Our half hour side Pike’s Peak journey had turned into five hours. We stop at a gift shop at the mountain’s base. Leigh looks at the jewelry. Everything is 50% off. I try on a ring, which I never do, and walk away. I came back, put it on and buy it. It’s $16.50 with the discount. Lovely, solidly built sterling silver with malachite setting. I feel , as I did with the turquoise ring I bought 15 years ago, that it was waiting for me. The turquoise ring was in a display in one of the gypsy booths at the mall near where we live. It had caught my attention and I tried it on. It fit perfectly. It was 25% off. I left, returned a week later. It was 30% off. I thought about it and left again, knowing that it could easily be gone at any time,. I went back two more times until it was 50% off. It was still there waiting. I bought it. It’s been on my finger ever since. Is it a mystical thing? Is it special? No. It was just waiting for me and now we’re together. I think much of the time in the universe, that’s the way things work. I go out and kill time outside the Pike’s Peak shop when a couple young guys in a cheap compact pull in. I strike up a conversation with the one who stayed outside, Dan. “Yeah, I’m from Chicago,” he says. “We flew in, rented a car and we’re just tooling around Colorado. We wanted to see Pike’s Peak but they said the clouds rolled in and they’re not letting anyone in.” So once again Leigh and I rode with the moment, accidentally discovering the road, going up in the morning and coming down at 1 p.m. just ahead of the clouds. When Leigh is done shopping she calls Sherry, whose husband John just recently died, tells her we’re running late but that we’d be there. We head to Salida, home of one of my favorite western writers, Steve Frazee. I had done an extensive, in-depth article on him years ago. Several of his books were made into movies. He was thorough and researched his material before he wrote. Like Louis L’Amour, what he wrote was the truth about life in the Old West. We go through Salida, up the state highway, turn off on a dirt road, drive up three miles, punch the numbers on an iron security gate which opens with a laborious creaking. We drive another quarter mile up a narrow one-lane dirt road lined with Ponderosa pine and other pines I don’t know. After much slow winding over the rough dirt lane, we’re suddenly facing a two story log house that looks like a small palace. We hadn’t been here in 10 years, but nothing has changed. Sherry and John started building it when they were 60- years- old and spent six years working on it by hand, from hewing the logs to constructing their own irrigation and electrical power systems. Sherry is a tall, 80-year-old
woman, who is one of the classiest persons I’ve ever known. She’s
quiet, articulate, and knowledgeable about everything from cleaning
wood to knowing all the flora and fauna. Her conversation moves
from antiques, history, and music to literature and gardening. We tell her about Pike’s Peak. She nods with old familiarity and says that John was a very sought after engineer. Because of this they had lived in several countries. “Yes, John spent a year up there doing research,” she said. “He used to get so mad because in the winter he’d be snowed in for a month at a time.” I quietly sip my vodka and tonic as my big adventure on Pike’s Peak slowly sinks into proper perspective. As we rise to prepare for bed, Sherry goes over to an urn. “Goodnight, John.” It takes me by surprise. I had noticed the pictures of him on the wall and at one point had walked over to study them more closely. I didn’t even notice the urn on the stand below the pictures. “Some people tell me I’m crazy for keeping his ashes here, but I don’t care,” Sherry says. “I don’t care what anybody thinks. I want him here.” I nod. John’s been a silent partner in our evening discussions.
I bow my head good night to the urn and know, somehow, in some way,
he’s been here, enjoying the company, looking after Sherry.
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