WaChaa

History has its eyes on you

The City of Golden was born around Clear Creek, which runs at the edge of downtown, north of both the enormous Coors factory, which bottles it into beer, and the School of Mines, which studies it’s mighty power. Over time it has been improved, controlled, and maintained, and now sports a smooth paved trail on both banks with seven bridges to encourage meandering and parking and commerce. It’s particularly welcoming for those who navigate life on wheels, as it is wonderfully accessible for strollers and mobility devices. Through the many iterations of government and committee process, areas are surrounded by imported river rocks or mulch or a bevy of sunfloweresque weeds depending on the season, each which disobeys traffic laws and encroaches on the pavement, expressing the entropy typical of both of geology and botany.

The dog, the person, and I wander these loops many times a day, in various arrangements. Sometimes I run (very slowly), other times I walk hand in hand with my partner in humanity, the dog either between us or looking down from her lofty perch of three dog beds, stacked against the window. Our fellow path regulars include a sweet, stylish upscale hippy couple and their minuscule dog who looks precisely like The Brain from Pinky and The Brain, an unhoused yet jolly human and his black and white lady dog companion, and a jogging woman in her 60’s or 70’s who wears coordinated spandex and a camelback, a high pony, and a wily smile that simply will not let you pass without reciprocating. She’s like the powdered sugar version of Rainbow Bright.

I love them all.

We, my interspecies nuclear family unit, have taken trail maintenance upon ourselves in our own ways. The dog is particularly fond of chewing up errant sticks to bits. My person and I vigorously shake trees laden with wet late-spring snow so that they may spring back to an approximately vertical stance instead of snapping. Daily I kick stones and wood chips as I pass, in pace with my steps, and say,

“wa-CHAAAAA.”

I’m very good at this game. I have no formal training, as it’s quite possible that I was the only child born in the 1980’s in Colorado who did not spend at least one season engaged in recreational soccer, formal or otherwise. While I’m very capable of both grace and aggression, the twain have never held hands within me while on a field playing any sort of sport with a ball. The rules and requisite hostility don’t suit me, although I love what sporting teaches us about collaboration and losing. Boundaries and sportsmanship. Physics and entropy.

The one thing I don’t (and may never) grasp is offsides. I was only ever allowed to play the goalie in recess soccer, or the everywhen position in IM hockey in college because I had no idea how to be so aware of the entire field at the same time. I understand that Glennon often pokes at this to jokingly demonstrate how she doesn’t really get Abby’s work (but supports her anyway!). But I really don’t get it, particularly when I’m out there. If I were flying above the field, or sitting in the stands, I could suss out how many players where on which side of the object at play, but when I’m down there in the reals I am consistently and unconsciously on the wrong side of something just out of reach.

This mini-backyard microcosm is the landscape of so much of my reflection - laps and loops sometimes in solitary tears and others in spirited conversation. Seasonal creek use changes the traffic patterns as the north side of the creek becomes a one-way innertube parade as those seeking joy or temperature regulation make multiple pilgrimages daily up to the gently threatening signs at the mouth of the canyon. DANGER - do not put in above this point.

We - the locals - adapt and relent to this migration, as I imagine other ecosystems do. I’ve heard that salmon sometimes decide all at once to head up river, driven by internal chemical signals or pheromones or the Mayan calendar perhaps. Reproductive proclivities may have also graced my literal fellows on the path, so in the hot days of summer I stick to the south side.

Perhaps because I seem to have aged two decades in four years, I’m increasingly attuned to the lack of social awareness and responsibility of visiting humans on the trail. Frequently, they doddle blocking both sides, or leave errant dog crap in the middle of a lane, or just saunter six abreast with no courtesy or even awareness of other trail users. This last week a photographer sat a baby in the middle of the path to get cute pictures, which is most baffling. Full path blocking photo ops are reserved for the young ones in full quincenera garb, who respectfully wait and then RUN to the middle of the bridge in ornate, round dresses that are more than eight feet in diameter. The regulars and I will often pause to redirect others out of frame so that something so glorious can unfold. But why a baby on the pavement? Particularly when there are gardens and buildings and botany literally everywhere else?

The yogis say that awareness is a gift, whenever it comes, and I can’t disagree with them, but the gift of the decline of decorum and consideration I witness feels a bit like the one time my former outlaws got me a trio of mirrored crosses for Christmas. Gifts aren’t always welcome, or easy to receive.

You get that this is bigger than the trail, yes?

I fear, yes.

It feels as though I’ve got a sense of moral offsides that I’m trying desperately to impart - the battle against entropy, the gentle encouragement to the young ones not to drop their bicycles in the center of the path, the wachaa, and the stern harrumphing I do at the tourists who just stop and gawk.

Excuse me. You are offsides.

America feels offsides, and that’s the best way I can summarize it.

I have outrun the feelings and the fallout of the week thus far, and am casting this into the ether unraveled, with edges frayed and no full symmetry. Because I can’t tell you what to do or how to feel, and I don’t know what the next right thing is for us. For me, it is Hamilton on repeat, a battle against the natural tendency towards chaos: trail maintenance and other small favors.

WaCHAA in my tiny corner of existence.

Thanks for reading,

K