Lake Dillon, Colorado

  There is nothing quite like sticking your head out of a window in Colorado. The air is thin and cool but never sharp. My friends and I rejoiced in it as we drove to a house by Lake Dillon. Another respite from our college-destined worlds, this long awaited 4 day trip was our way of going out with a bang. As all mature 18 year-olds do, we sang to Disney songs, the most obvious source of philosophical conversations and adventure. We wore sunglasses and banged our heads. My fingers hung out of the window, tangling with the wave-like air. A charming little town waited for us, full of cafes and strings of light, carefully tended flowerbeds and dogs to dig through them, children skipping and couples stepping slowly. With such a sweet destination, we were serene.

But as it is usually with the beginning of my adventures, it stalled. Some element of experience is always that moment of fear, doubt, or danger when we are defined by the decision to stay or pull away. My car puttered to a stop just off the highway, steaming and stubborn. A coolant leak that my mechanic had failed to solve yet again. At first we all just stared at it. Then everyone looked at me. I imagine I visibly gulped. After an SOS to my step dad, we set to rigging up a hose and attempting in our perplexed unknowledgeable way to temporarily fix the car. Of course it started to rain. I suppose it was a movie moment, just not the one out of all others I would choose. But we laughed. After cooling down the radiator with a hose, we threw ourselves in the grumpy car and spun around breathless. I said jokingly “No more breakdowns” –in more ways than one. In my leaky submarine of a car we drove out of the flood of water pooling.  

Dillon was comparatively calm, but breathtaking in its own way. As the night descended gently, we danced to an 80s cover band playing in a small amphitheater by the lake. We were the youngest there, surrounded by retired couples swaying happily just off beat and children sticking their tongues out. We laughed at a woman recording her father, whose dance move was comprised of pointing over and over again. When we found a sculpture of the founder of Dillon a day later, pointing his finger at the view, we deemed the dance move the “John Bailey Dance.” There’s something about dancing by the water, as the night slowly fades the features. Maybe it’s having beauty in different forms all around me, in my ears and my eyes and my dancing feet.

Every night we stayed up until three, talking about college then philosophies of life then the silliest things that set us into uncontrollable laughter. I’m starting to think to really know a person one must hear out these late night musings. It was exhaustion of the body, but not nearly the spirit. We awakened to breakfast on outdoor patios, watched movies in our dreamy half-asleep state, and stepped into our small town. Out again into the warm air, sun tickling up my sleeves, wind blowing my hair gently away from my back.



One day we wandered into Keystone, Colorado. We walked through a hotel entrance to the small square instead of through the public stairway. Hotel elegance is always nice to behold. It is fun to enter in the less obvious way, especially when it turns out the grander. Once through we rented paddle boats and bought fish food. On the pond, I laughed at the word “fish.” We had an entourage of geese. For a minute it was pleasant, until they got vicious. They grabbed the boat with their beaks, honked at each other, swam right in front of the boat to get us to slow. It was all we could do to escape them, including some clever back-pedaling. When we were in the clear, I enjoyed driving my friend and myself right under the fountain, soaking us when I got too close. She threw fish food at me in fake anger and we were right back where we started.

I returned home to my ever-quickening countdown. In less than two weeks Dillon will be a world away. I found solace in Dillon’s small pocket of the world right before entering a bigger one. Somehow late nights, dancing, water fountains and even maniacal geese put life into perspective. When I make small, simple memories, I prepare myself for bigger ones. I brace myself for when it comes time, when there is more than breezy wisps of Colorado air pushing me forward.