What Goes Around...

I am not an immensely observant person. Ask any of the women in my life and they will tell you so in no uncertain terms. But over the last few years even I, Mr. Oblivious, have had to notice Boulder, Colorado. I started drinking tea years ago by drinking Celestial Seasonings Morning Thunder and Emperor's Choice, then later moved on to its decaf Chai tea. Celestial Seasonings is based in Boulder. For years I have listened to learning programs from a wonderful company called Sounds True - also in Boulder (actually Louisville which is close by). I've become a student of Integral Theory and Integral Life, developed by Ken Wilber largely in, you've got it, Boulder. In one of the magazines we get I saw an article about the 100 best places to live in America, and Boulder was in the top five (along with Ann Arbor, if I remember correctly). And Boulder, perhaps the "greenest" city in the country, was one of the first to establish a program for local home owners to make energy improvements to their homes financed through city bonds and assessments back against the benefited properties. Many cities and states have followed suit.

I've only been to Boulder once, more than ten years ago, ducking up there for a couple of hours after finishing a conference in Denver. But even then I remember thinking, "Wow, what a fun place. Sort of like Ann Arbor, but in the mountains." While there I found a wonderful bookstore/coffee shop on Pearl Street right next door to a high-end kitchen store (neither one part of a chain). Doesn't get much better than that, although I remember thinking that a very fine stereo shop next to the kitchen store would have made a Brad trifecta.

But it wasn't my brief visit that has made this city stick in my mind, and not even the myriad ways that Boulder is calling out to Cary and me on an almost daily basis. No, I remain fascinated with Boulder to this day first and foremost because of a visit my parents made to Colorado almost 50 years ago. When I was a little boy - six or seven at the most - my parents did a marathon drive to Denver and back so that my Dad could interview for a job as a structural steel draftsman. Mom and Dad never went anywhere, even with my sister and me, so this trip was a big deal. They came back from this trip not so sold on Denver, but just glowing about Boulder. And though they would have loved to have moved there, it turned out to be too expensive for these not yet 30-year olds to handle.

Through the years my Mom and Dad both brought Boulder up in wistful conversations. It was that magical place that they had once glimpsed, a sort of Midwesterner's version of Mecca, a place of pilgrimage and hope, a place where the living would have been easy if only... Yeah, if only.

I'm much older than my parents were when they dreamed of living in Boulder. The dream was undoubtedly much sweeter for them than the reality of living there would have been. For one thing, I later learned that one reason for the trip - and the dream - was that Mom and Dad were having marital problems and thought that a real change in scenery would help. It wouldn't have. Wherever you go, there you are. That's the expression. And it's largely true. For another thing, the politics of the place were all wrong. My Mom got more and more conservative as she got older, aggressively so. She thought Rush Limbaugh was a little soft at times. The idea of her living in this mountain hotbed of liberal progressive thought makes me smile a little and shiver a lot.

But it is exactly the politics, the network of progressive thinkers, the quirky restaurants and university town feel, that makes this city so attractive to Cary and me. Oh yeah, and the fact that it's sunny 300 days a year. And so I feel a strong pull to go visit, to look around, to kick the tires of the place. And that's what we're about to do (along with some hiking in Breckenridge and sight-seeing in Denver). And we're making a road trip of it, albeit not with the quick turnaround my parents did. Only by driving there can we get a true sense of "place."

I'm not looking for a dream or a panacea, I'm really not. But I am looking for a reality that sustains me better than the one I am living now. Is Boulder it? Who knows. But I do know it has been calling to me for almost 50 years, and I feel like it's finally time to listen.