Before accepting the job in
Yellowstone, I compiled a list of American cities I would consider moving
to. Each time I Googled the most livable
cities in the US, Boulder, Colorado consistently popped up in the top ten. The city is large enough to be a city but
small enough not to be burdensome. The
outlying areas are ideal for hiking, and the weather is usually agreeable. Colorado University is extremely
reputable. The streets are bike
friendly, and the restaurant scene is decent. And most importantly, a young and
unestablished college grad like me could hope to pay reasonable prices for
apartments that a man my age shouldn’t be ashamed to show his mother.
I’m a sucker for top ten lists, and
the city analysts persuaded me to put Boulder in my number one slot. The only problem was I had never visited the
city, so all of my information was based on lofty hopes and a few lazy Google
searches. I resolved to change that and
discover what makes Boulder so great. So
I rush out of work on Friday and drive across the entire state of Wyoming until
my heavy eyelids force me to pull over and sleep at a rest stop outside of
Casper.
Since the cities in the west are so
spread out, the highways that link them are rarely illuminated. I have never used my high beams as much as I
have since I moved to Wyoming. I am
always on the alert for a deer or an antelope pirouetting from the bushes and
onto my windshield. Other drivers have
the same fears, so they never turn their high beams off and so they blind me. I curse at them for not being considerate,
but I don’t blame them for not dimming their only source of light. An employee I worked with was driving near
Canyon in Yellowstone when he smashed an elk.
The car was totaled, the elk died, and the rangers fined the driver $350
for killing an animal.
I was driving in Montana outside of
the Blackfoot Indian reservation when a grizzly dashed across the street before
I realized it wasn’t a fat dog. Several
times in Yellowstone I have swerved to avoid a bison sticking his butt into the
road while chewing the grass that meets the concrete. Pronghorn have leaped from the high grasses
in the moonlit Lamar Valley only to lock eyes with me as I slam on my
brakes. Foxes and coyotes have scurried
before my tires and have escaped death more than once. The darkness and the threat of hitting an
animal force me to pull over for the night.
When I wake up in the morning, I
drive past Cheyenne, the capital, and another two hours beyond the Colorado
border until I reach Boulder. The first
thing I notice is that parking is difficult to find. It astonishes me how frustrating such a
simple task as parking can be. I have
driven over ten hours and transported myself to a new land, yet I am trapped
inside the car. I find myself getting
moody with Erin for not finding an open spot, as though the availability of
vacancies is somehow under her control.
Suddenly, more irritants bubble to
the surface, and my tone changes from friendly to coarse. This metal box on wheels seems to be
affecting my temperament. I am aware of
my displaced emotions but cannot seem to corral them. I am finished with motor transportation but
am unable to make the transition to walking again. We circle the main artery through town
scanning the curbs for blank spaces until we give up and embark on a dizzying
course through a multi-level parking garage, which finally proves successful.
Our feet finally hit the pavement,
and we peruse a few shops. Erin finds a
secondhand store that sells clothes, and I find a used bookstore. When I enter a city for the first time and
spot a used bookstore, I cannot resist the urge to enter. Unfailingly, however, I discover that the
used bookstores in Salt Lake City, Boulder, Bozeman, and Pittsburgh all sell
the same major titles with the exception of a miniscule table that features the
works of local authors who I’ve never heard of.
Every time I see the storefront I forget this vital piece of information
and open the door anyway. After skimming
the titles along the wall for nearly an hour, it dawns on me that I cannot see
the city if I am staring at book bindings, so I leave the shop.
I reconvene with Erin, and we amble
toward the large crowds congregating on Pearl Street Mall, a pedestrian walkway
filled with stores and cafes. On the
streetcorner a performer asks for a volunteer from the audience. He has stacked five chairs on top of one
another in unconventional ways, and now he is perched twenty feet off the
ground. He is wearing saggy pants and
for some reason he is taking off his shirt.
A little boy struggles to hand the performer the sixth chair, so a
taller man comes to his aid. The
performer thanks the small boy for his help and then drops a five dollar bill,
which slowly sails toward the ground.
“If you can catch it, you can keep
it,” the performer says, and then mentions that entertainment has a monetary
value.
If somebody stops you in your
bustling itinerary and briefly distracts you from the problems boiling inside
your brain, shouldn’t that be worth something?
Erin grabs my elbow and encourages me to move on before the final act guilts
me into parting with a few small denominations of cash that I have earned by
pretending to be nice to strangers and speedily delivering their entrees from
the kitchen to their table.
Down the street in between souvenir
shops, another man poorly plays the piano while hanging upside down. I would have been more impressed if he had
played the piano better while seated like a normal person. The streets here in Colorado are full of bizarre
characters. Erin leads me off of the
streets and into stores that sell local art.
Then she persuades me to wait outside for her as she shops in some TJ
Maxx affiliate. The sky darkens and rain
fizzles down as I ponder what constitutes a city. What sort of impression can I leave with if I
only enter shopping malls and then stare at the people on the sidewalks and
silently judge them by what they bought in stores? I have seen shopping malls in several cities
in several countries and have left with the same impression: that I could be anywhere right now. But what gives a place its personality in a
materialistic age?
Socially, the main issue that
separates Colorado from the rest of the country regards marijuana. I don’t smoke and have never entered a smoke
shop (with the exception of peeking inside one in Amsterdam). I didn’t ask anybody on the streets what
change this recent policy has unearthed in the state. I didn’t see any blunts or smell any
weed. I only saw souvenir T-shirts with
marijuana leaves next to the state flag or slogans like Rocky Mountain
High. These tacky gifts, combined with
the prominent number of bizarre street performers and pedestrians with
unnatural hair colors such as green or purple made me realize that state
borders dictated group-thinking more than I originally believed.
Before I visited Colorado, I was a
strong advocate for legalizing marijuana in every state. While living in Florida before the state
elections, I heard a story of a mother who had to drive for hours so that her
child could receive proper medication for her migraines. I was frustrated at the stubborn conservatism
of a state riddled with retirees whose ideas are out-of-date. But when I went to Colorado, I learned that
certain practices, such as legalizing marijuana, is only fitting with a
matching demographic. Although I don’t
know much about state laws versus federal laws, I am beginning to understand
that the states, although unified under one flag, are often as different as
foreign countries and must be governed as such.
I am not saying that everyone in Florida is old, nor does everyone in
Colorado smoke marijuana and uphold the habit as morally righteous. From each state there emerges a distinct
voice. The land often determines the
dominant personality of its people. For
the convenience of those who uphold the law, the law should suit its
constituents.
While walking around the CU campus,
I try to convince myself I want to move here.
The education here would be top-notch, and I enjoy walking around in the
summer with no sweat stains under my arms due to the lack of humidity. And I could ride my bike virtually anywhere
throughout the city without having to worry about being sideswiped by a car. However:
would I fit in here? The people
seem extremely laid-back, but are they too nonchalant for me? Could I quiet my harsh judgements while
living in a lackadaisical hipster’s paradise?
In order to understand how I can
find my ideal environment, I have to understand how my preferences were shaped. I grew up in western Pennsylvania, where the
skies are gray for the large part of the year.
It snows every winter and often freezes and thaws as the temperature
often hovers around the lower thirties because the Appalachian Mountains are
puny. When I moved to Florida I realized
how I detested the flat ground and the sticky heat. The best way to realize you like something is
to remove it from your life until you find there is a nagging ache inside of
you.
While perusing posters in an art
shop in Boulder, I see a map of the United States based off of
stereotypes. New England, specifically
New York, is labeled as TOO MEAN, whereas the Southeast is labeled as TOO
NICE. Southern California is TOO
PLASTIC. Pennsylvania has TOO MANY
STEELER FANS. Texas is TOO HOT. Washington is TOO RAINY. Wyoming has TOO MANY ANIMALS, NOT ENOUGH
PEOPLE. There are no lines drawn on the
map, but in the space of Colorado there is one word: PERFECT.
I heard that when you drive through
Colorado you never want to leave. I
drove up into the tundra zone of the Rocky Mountains where the air is thin and
I could stare straight ahead at the clouds, which turned purple at day’s end as
I passed the borderline and a sign that welcomed me be back into Wyoming. If I were to turn around, another sign would
welcome me to Colorful Colorado. On both
sides of these signs, the same grass grows.
There is no line dividing neighboring states, but somehow one feels more
like home than the other.
