Monday, November 22, 2010

It amazes me how spending only twenty-four hours at Valley View leaves me with a sensation of dislocation when I come home.  Denver looks a little brighter, but a little less like home.  I feel like I had a week long vacation and yet I was only gone from Sunday morning to Monday afternoon.  Ashley and I decided to go at the very last minute, at eleven o'clock on Saturday night.  We packed up and headed out on Sunday, and called the office to reserve the room (that opened up miraculously) about five minutes after the office opened.  We drove through two snowstorms on the way there, and once there the wind was cold and the weather somewhat uninviting.

It was amazing.  There is no place else that I have been anywhere that leaves me feeling like this.  The feel of clothing is currently foreign.  It's not unpleasant, just foreign.  I will have to remind myself for the next few days that I can't go stand on my porch in the buff.

Trees and rocks, birds of every kind (especially noisy jays, jaunty magpies and a one lone bald eagle flying off to the north as we drove down the dirt road into the hotsprings) a tiny, white ermine and most of all the water.  It's not the hottest water ever, but that means I can stay in it for hours.  Getting out of the water can be excruciating for a second until I can get my wool cloak wrapped around me.  It's even more excruciating when I back into a snow covered tree. 

But really... I just feel different after spending time there.  I've never been for more than two days.  I can only imagine that after a week I might not ever come back.

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