My Revealed Plans for an Early Colorado Retirement
Colorado is a dream state - God's country in its truest form. Encountering it for the first time, I wondered if I'd been missing out on some greatly kept secret. How could I not have known all of this was here? From trecking up the first flat iron in Boulder on my very first day, and taking the time to survey all I conquered below, after lots of stops to take breaths along the way and admittedly even tears, I was astounded. The view was the type of scene that makes you feel small, peculiarly small. The variety of small where you even start considering how the hell you got there - not on the mountain but on this Earth in the first place. Any place the eye had the opportunity to rest, once the landscape could be fully registered, conjured feelings of utter astonishment and awe, and even a bit of freedom. Colorado is the type of place that could make anyone feel free.
We stayed in Boulder, a perfect town which I nearly refused to leave. There were tea houses, and the most thoroughly curated independent bookstores, and the most stomach-achingly delicious Tibetan fare, BBQ burnt ends, and bone-marrow burgers I could've hoped to ever have. Occupying space in that town, I felt like I had the room to discover and grow and determine a bit about myself. Regardless of the fact that I was on vacation, it felt as if I had actually retreated away from the real world in which Nadia, as she existed, had already been cemented with no hope of alteration. In my new Coloradan universe, I immediately recognized the ability to ebb and flow and rediscover the person I was becoming, just because there was the space and inspiration to do so. Maybe those feelings were in response to the highly concentrated use of everyone's favorite medicinal plant and the free spirit attitude that could be found absolutely anywhere and everywhere. Even so, the point remains - Colorado made me feel like a newly minted, still-becoming human being.
In the midst of all of that ebbing and flowing, existed a fiercely active and self-determined spirit that I fell in love with. Activity, at any age and for any person, was so clearly a paramount part of life for all residents. Hailing back to my semi-harrowing climb up the first flat iron, there was a very petite and very elderly couple that beat me up the mountain easily. They weren't the only ones to do so either. We also took the chance to drive out to Vail, so I could get a look at the jaw-dropping 14ers. Of course, Colorado is a ski-heavy state, but the willingness and desire to get up early to twist and glide down a mountain all day long, for the fun of it and for the athletic benefits, are sentiments far from my own. Nevertheless, I found myself inspired again by the feeling that I was missing out on this, what I've determined to be, Colorado lifestyle which I so desperately hope to harness for myself in my daily life, far, far away from my Boulder dream.
So in the spirit of climbing every single mountain, skiing down each slope, and eating as many bone-marrow burgers as I can manage to, I've decided to retire to Colorado at the age of 35. It's official, it's been decided, no discussion necessary.
