… To The Top!
The Colorado College Summer Music Festival ended with the resounding chord of Tchaikovsky’s epic Fourth Symphony. As promised, a list of activities when not practicing, rehearsing, or sight-reading music and a fun fact about each:
Venture to Garden of the gods. Fun fact: rocks are super cool. The rocks were structural anomalies, vibrant red, and very inspiring. I suppose the gods enjoyed walking along hunks of hardened sediment rather than among flowers…
Keep in touch with Vandy kids. Fun (sad) fact: super old-school me owns a flip phone and cannot text. Crazy. So to keep up with friends, I have been emailing, calling, Facebooking (yes, I just made that a verb), chatting over Google Hangout/Oovoo/Skype, and best of all, sending letters by snail mail.
Hike up Trail 13 at Mueller State Park. Fun fact: though our guide A. was in his mid-nineties, he was chipper and in better shape than a few of us who wheezed our way up a dirt trail. But it was worth it, both for the burned calories and the remarkable nature we witnessed. From the flowers to the trees to the mountains, we felt like only a small part of this gorgeous nature.
Learn to drive stick. My friend S. graciously volunteered to teach me how to drive his little Civic so I could increase my life skill points. Fun fact: stalling at an intersection is terrifying. Hey, I had graduated past the parking lot!
Summit Pikes Peak. Fun fact: Bigfoot lives in Pikes Peak. Another fun fact: it’s a lot easier to drive up than to hike up, though not by much because there were no guard rails along the 180 degree uphill turns. The views were gorgeous, from the rocks to the trees to the open sky. Sometimes I just felt the need to burst out with this song (guess before clicking!) from the Sound of Music.
Pray for the safety of Colorado Springs. I don’t know whether you’ve heard, but there is a huge fire and more than 32.000 people have had to evacuate. The weather had been very dry and hot, and the smoke was already thickening in the Colorado College area, as if a barbecue went wild. Hopefully rain will arrive quickly to calm down this wild conflagration.
Current location: Boston. Shindigs will be unveiled shortly!