West

I looked out the windows of our rented chevy malibu for well over 7 hours. And not just the one window in front of me- the one to my left, to my right, behind me- basically any transparent surface that allowed me to see my surroundings outside of the tattered gold rental car. This is a grand deviation from the norm- or my norm, anyway. I have been subject in the past to various bouts of motion sickness and a very short attention span, so normally I'm looking forward or not looking around at all. This time, however, the two things that keep me from enjoying the scenery were superbly overshadowed by the magnificent landscape that is Colorado.

As a kid, my parents always traveled primarly north or south of our stomping grounds in Southern Kentucky. My first trip westward was to Las Vegas a couple of years ago- and although it does offer some nice desert-esque mountains as an almost apologetic backdrop to the glitz and blinking greed from the strip- it pales in comparison to what I saw and experienced this past week.

The Telluride Bluegrass Festival housed more than just music for me, although the music was my primary draw... the enviornment of the festival soon became a foundation for my extreme enjoyment and constant feelings of inspiration and bewilderment. Listening to the various voices and instruments reverberate off those snow covered mountains combined with the energy and genuine kindness of those around me was indeed what I had come there for and what I needed. As we rode up the mountain one afternoon on a gondola ( of which i was a little weary of at first) my friend Patrick- after looking out all the windows available to him- concluded that " coming to a place like this just makes you wonder what the hell is wrong with the rest of the world."

It was then that I realized that those mountains I had been returning to, day after day, providing me with the same awesome backdrop to the music that I love, were becoming symbols of sorts .Life is way too short to be staring out of one bug filled greasy window. You end up only seeing things coming into that particular view. One of the awesome folks we camped next to put it best during a late night campfire at our campsite. " Ya only go round once", he said. " Make sure ya get a good look at everything."