the relationship between nature and the human brain. For me, the
exploration started when my husband accepted a job offer that would
take us from an idyllic small mountain city to the hyper-urb of
Washington, D.C. The summer evening we moved out of our house in
Boulder, Colorado, was warm and clear. We stood on the curb
watching the last of our dismayingly large pile of boxes, furniture and
gear get tossed into an Atlas Van Lines truck. The kayaks were the
last to go. Bright as jelly beans, scuffed by years of river rocks, they
had no clue they were destined for a concrete parking pad in a big
city.
Our next-door neighbors came out. Their kids draped arms around
our kids. Soon small children from our branch of dead-end streets
wandered up with their scooters and dogs. At ten and eight, our kids
had been the elders, leading the pack to plastic-cup boat races in the
irrigation ditch, raccoon spotting, tree climbing, rock painting and
general mayhem among the shrubbery. There were days when they’d
be outside from after school until dinner time, and I didn’t really
know exactly what they were doing.
The sky was pinkish. Never does Colorado look as beautiful as
when lit by a summer sunset. I’m sure I was crying before the doors
on the truck slid shut. Then my neighbor started and we were a couple
of fools sniffling against the ornamental sage.
There were a lot of reasons I was sorry to be leaving the West,
where we’d lived for two decades. Chief among them were my friends
and colleagues, the kids’ school and pals, our woodsy house, the
mountains themselves. The trails near our house were ribbons of
delight, filled with surprises like the baby scorpion who skittered
across to say good-bye, the changing parade of wildflowers and my
voluble hiker buddies as we dodged the clench-faced triathletes.
Even so, like a lot of people, I never really knew what I had until I
lost it. What I didn’t fully realize that evening the semi slid away
with our worldly goods was how much the mountains had become my