I demand a lot from a trail. I want it to make me ache, in my muscles, and somewhere deeper. I could claim I’m out for the fresh air, a snatch of birdsong. But I want a summit, a panorama, a destination. I want escape. I want encounter.
Maybe I want too much.
The truth is, I don’t always know what I want. So, I pick a trail and walk out into the world, see what I get. Most trailheads around Boulder roll out through sage meadows and low open woods, up into foothill forests, tangled gulches, broken light through the canopy, the press of trunks threading toward the promise of something more. Sometimes that promise opens early. The trunks fall back, the canopy breaks, and I find myself in a park, an expansive clearing hemmed by trees. There is grass, there is sky, and there is me. I am struck by it, by the sudden rush of space. I welcome it. And it brings me pause.
