Blissful Bookends

Eerie day at work today. It conjured flashbacks to five years ago, back to white walls, plastic sheets, a face pushed down on the dirt and some dark, dark days and nights. To see someone go through something similar is tough to watch if you have any humanitarian side to you. It's more than I'm trained to handle, truthfully, and we're leery of getting too involved. But, if somebody reaches out for help and they're about to fall off the edge, do you just block them out and do nothing, or do you try and offer a little helping hand? I offered a slight hand today, and it does not make me a better person. It did, however, remind me of a place I never, ever want to go back to. 

The chaos of the day bookended by bliss. In the morning, a walk in the woods with a little bit of skiing thrown in. The valley echoes now with the raging creek. Spring is everywhere around us. The smell of pine, of wet rock, of melting snow permeate all. One thing I will greatly enjoy during knee recovery is just sitting on our deck, listening to the creek roar and the birds feed, while reading adventure narratives from Shackelton in Antarctica, Nansen in the arctic and Ed Webster on Everest. To find motivation during challenging times, it's good to tap into the greats. 

And then tonight after the chaos died, pedal stroke by pedal stoke, taking the Sklar up a little mountain near work, listening to the grasshoppers cry and enjoying the evening light and air with my beautiful wife at the exact spot where the Great Plains meet the Rocky Mountains. This road crawls under the Flatirons, a Boulder icon. The Flatirons are the remnants of an ancient, gigantic 280 million year old mountain range that rivaled the Himalayas in size. It's not a bad place to ride a bike, and it's a wonderful spot to let the stresses of the day blow away with the spring breeze.