Crested Butte: Epilogue

I thought things would be different when I got home from Crested Butte.

After 5 days of riding 3 or 4 hours, followed by micro brewed stout and long conversation, I really felt as though I had turned a corner as far as my recent mood was concerned. I believed that I had 'bumped into my old self', cradled in that idyllic valley.

It physically hurt to leave CB. My chest was tight, stomach felt sour. I had the same feeling leaving Mr. Toad's the night of the last session before my move. I felt as though I was choked up to the point of losing it, and wondering if that might not be a good thing. Maybe there would be some relief afterward...but in the end the break down never happened. The thoughts and emotions stay bottled up. Trying to talk about it gives off a pathetically narcissistic aroma. Not talking about it causes heightened paranoia.

No sooner had I gotten back home...I wanted to go back out. Anywhere. To just grab what I needed, throw it in the car and go. I've got the playlists from the trip in almost constant rotation, plus the new release by Ray Lamontagne and the Pariah Dogs. Beg, Steal or Borrow feels like it was written just for me. Sometimes I'd jump on the interstate and get between a couple semis and imagine that the cloud line in the distance was actually a mountain range, that my next stop would be to set up base camp for another outdoor stretch. I even took it a step further and headed off into Western Wisconsin to do an afternoon hike through a nature preserve. It almost worked. The Timber Rattlers we ran into almost made me forget that Highway 35 was less than a mile away.

While typing in my journal entries from the CB trip, I ran across a note I had written to myself almost a year ago when I first bought my little Moleskin (incidentally, check out this list...I was a cliché without even trying on this front).

It said “Where has your backbone gone? You didn't used to be like this.”

Truth is, I don't know.

Cue music. Roll credits.