Sally Gerard

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If I could have any super power today, I’d want the ability to fly. If I could fly, I’d be able to get home in the blink of an eye and spend much less time on the road. I could check cattle, even when they’re spread across the pasture. I’d be able to spot problems quicker with stock tanks, fences or calves.

I could decide, on the spur of the moment, to fly

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up to a mountaintop and watch the sunset, or to the ocean for the dawning of day. Meeting friends, who live on the front range or in Atlanta or Tennessee or DC or Paris, for coffee

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could be spontaneous. Just think, you could soar with eagles or fly south in a V of geese or be in the midst of one of those huge swarms of birds just making patterns in the sky.

You could wave at people in the window seats of airplanes, have lunch in Hawaii or Australia and never wait in line to see the top of the Eifel Tower or the Statue of Liberty. If you were good, you

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could fly with skis on to the best snow on the mountain, or fly along with a picnic lunch until you found a beautiful spot to enjoy it. Maybe you could even deliver pizza to the astronauts on the space station! Endless possibilities.

Summer is full swing and we’re facing our first week with temperatures heading into the 90’s. I’m not much of a fan of heat; I’m much more into cooler temperatures like we’ve had most of May. However, on our first hike day last week, we did run into quite a bit of snow.

Dropping our horses off to their summer jobs in the mountains, lucky them, I met my hiking partner, Elaine. We’d ridden about twenty-six miles the previous couple days and were ready to begin our summer hiking adventures. Joining us that day to hike as far as we could on the Ouzel Falls trail, were Alex and Rikki. Blue skies and warm sun lead us up the trail to rushing water crashing over rocks.

A beautiful morning, we came upon fairy slipper orchids, Larkspur and a deer. Due to my creative parking of the horse trailer, we had to be back down to the entrance by 12:30, so we didn’t quite make the falls, but we still managed a sweet five miles. As tradition dictates, we forced ourselves to lunch at Meadow Mountain Cafe and had a round of chocolate malts all around. Wonderful.

Our plan this summer includes: Estes Cone, round two of The Manitou Incline, Thunder Lake and exploration in Golden Gate to culminate in a Mount Bierstadt/Mount Evans hike  in August. Although, I did just read this: “Mount Bierstadt (from Mount Evans) is only 200 lower and 1 1/2 miles from the Mount Evans summit. Connected by boulder-strewn ridges and the Sawtooth. It is possible to cross the Sawtooth without ropes; it is not advisable. Any route from Mount Evans to Mount Bierstadt other than across the Sawtooth involves a loss of altitude of about 2,500 feet and is also not very practical.” (MountEvans.com)

I’m not sure anyone has ever accused either Elaine or me of being practical in our hiking extravaganza.

A really good book would be about a person who is written so real that I’d feel like I could share a morning with them-like I’d sit on the deck and talk or go on a long horse ride with them. The book would tell a story about something they came up against in their life that was terribly difficult and how they overcame it.

There’d be other characters too: some I’d love and some I’d hate and a few I would not know well enough for either. There might be travel to other places or planets, horses or dragons and some really good food I’d want to eat right off the pages.

Some of my favorite books include: The Lord of the Rings trilogy, The Little House on the Prairie series, Night Circus, The Black Stallion and the Girl, Narnia Chronicles, The Summer of my Great-Grandmother, Neverwhere, A Swiftly Tilting Planet, Ender’s Game, and so many more.

I’d totally go to breakfast with Frodo, Laura, Lucy, Meg or Ender! Blueberry pancakes at the Cracker Barrel all around! And coffee.

I think  most people are basically kind. Most people will smile and greet you, lend a hand if you need it, even go out of their way to do a favor. Our nature is to tend toward community with others, so the fabric of our being is to treat others as we want to be treated.

Those who are cruel exist-and in a terrible lonely way, I imagine. Most likely they’re cruel because they were treated cruelly and thus that is what they learned and know. They have no community, know no kinship, and exist in a world made up of only themselves and their evil, tortured minds.

Out here, where people are few and far between, community is so important. We come together in times of need, and how the word gets around that there is need must be a God thing. We had a plumber out and when he pulled in, the first thing he said was, “Wow, I guess you don’t see too many people out here.” I laughed and assured him that we see plenty of people and even have indoor plumbing-hence the reason for calling him down.

Our horses are ready to make their journey to the mountains for the summer in order to show lots of travelers the beauty of a trail through Aspen groves and high meadows. I miss them in summer and so have some girlfriends here to ride these last couple of days. We rode over 18 miles yesterday, packing our lunch and all-important pull-n-peel Twizzlers. We’d hoped to pull-off a two-day pack trip in the mountains, but late snow necessitated a plains oriented trip instead.

Rather than watching for bear and deer, we rode into to stubble fields to let tractors and semis pass, the familiar smile and wave of community surrounding us. Lunching on the deck of some dear friends ‘up north’, we tied the horses in their corral and ate our PB & honey with Cheese Its sitting in comfort of padded deck chairs. I think we all decided that we’d never had a cushier ride day meal! And only one rattlesnake on the homeward road.