The Futile Ritual

The hot sun burns my filthy adolescent face, but the cold air causes me to roll the window up. This is the paradox of a late March afternoon in the deserts of Western Colorado. The task at hand, rolling up the window, is made more difficult by the absence of the window roller up thing, it has been swiped. The culprit, the driver, it must be impossible to drive safely without the convenience of a knob on his window roller upper, never mind the 12-pack of MGD under the sweater. The noise changes as the '73 Ford takes flight, or at least takes to the bridge to Orchard Mesa. The old truck with several thousand pounds of steel welded on the back, a product of a great depression child, and a one of kind Colorado do it yourselfer, two of a greatly shrinking breed. The once wild, untameable Colorado is making its yearly facade as a river below.

"Maybe a couple of inches," I said. It was certainly not worth noting, but we noted it. Noted it on the same rock every day, hoping, at least I was, that the rock would disappear below those muddy waters. Still to this day I have that hope, that the once might Colorado would rise up and reclaim the beauty we had taken. I longed, still long, to see the Colorado run free as it once had. To truly understand that natural cycle, to have the River force me to respect it the way nature has never done for me.