out the back window as they slowly fade into the distance, until finally, somewhere out east, they finally disappear and you settle resignedly into your seat. There’s a long, monotonous drive ahead.
Hours later, the pull of home begins to overpower the feelings of loss and it becomes, almost literally, a run for the barn. The last two hundred miles, in the dark, are all downhill, and eventually familiar lights begin to appear on the horizon.
Finally, some twelve hours after leaving that cabin in the mountains, you pull into your own driveway, exhausted but home. And somehow everything looks new again, different somehow, fresher, and yet so familiar.
Tomorrow you’ll see your best friend. And next week school starts! So much to do to get ready …
It is so hard to leave the mountains, especially when it is so hot down below and then there are the… grasshoppers! I loved reading this piece.
Grasshoppers? I can’t remember when I last saw a grasshopper. Plenty of crickets when I step outside at night, and frogs. In the middle of suburbia. With no ponds around. Go figure. Glad you enjoyed this.
We have crickets and cicadas over here in Aurora, but boy to we have grasshoppers at the moment. I think that it is because I am located right at the edge of the plains (Literally, the Plains Conversation Center is next door…) and they are coming in from the fields to the east.
That makes sense. I’d have to go several miles east or north to get to continuous open fields or plains. Sort of patchwork in between as subdivisions fill in. I’m happy not to have grasshoppers, but even happier to have very few mosquitoes. Knock wood!!
You captured so very well the appeal of vacations! Change invigorates and at the same time makes one appreciate the safety and ease of home!
I was reliving dozens of wonderful vacations, escapes from Oklahoma City to Allenspark, CO and vicinity. Glad I managed to capture some of it.
You describe perfectly my childhood experience of leaving our Wisconsin cabin (and lake) and driving back to Chicago. I didn’t want to leave the lake ever.
Leaving was excruciating. Nothing at home compared to those vacation times and places. And yet, home was always home. We were so lucky, you and I, to have had those experiences.
A wonderfully evocative post, Colorado.
Gracias
Your words made pictures. Really. I could see the rear view mirror and the fading images. Good job.
Oh, thanks. I had all those delicious memories in my head and tried to put them on the page. Just a glance at the screenshots and I’m back there again. Doesn’t seem that long ago … only 60 (!!) years or so …