Where the Land Surrenders to the Sky

Eternity introduced itself to me in fourth grade.

It was in the pages of a choose-your-own-adventure book. You as the reader are selected to pilot a spaceship into a black hole - for research or whatever. One of the choices you get to make determines how you and your copilot will cross the event horizon. If you choose wrong, one of the outcomes involves your ship losing power and becoming suspended in permanent orbit around the black hole. You are told rescue is not possible, and you meet your demise slowly as supplies and oxygen run out. This macabre ending is accompanied by an illustration of you and your co-pilots’ decaying corpses, still sitting upright in their chairs.

That story was the first that really put “time” into perspective for me. There was a “before” that I wasn’t around for, and an “after” that would carry on in my absence, but what really threw me for a loop was just how long both of those periods would be. Since then, I’ve had a fascination with places and things that seem to exist in a different scale of time - or even outside of one altogether.

That’s what brings me back to the Bluffs in south Denver, Colorado. It’s a series of interconnected open spaces about 10 minutes from my hometown. Their sinuous trails and elevation above nearby neighborhoods make you feel uncoupled from time’s procession. It really hasn’t changed in all the years I’ve been going there. I can’t prove it, but I don’t think it’s exaggerating to say that the area looks the same as it did one thousand years ago - parking lot not withstanding.

This area was and is one of my favorite places on planet Earth. For that reason, I believe I have an obligation to “commemorate” how I feel about it. I can’t make you feel how I do, but I know you have somewhere like this that evokes similar feelings.

This is a special piece for me, so I’m taking some more time to create it. The rest will be published on October 20th.

I hope you find where you feel found. This is that place for me.

Read the second part here.

Thank you for your time.

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