You Are Here: The Glen

If anyone reading this can see random links in the blog entries, I'm sorry, I didn't do that, I don't know what they do, probably best not to click them.

Ok. 

In the absence of something really interesting and secretive and Colorado-Springs-y to do with my friend Morgan, I took her to Glen Eyrie. 

I could tell you that Glen Eyrie is a castle owned by the Navigators, or I could tell you that I've slept through my last two Glen Eyrie volunteer shifts.

For a few weeks, I had been picking up shifts as a housekeeper or a coat-check at the castle. But everyone else was getting paid for the work that I was doing, and I ... well, wasn't. And apparently the goodness of my heart would just not wake up last Friday or Monday.

At the same time, the hiking trails around the Glen are only accessible to staff, conference guests, and volunteers.

Also, you can hike in Colorado in December. It was 45 degrees out. 

"Mom, where is my volunteer pass to Glen Eyrie? You were the last one in the PT Cruiser... Mom, you did not put it in the photo album pile!"

After securing my pass, Morgan and I climbed in her jeep and drove towards the castle. 

Morgan is a camp friend. We met at staff training week when we were both 15. I distinctly remember grabbing her arm during some team building exercise when we were supposed to find partners. I saw this as an unspoken agreement that we would be the best of camp friends. She just remembers it as a little weird. 

Regardless, we are very good camp friends. 

She wanted to see the castle before we went hiking. 

"Ooh, can we get a picture with it?" 

I saw a team of housekeepers approaching the castle in a golf cart. 

"Uh, yes. Yes, just park over there." What were they going to do? Stop my next check?

We posed in front of her camera, which she set on a timer. There was, of course, no encounter with the housekeepers. 

"Yep, Morgs, this is Glen Eyrie... it was built by General Palmer in the late 1800s, but his wife didn't like it and moved to California." 

(I looked this up in my volunteer packet later: General Palmer's wife, Mary Lincoln Mellen Palmer, had a heart condition and was advised to move to a lower elevation. She eventually died in England. Woops.)

"Huh."

"And then the Navigators bought it in 1975 (1953), and they've been using it ever since." 

We found the trailhead with little difficulty. We parked and surveyed the map, but it did little good. We took a left instead of a right and wound up in a construction site. After wandering across a field of shrubs, we found the trail again. We hiked our way up to the top of Echo Canyon, taking the obligatory Facebook shots along the way.

"Look, I'm rock climbing!" "Take a picture of me on this bench" "Look at this rock!"

"Wow."

"That's all that Ivy would say. Remember that?"

Ivy is another camp friend. We spent the summer of 2012 with Ivy at Camp Elim. Ivy and Morgan would stay at my house on weekends before we headed back to Woodland Park for another week of camp. Ivy is from Tennessee, so the Colorado-ness of everything often reduced her to "Wow"s.

"Remember Pikes Peak?"

Morgan and I convinced Ivy to climb Pikes Peak with us after Ivy had done a week of Trail Camp. We remember this story differently. I think it was Morgan's bad idea. Two miles up Barr Trail, Morgan pointed at the summit of Pikes Peak in the distance. "Look, Ivy, that's where we're going!"

The summit must have appeared too far away, because we both turned around and saw Ivy crying on the ground.

This is funny now...

She was determined, and we made it to the top. Fortunately, a friend drove us back down (Another lil piece of Colorado trivia - Pikes Peak is one of the only 14,000 ft. mountains in Colorado that has a road all the way to the top - there's an annual road race on it).

At the top of Echo Canyon, we wandered around, not saying much to eachother.

There was an overlook of the city. My city.

And I felt impossibly bored and desperate.

I stood on a rock, lifted my arms, closed my eyes. I remembered the stretching and soaring of mania like an old friend.

One-hundred possibilities and plans, abilities and thrills, interests and ideas. A world that spreads and stretches and moves with you and from you, for you and for everyone.

All gone.

And I was reminded, once again, that it's never about location. These things we carry with us.

Bored here, bored anywhere. Alive here, alive anywhere.

"Meredith, what are you doing?"

I stepped off the rock silently.

"We need to hike back down to meet Amy for coffee."

The rocks angled upward in Echo Canyon. Hope is a sort of desperation, too.

And I have hope. Hope that there's adventure here. Hope that I'll go looking for it.