The Road to Boulder

I am comfortably settled into a funky arch-typical boulder hotel. Called the Boulder Outlook, it is outwardly the same as the comfort Inn or any other budget hotel I've ever been in - the room could be any motel anywhere. Except this is owned by a Boulder-minded person (in my day I think we'd call him a hippy) so it boasts a HOST who is an Ambassador of Cool who is always available to help in whatever. There is all the free stuff of every budget hotel - Internet, breakfast, refrigerator, pet friendly, poor quality towels, small bathroom, etc. but it also has room service that offers vegan and vegetarian options and sustainably farmed meats. Breakfast goes to 10, rather than 9 and the coffee is strong and sustainably farmed. It offers dry cleaning as well as the guest laundry. The pool is maintained with chlorine-free products and the whole hotel is managed on a zero waste principle - "doing its part to keep the world beautiful". And, it has, in the middle of the lobby, a recreation area for hotel quests that includes a climbing rock for adults and a smaller one for kids along with a cascading waterfall. And best of all for me, there is an in-house masseuse. Yes, that's right, here in this funky motel, there is a strong, sweet Asian woman who made herself available for me on 15 minutes notice so that I could uncreak my stiff and crooked body. I've driven over 3500 miles already and my back - which has really been quite well behaved most of the time - is beginning to complain.
Ah, heaven. After more than 60 minutes I walked out of the quiet room able to stand up straight and move easily. I only hope it will last.
The trip from Ogallala to Boulder was an easy 4 hour drive marked by gradual change.  First, as we drove west and south we also drove up. The land changed from fertile plains to high desert.  Climbing from 3500' up to 4500' the landscape color changed from deep green and the gleaming gold of the corn tassel to the flat, dry yellow of hay and straw.  The infinate waves of corn fields mostly disappeared and hay became the ubiquitous crop and,  instead of small herds of catttle grazing peacefully in the fields, hugh feedlots appeared with hundreds if not thousands of penned cattle eating from troughs and eating and eating.


The second noticeable change was that the rolling hills gave way to high, flat plateau and then, way off in the distance, mountains. In Nebraska there is horizon everywhere I looked. As far to the right and left that my peripheral vision would allow me to see, there fileds kissing sky. Then slowly, the horizon disappeared, blocked by shadowy mountains which became more and more clear, more and more detailed as I drove.   And a realization came over me as I approached those mountains.  As beautiful as I found the sandhills, as much as I loved the openness and vastness of the landscape, the closer I got to the mountains, the more settled and comforted I felt. I take something from the strength of the mountains that neither the ocean nor the plains with their never-ending-ness can give me. The moutains contain me.  They protect me.  I disappear in the vastness of the ocean or the plains.  But somehow I stand tall with the mountains.

And finally, the change that became noticeable mile after mile was that I was no longer alone on the roads. People, cars and trucks started surrounding me. The county road ended. A real highway became my only option. Cars to my left or right. Cars in front. Towns that were  6 or 10 individual buildings with 60% of them closed up and dilapidated gave way to towns of block after block of contiguous structures clearly thriving. Nebraska has no people. (It does, however, have very big bugs - you should see the car...)  Colorado has people.
 
I am back in a city now - not a city like NY or Chicago, but like Cambridge or Berkeley and, I must admit, it feels very, very good.