Strange weekend, strange week, strange year.

I spent this past weekend somewhere between wonder and terror. Or at least wonder and acute discomfort. On the one hand I experienced something completely new in the form of Valley View Hot Springs, a place of warm water, beautiful views of the Sangre de Cristos, snow on the ground and lots of people occasionally wearing no clothes. I've been naked before so joining them was easy.



What was hard was talking to them. Especially hard was talking to the people I'd actually traveled with. I'm not generally the person someone goes to for pleasant conversation. I have been known to fascinate people, but that requires I'm not so lost in my head as to think I'm actually fascinating. And it requires that I do a lot of shutting up. That got driven home when a rather harsh but deadly acurate comment to that effect was made. It shut me up. For a little while. It also reminded me to stay conscious and not just babble.

The funny thing about that is that the folks I was with were some of the noisiest people I've been around in months. They chatter. It's delightful in its way to be surrounded by three intelligent, highly conversational people. It's not so delightful to be asked to shut up under the circumstances.

Thing is, I really was probably talking too much, but more than that I wasn't managing to integrate my conversation into the already existing structure that the three friends had. I think some people are naturally good at this, maybe they listen better or there's a cultural rhythm that I lack the skills to see, I have no idea, but I've seen some people slip into a group conversational dynamic like the most graceful, naked fat man into the delightful, warm water of a mountain hot spring where I cannonball like a deranged twelve year old on too many pixie sticks.

And then I get truly nervous which makes me talk even more.

And I think, I hope I didn't do any lasting damage to my ability to interact with these three wonderful people.

And I think and I hope that they also haven't left marks that will make me even more skittish around them.


And for all that it was an amazing weekend and I am very grateful that I was offered the chance to join them and will almost certainly go again, especially if invited to join them and others and maybe again still on my own sometime to be even quieter than anyone who has ever seen me nervous could possibly imagine my being.

I'm made of fear sometimes, from toenails to slightly chewed fingernails.

But this weekend, in some of the quieter moments, drifting in the water I felt like some things started to unclench, to let go a little. Late at night when all the pools were empty, and really it was too cold to want to step out of the warm water and into the sharp night air and I was by myself, that was nice too. A balance really, of trying to interact with the people around me, the ones who'd put the effort out to meet me and get to know me... and the quiet where maybe I can actually relax in a way that sitting in my apartment never does.


I saw a bald eagle on the way there, and the way the mountains were swallowed by clouds and released again. When I was falling asleep on Sunday night, in my own bed I dreamed I could still feel the slow movement of the soaking pond as I hung there, just drifting. On Monday I noticed that I had been naked long enough during the weekend that I felt my clothing as a physical, palpable sensation.

Perhaps if I can find that quiet and connect even more with my own self I might find the words and the silences to connect better with the people around me.

If not, there's still the sensation of warm water, the blue and bluer sky and the frost riming the perpetual fall leaves.

It's just nicer to share.