The Colorado Border

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.