Driving Home in April

When coming home from a trip and entering my mountain valley in Colorado, I usually think about how good this feels--to have been somewhere, perhaps to do errands in the city, or coming home from a distant adventure as was last the case coming home from Cincinnati, then Santa Fe.

Well, I was only coming home from Salida, a town 20 miles down the valley. No big deal there, but it was a spectacularly beautiful late afternoon, almost evening. I wrote notes to myself which I'll use now.

Driving Home....

Home from Salida. The sun had just gone over the snowy peaks ahead, sunlight still wrapping around their summits. Near peaks looming, others going off stepwise to the north. Each jagged, pointed, all geographically associated by forming a straight line up one side of the Upper Arkansas River Valley.

Nearer, a few sprouts of green. Water flowing in irrigation ditches. Low houses, farm buildings, and sheds where tractors are. A pickup moving along an unseen road. Pieces of irrigation pipe scattered, about to be assembled. A few clumps of trees, not leafed yet. The highway stretching off ahead, one car behind with lights on, two coming, one with lights.

Rounded hills behind me, the high sweep of the Sangres beyond. Scattered clouds hovering, contrails far above, pointing toward major cities. Brown grasses stirring in the breeze.