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stories
Remembering Pearl Street
Pure joy. That was the look on her face when I told her she could shed her shorts and chase the jumping water fountains. It was a hot, hot day in June. We had made the yearly pilgrimage back to Pearl Street Mall in Boulder, where I sold natural fiber clothing while transitioning from teenager to young adulthood. I was enjoying how much she was enjoying herself. The fountains in front of the courthouse were somewhat new at that point. It was like the mall was aware that it needed to evolve into a place that my young family would look forward to visiting. As I sat on a bench and watched, I remembered eating giant slices of pizza from Abo’s on that very same bench years before. I laughed at the thought of cashing my paycheck and then immediately making a music stop at Rocky Mountain Records and Tapes. I could taste the huge, heavy, sweet bran muffins that I got for breakfast from Café Express, where my cousin was the manager. I looked across the courthouse lawn to the restaurant where my edgy co-worker Maureen and I had invented the Morgul-Sparkle champagne cocktail with a bartender who wasn’t too worried about the fact that we were under-aged. I smiled as I felt the movement of the generations.
Moab Deer Encounter
It was late afternoon and we were hiking toward the skyline arch in Moab. It was more of a walk, really, the parking lot was close, and we could see the arch from the road. As we got nearer, we could see other hikers inside the arch, celebrating their successful ascent. Suddenly Kathryn lost her breath. She saw a deer coming towards us and then another. “Oh my gosh, I can’t believe they are coming so close,” she said. As they moved in even closer Kathryn gasped. We could see that many of the deer’s ribs were showing. “They must be sick,” she thought out loud. I wasn’t sure. Their fur looked thick and healthy, their eyes clear, but some of them were emaciated and they were allowing us to come unusually close. I stood still, snapping away on my camera. Time slowed to a halt as they moved through us.
Soon we moved on to the next pull-in along that road in Arches. We were soaking in one of the most beautiful sunsets that I had ever seen when Kathryn started to read from a steel informational sign. “Do not feed the deer under any circumstances,” it said, “they are becoming dependent on humans for food and as a result have started eating out of the trashcans. They are ingesting so much plastic that their intestines are not able to absorb the nutrients from any food that they eat.” I was shocked. The three of us looked at each as we began to understand that our amazing deer encounter had just taken on a new meaning.
