Trouble on Concourse B

On our way to our gate in the Denver International Airport on Tuesday, Robin and I created a bit of a mess. As my friends all know, I suffer from peripheral neuropathy, so I trip over my feet easily, and my sense of balance is all but gone. So, to be safe from falling, we took the “people mover” at the airport. But I made the mistake of putting my luggage in front of me instead of behind me and when we got to the end of the mover, you know, where you gracefully step off the damn thing, my suitcase stopped abruptly with part of it still on the mover, but I kept moving. I tripped on the luggage and immediately fell to the floor. Robin was behind me, and so she tripped over me, and she fell also, which resulted in a huge pile of two senior citizens, two suitcases, a backpack, and another carry-on in a jumbled pile on the floor of Concourse B.

Within two seconds we were surrounded by a dozen people who helped us to recover our composure. One young woman wrapped her arms around my middle, face to face, and hoisted me to my feet in what was the most intimate embrace I have had from a woman other than my wife since 1965. At the same time, another woman put her finger through the belt loop at the back of my pants and lifted. At that point I remember feeling like a dead deer being scooped off the highway to reduce interference with oncoming traffic. One man helped Robin get up. The kindness and caring of all these bystanders were truly amazing.

Neither of us was hurt seriously, but the entire incident was incredibly embarrassing. So, I ripped off my NK95 mask and snapped loudly “If you enjoyed that, please come to our Friday afternoon performance. You won’t believe what we can do on that other “people mover” to your left.” Everyone laughed, and I am sure that if I had placed a large hat on the floor at my feet, it would have been filled with dollar bills.

When we finally got to a seat at our gate, I was still upset with the poor agility I now possess. I was angry about the state of my legs and feet and tibial nerve and aging. I muttered to Robin that I am never traveling again, which made her incredibly frustrated, and we argued. But then I broke the tension by saying “I should have gotten the number of that young woman who hugged me.”

Within a few hours we were home again. I sat brooding on our deck with a scotch and a cigar that evening, and I contemplated whether I should ever leave my home in the woods again.

In Denver, and I’m homesick

(I'm confused.  I flew to Vegas, but I might be in Paris.)

For the past week, I have been in Denver, Colorado visiting our sons. Denver is large and growing rapidly, as is the entire Front Range of Colorado from north to south. Driving on the highways is reminiscent of driving in southern California. The area is full of young people who immigrated here from Ohio, Illinois, New York, and other places where life has ceased to be exciting enough. They come here for skiing, snowboarding, mountain biking, hiking, and camping in the Rocky Mountains nearby, and when in Denver there is plenty to do. The city boasts professional teams in baseball, basketball, football, and ice hockey, plenty of parks, bike and jogging paths, restaurants and bars of every stripe, interesting museums of art and history, and a good zoo. But I’m bored stiff. What the heck is my problem?

I’m bored because my primary activity in life, aside from blogging and trading stocks, is learning about, and living in, the woodland around my house. In short, I miss my forest in upstate New York and the “backyard ecology” that I practice there. Normally, an ecologist loves to travel to new places, because there are new habitats to explore, new birds to observe, new trees to appreciate. But in the city of Denver, that is not very satisfying. Oh, there are trees everywhere, but almost none of them should be here. Denver was built on the short-grass prairie of central Colorado—the native vegetation was only a few inches tall. Trees would have been limited to the banks of streams and rivers, and they would be cottonwoods and willows. The trees in the city now are mostly native to some other region of the U.S. or to another country: ash, Russian olive, Chinese elm, and Tree of Heaven, that native of China that I absolutely detest outside of its homeland. An irony is that we drove around a neighborhood yesterday with street names like Ash, Birch, and Cherry. Rub it in my face!

My issue here is that there is vegetation everywhere, but it does not constitute a “habitat”. Most homes have attractive green lawns, scattered trees planted in the yard and along the sides of the house, and a variety of flowering plants in gardens. All of this takes nearly daily watering, of course. But that is another complaint I have, for another blog. Nothing I criticize about Denver is any different than what I would say about almost any city in the world. We reconstruct a poor facsimile of the natural world that we took away when we built the city in the first place. For most, this is apparently just fine. In my case, I can’t wait until I go to the airport. But first, I have to spend time in Las Vegas, the Mecca of Facsimiles---Vegas even has the Eiffel Tower, which I always thought was in Paris.