A Summer of Healing.

As dawn broke, the city stretched and yawned, shaking off last night’s slumber.  It was time for another week.  Sitting in front of my window, facing the grassy quad, I listened as the sounds of campus gurgled to life.  The bustle of students rushing to their 8 a.m. lectures, the beeping of distant construction, the sirens racing towards the hospital, all wafted in harmoniously through my window, riding the warm, glowy wave of morning sun. 

I spread peanut butter and jelly onto a tortilla, the way mom used to before family hikes.  The hikes that traveled through the flatirons.  The mountains that are forever my home.  Behind the historic buildings of Chautauqua, we crunched along the dusty trails, completely absorbed in the aroma of wildflowers and the sweet vanilla of the ponderosa pines.  As I searched for the perfect lunch rock, I let the rhythmic motion of the tall grass captivate me, waving in the wind like the smooth ocean, lazy and rolling in the summer sun.  

At the summit, we ate lunch as we looked out over Boulder, straining our eyes to find the white peaks of the airport on the horizon and letting the reflective shimmers of the city distract us.  The warmth of lunch rock comforted me, lifting my face up towards the sun, whispering the magic healing powers of the sun in my ear while drawing my mouth into a wide grin.  My hands sticky with jam dribbles from my pb+j rollup, I soaked in the rays, but more importantly, I basked in the warmth of family.  

Without them, I couldn’t have noticed the beauty of the journey.  I couldn’t have reached the peak.  I couldn’t have felt the healing yellows of the Colorado summer sun.