chop wood, carry water

For the first time I'm alone in the house. There's embers glowing in the fireplace. The mobile on the front porch is still. Coffee's brewed, and a raven flew past the window. I hear the humming of the refrigerator and the keys on the computer, and that's it. Silence otherwise. I've been chatting with a friend of mine who's in Aspen til Friday. I just saw a video on Facebook of Jimmy Stewart reading a poem he wrote about his dog named Beau. Back in 1975 I went to visit Aspen and stayed with a college friend who had a dog named Beau. I still have a picture of Beau. Got to love that dog for the weekend, and have gotten to love his owner for years.


I went to Aspen for many reasons that weekend, one of them was to see John Denver. I did see him, and then in 2006 I met and worked with someone who had been a very good friend of his, and he was the one I had been chatting with this morning.

I've always had a love relationship with Aspen, and to be able to hear about the goings-on this morning was priceless. I could see the mountains, the snow, the highway down the Roaring Fork Valley, the brick pedestrian mall...

Aspen, my dream winter wonderland. I used to go there when I couldn't take my life anymore. I would drive to Aspen/Snowmass for a reprieve, and then be able to go back to what I left behind until I could go back no longer. I thought I'd move to Snowmass after living so long in Boulder county, but instead ended up in the northwest part of the state. Interestingly enough, I did end up going to Aspen several times to work with my employer. I met new people and fell in love with it all over again.

Will I be going back again? Who knows? I never thought I'd end up in New Mexico either.

I chop wood, carry water now. I just be. This is home for now. This feels right, right now. The ability to chop wood and carry water is exhilarating really. It moves me, literally. I move, and I accept whatever's on my plate at the moment. I am so grateful for whatever shows up because whatever it is, I know it is more than I could've imagined.

flying high..

Flight according to Abe:

You did not come forth to face reality. You came forth to spring off of reality. You came forth to let the reality be the basis from which you take flight.

And that is really what we want you to hear. We want you to be in love with the contrast that produces the desire. And we want you to milk those new desires for everything they are worth.

When you get a new desire, if it is big or if it is small, we want you to fantasize around it and give your attention to it, and take every bit of pleasure you can from the power of your mind knowing that manifestation will follow.

But it is not your manifestation that we are here rooting for. It is your moment-to-moment thrill with the power of your flight.
 
by Abraham-Hicks
 
I left my husband because of flight. I wanted to learn to fly an airplane, and he blatantly said no. I wanted to fly. I wanted to soar, and he wanted to keep me tied to him, small and powerless, scared shitless and driven to make him happy.
 
I preferred flight.
 
So, here I am years later and still obsessed with flying, still craving the view above the mountains, still longing for the thrill of pulling the yoke back and feeling the wheels lift off the ground. I desire to fly. I ache to sit in the left seat of a small aircraft. I can feel the wheels as they gently touch down while pulling the yoke back, watching the mountain above the nose as I gradually lower it and feel the last wheel touch down as if it landed in velvet. Ah... greased landing. I used to dream of those. I used to awaken in the mornings and check the skies for clouds, the trees for wind blowing their limbs. I used to call AWOS to see if that morning would be a good day to fly.
 
I breathed it. I ate it. I drank it in. There was nothing that thrilled me like a greased landing. Nothing.
 
When I wasn't in the air or working, I was studying. I was on the phone with my Aspen pilot asking him questions. We would get together on the weekends, propped up in a hotel bed and go through my textbooks. He'd help me see the practical experience of the maneuvers I was doing in the air.
 
I had never had a relationship with someone who was passionate about the same thing as me. We could lay in bed forever talking about it and eat dinner reliving our latest flights together. To me, that was heaven, pure joy.
 
There was nothing about our relationship that our society would call good, yet it was the best relationship I had ever had. It catapulted me into a new life believing in myself and making me want so much more from my life and myself. It was exactly what I wanted without even knowing it was possible, but once I got a taste of it, I couldn't settle for anything less.
 
It's the contrasts that we create in our lives that give us opportunities for wanting more for ourselves. There were things about that relationship that I wanted differently, so I chose differently. As the years progressed and the relationships changed, so did my desires.
 
I've fine-tuned what I want now thanks to all those lovely experiences, and since I know better, I choose better. It's true about anything in life. Nothing's good or bad; it's just about what works for you and what doesn't. When it doesn't, do something differently. When it does, bask in it.
 
And as far as flying goes, I'm soaring.

Perhaps Love - John Denver & Placido Domingo

I've been working on my new website while listening to this song. John Denver's singing takes me to a place that absolutely fills me, but this song in particular just floods me with massive quantities of love. And... it could be from memories that certainly skyrocket to the forefront of my mind when I hear it, and maybe that's why I've been playing it almost nonstop these couple of days.

This song takes me back to a morning when I awoke to birds singing outside the window. I was hunkered down underneath a white down comforter and what seemed like twenty pillows, and upon opening my eyes, I could look at my Aspen lover. We'd fall asleep in each other's arms, but soon I'd need to be turning over and stretching out across the bed, leaving him lying behind me, my naked butt scooched up to his hip.

One morning in particular the song lyrics were playing in my mind: "The memory of love will bring you home..." My leg was splayed across his, and this went through my head: "If I should live forever, and all my dreams come true, my memories of love will be of you." When I rolled over to look at him, his eyes were closed, mouth slightly open, and his breathing was solid. I put my hand on his chest, and spun his hair between my fingers. Slowly his eyes opened. There was this instant recognition of seeing me beside him and being so pleased because of it, that when he wrapped his arms around me, pulled me close, and kissed me, I knew my love memory bank was full of him.

About last night...

A guy I went to high school with had a birthday yesterday. After 21 comments back and forth to each other on Facebook, we continued with texting on and off throughout the day and night, and into early morning for me. We texted a lot about metaphysics, which led to past lives and Indians. Anyone who knows me well, knows how strongly I relate to those subjects. Indians became a constant topic of conversation and transformation for me while I lived in Steamboat, and apparently it didn't end there.

To make a really long story as short as I can, this friend yesterday brought up specific things that related to what I had seen during my shamanic journeys. It has since put me in another place mentally and emotionally. I haven't stopped thinking about it. When I least expected it, when I was so focused on possibly beginning a new relationship with someone local, this man in Colorado plugs into visions I had not even thought about in a long time. The energy that rose while texting each other is still ramping up. I pace the floor like a caged animal because it is so powerful. There was a connection made last night through the help of technology that has shifted everything.

"When you least expect it, from the most unlikely place, he will show up." This is what a psychic told me May of '08. Well, let me say that it is the most unlikely person and the most unlikely place. I thought I'd never leave Colorado, and here I am back in Texas after a 34-year absence. Reading his texts last night about how he sleeps with the windows open year round flashed me back to wonderful nights snuggled under covers with a breeze wafting through the room. I can't do that here. It's too hot, too humid, and way too many bugs. As he was texting me about his first trip to Gunnison, his desire to be in the wilderness, and a place with a creek running through it, my heart remembered why I moved there in '74.

I've been very happy here in McKinney. I've met the best people in the world, creating relationships beyond compare, and lately I've been feeling open to moving again. Listening to my friend talk about why he had to move there last year tugged at my heart. I remembered sitting by the Roaring Fork in Basalt listening to the water rush past me; the night I spent at Woody Creek Tavern with two very good friends of John Denver's; the many times I've taken off from the Aspen airport in a friend's Bonanza; the daily walks I took along the Yampa in Steamboat; the hikes up Emerald Mountain; climbing W Mountain in Gunnison; feeding horses naked during a snowfall...

Even though I had lived in Colorado for 34 years, I'm remembering only those times when I was single there. Those were my most amazing times, because it was in being single that gave me the latitude to awaken to what really jazzed me.

And now, this man reawakened in me the deepest, most profound part of who I really am using his own desires for the land where he now lives to help me remember what drove me there 36 years ago. I can live anywhere and still be a Colorado girl. People tell me all the time that I dress Colorado. No matter how hard I've tried, I'm not a Texas-girl dresser. I am not bling, big hair, or high heels. I am a t-shirt and blue jeans girl. Give me my Keene sandals, and I can stay on my feet walking or hiking for hours.

I love McKinney. I love the people here. It's magical, and yet, there's this other part of me that remembers the colors of the aspen leaves in September and the sound they make with the wind blowing through them, or the mountain to the left of us when taking off from the Aspen airport, Starwood to our right, and all the Gulf Streams under us. It's funny that I've never felt the desire to fly here, but thinking about take-offs from the Aspen airport makes me want to jump in that Bonanza right now.

I feel my life in waves, one wave of this great desire to be in Colorado, and another wave of loving life here in McKinney. Back and forth these waves undulate, tide rolling out and then coming back in. One foot in Texas, the other in Colorado.

And then I did an energy session with an intuitive who gave me a reading afterwards. What she told me was what I had been feeling: my heart, my home is in Colorado. She said I would be going back there this fall. She said this man is a stepping stone to my being open to doing just that. She said a lot of other things about him too, but I'm not sharing that information.

The guides that showed up were Indian grandmothers. They asked me how far will I take myself? They told me that all I needed to do was put one moccasin in front of another. I make my path wherever I go. They also said I was still connected to my shaman, Rob Wergin, that my work picks up where his leaves off. Not sure what that means, but they said that I'm not done working with him. Well, thank god for that!

So, Monday morning when I woke up I had no inclination to move back to Colorado. Within hours my mind was a tad bit open to the concept, and now... Hm, let's just say that I make my path wherever I go.

For Amelia....

"You did not come forth to face reality. You came forth to spring off of reality. You came forth to let the reality be the basis from which you take flight.

And that is really what we want you to hear. We want you to be in love with the contrast that produces the desire. And we want you to milk those new desires for everything they are worth.

When you get a new desire, if it is big or if it is small, we want you to fantasize around it and give your attention to it, and take every bit of pleasure you can from the power of your mind knowing that manifestation will follow.

But it is not your manifestation that we are here rooting for. It is your moment-to-moment thrill with the power of your flight."

The above quote is from Abraham-Hicks.

I have been obsessed with flight since September 2004 when I took my virgin flight over the mountains from Aspen to Gunnison, a place where I had held huge dreams for myself. That flight to the dream world of two 18 year olds was a huge awakening for me. My pilot was a former college friend who I hadn't seen in almost twenty years and to be able to fly back to a place where we thought we could do anything and be anyone was intoxicating. We sat in the W Cafe where we had back in 1975 and talked about what had happened between then and 2004. How did we end up being the people we were? How could that have happened?

We plotted and forged and reminisced, and it all felt so naughty and enticing. Could we possibly take a leap? Could we possibly make twists and turns in our present lives to become who we thought we were going to be?

He didn't. I did. He's still in Aspen with the same life. I'm nowhere near Aspen figuratively or literally. I leaped. I went home and set the wheels in motion for a single life far away from where I had buried myself in marriage.

And here it is 2009 and just a few days since I saw the movie about Amelia Earhart. I've ravaged every book I can find about her disappearance, and amazingly enough I find many missing puzzle pieces to my own life that have just created more questions and less answers.

It's flight that is foremost on my mind. I cannot listen to an engine overhead without looking up to check whether it's fixed landing gear, high wing or low wing, twin engine or single. I dream about my hand on the yoke, full throttle, and feel the thrill of the nose wheel lifting from the runway.

I don't know who Amelia was. I don't know myself half the time either, but I do know this: It's the moment of liftoff that is the most exhilarating. The possibilities are limitless. The insignificance of what's on the ground becomes minuscule until it all evaporates in the clouds. I bet Amelia felt it too.

A well-traveled road

As soon as it was time to go to college, I left the state I'd spent most of my life in -- Texas. I fled to Colorado. It was a place I had thought about and dreamed about for years. My every waking moment was spent fantasizing about living there. I imagined everything I'd do, how I'd live, and who I'd love. Ask anyone who knew me during high school. John Denver and Colorado were all I ever talked about.

Looking back on those 14-year-old's memories, I realize how few of those fantasies came true. So, what's up with all this hype about the law of attraction -- we attract to us that which we think and feel about? I thought it; I felt it; and I still didn't move to Aspen and become friends with John Denver. That was probably my biggest fantasy. I wanted to travel with him, to help run his show in some way. I didn't know what that would be. I didn't care. I just knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that I could work and travel with this man.

After moving to Gunnison, Colorado for college, I took guitar lessons and learned how to play John Denver songs. I probably still have the music somewhere for "The Eagle and The Hawk." I was a music major playing the piano, and John Denver was not allowed in those classical music halls. Confined in my small room with a captive piano I would play for hours -- Bach, Beethoven, and Chopin, but never John Denver.

I was sitting in a room alone with a piano instead of outside in the Rocky Mountains that John would sing about. I was running my hands up and down a keyboard playing a long-dead musician's piece instead of picking "Rocky Mountain High" beside a river. I would spend hours and hours in a confined room playing the same arpeggios instead of traveling with a band that introduced John Denver to an audience so many nights on the road.

It didn't matter. I knew so strongly that this would come true that I didn't waiver. I kept playing until I was asked to leave the program for lack of a tolerable singing voice and for being tone deaf. I picked up my pen instead and became a writer. I ended up with a degree in English. I use it every day.

One of the first guys I met in Gunnison was from the Aspen area. I even hitchhiked to his mother's house my freshman year and spent the weekend with him there. He was a friend that I never forgot over the years. When I ran away from home with a six-year old daughter, I ran to him, and then again 18 years later when I struggled with a failing marriage and a buried identity.

Just a few short years ago in 2004, I left Boulder county where I was living to go to a symposium in Snowmass near Aspen. The symposium was put on by a John Denver foundation called Windstar. I never made it to the symposium, but I got reacquainted with my college friend. He flew me back to Gunnison where we'd met. We walked the main street where we'd been all those years ago. We talked about all the places we'd gone to there, the people we'd befriended, and what happened in those buildings. But most importantly, while walking down the street we remembered who we once were and who we thought we'd be. It was painful to see the incongruency in it all. It was a turning point, a defining moment for me like none other. It was my 48th birthday, and I was so disappointed with who I'd become.

The dichotomy of who I dreamed I could be and who I had become was such a chasm, I couldn't fathom a way to make it to the side I wanted to be on. The distinction between the two were so evident, so in my face, that it was too painful to not do something about it.

The drive back to Boulder county that day took me two extra hours and I don't remember it at all. I never stopped thinking about how I had to make changes. I didn't know how; I just knew I had to, and one of the first things I wanted to do was learn to fly. My Aspen friend flew me over the Maroon Bells and Pyramid Peak to Gunnison, and it seemed the world opened up to me. There was something inside that blossomed and turned me into someone who could no longer be that simple wife that did what it took to keep peace (in an angry sort of way).

Taking flying lessons was out of the question, according to my then husband. To me the only thing out of the question was to continue being his wife. So, after 27 1/2 years I became single again. After living near Denver and Boulder for all those years, I went back to the mountains in search of me. I went back to the mountains to hibernate for a couple of years and grow into someone I could be proud of.

One of the first people I met was a shaman that I worked with for months before finding out that he and John Denver had been good friends. We worked together in Aspen for a while, driving from Steamboat every week. I met many John Denver friends that way. I still get calls from them. And then last September I took a 5-day workshop with one of John's dearest friends, Tom Crum, on the Journey to Center. It was a John Denver lovefest. There were many participants that had been good friends of John's. I heard so many stories about him. We listened to his music, and his energy was so prevalent that it was palpable.

Within weeks of that workshop, I had moved back to Texas.

So, did all that visualizing/fantasizing mean nothing? Did I really not have my dreams come true? Did I not travel with John?

In the past when I've declared something as mine -- visualizing it and claiming it with affirmations, vision boards, etc. -- it has always shown up, but just not how I think. I've traveled all my adulthood with John Denver. I moved to Colorado in 1974 because of him. I spent many nights in the Aspen area because of him, and I moved back to Texas because of him. Every major event in my life has had a John Denver connection. Every trip back to Aspen has been a defining moment for me. Every experience there and every experience with his friends have helped shape my life into what it is today.

I thought I'd be lugging around guitars with a backstage pass around my neck. I thought I'd be hearing his music live from behind the stage. Instead, I heard him within. I followed the tiny nudges that kept leading me to the next step, and those steps led me to McKinney, Texas in 2008, 34 years after leaving Texas the first time.

I've learned to make my wishes known to the universe. To voice them in the ways I know how and then allow the events to unfold as beautifully and perfectly as they always have. I've learned to wake up to the possibilities in every moment and see the finer connection to all that there is. It's a lovely way to live. I am so grateful. Thank you, John. It's been a well-traveled road back.

I am so grateful

I awoke this morning to a phone call from a dear, sweet friend telling me about her nephew's accident. She asked if my chiropractor daughter, Dr. Alyssa Summey, could phone her sister, the mother, and give her information about what her son's doctors were suggesting.

After telling my daughter about this request, she told me about her friend/patient that was broadsided by an SUV while driving his motorcycle after leaving her office on Monday. He was airlifted to a hospital in Dallas where he still is.

These two events helped me remember how grateful I am for every single person in my life, how very precious they are to me, and for all the greatness that is showered on me every moment.

I am so grateful.

I got a beautiful email from a man who has altered my life significantly. When I opened up yahoo and saw his name there, tears came to my eyes. He's Tom Crum, an amazing being who taught me so much last September at his Journey to Center workshop. I feel the effects of his teachings daily. Thank you, Tom, from the bottom of my heart for blessing my life with your gracious teachings.

I am so grateful.

And then I met a friend, Michelle Barr, I'd lost touch with for coffee this morning. We poured our hearts out over coffee and tea, and suddenly the day was brighter and lighter. We took a tour back to my daughter's office on the square so she could look at the potential use of the office space for herself. We ran into another piece of the puzzle, Molly Jones of Molly J & Co. and ended up having lunch together and discussing the vibrant connection and possible joint ventures of business on the square.

I am so grateful.

I received a phone call from an Aspen friend who was a close friend of John Denver's, as was Tom Crum. After that conversation, I turned on my computer to see John Denver on my FB page. I am blessed with serendipity and miracles. John Denver always has shown up in my life during a major change. I look forward to seeing what's next.

I am so grateful.

I opened my email and read a long one from a beau, and it hurt to read his pain, but also felt good knowing that what he's suffering through cleanses him in the end. It'll bring him into such beautiful light. One day.

I am so grateful.

Tonight I fixed a delicious chicken dinner for my wonderful daughter before we leave to check out another office space. We're planning on going to Lone Star Winery for glasses of red wine, before heading over to Cadillac's to hear our favorite local musicians.

I am so grateful.

Just another day in the life...

I know why I live in McKinney, Texas. An abundance of reasons showed up yesterday, new ones added to my already long list.

Yesterday the weather here in McKinney was perfect, cool, nice breeze, just perfect for walking the square. There are many towns in Texas with the downtown shops and restaurants built around the courthouse. McKinney is different. The people here are different. The flavor is beyond compare. To walk around the square takes my daughter hours to do because she stops and talks to everyone. I mean everyone. Everyone knows her, and she knows everyone. This is her town. I don't know that I've ever felt like I had a town before. I never felt I belonged to the place where I lived. I was just visiting even if I lived there over twenty years. I could never call it home.

I've made great memories everywhere I've lived, but it hasn't been until moving to McKinney last fall that I felt like I came home. I have always had this strong connection to Aspen and probably always will. It's a soul place for me. A place where I have always gone to get renewed, and living in Boulder county, Colorado I needed renewing on a regular basis. Then moving to Steamboat Springs, Colorado, I would make my regular trek through Glenwood Canyon to my mecca called Aspen/Snowmass. During my last venture there close to a year ago after having dinner at Woody Creek Tavern, after having Reconnective Healing sessions with Lindsey Sandahl in Snowmass, after touring the Snowmass Village Mall during their weekend of green living last August, I felt something else. I felt it was time for me to go somewhere else to create experiences for different growth. It was time for me to move in an unfamiliar direction. So I did.

Two months later I moved to McKinney. Who moves from Colorado to Texas? Never in a million years would I have ever dreamt that I'd do something like that. I left Texas 34 years ago for the land of my dreams, and now I left paradise and moved to McKinney. McKinney may not have the mountains, but it has beauty beyond compare. It has its square and it has its people.

Yesterday I got my library card and checked out movies and a book. The book was on grace. It's called The Unmistakable Touch of Grace by Cheryl Richardson. I read the first two chapters while sitting on a bench in the square yesterday in front of Strada Verde, a boutique filled with clothes and accessories made from recycled or organic materials. I sell some of my purses there. Mary is the owner. She and I both graduated from University of Texas at Dallas. We both have degrees in English, and we both use our degrees every day that we speak our native language.

I sat outside and read and watched people walk around the square past the statue in front of the old courthouse which is now the McKinney Performing Arts Center. Beautiful old building renovated exquisitely. It's a treat to go to all the events there. Joyce runs the show. She's always decked out in the outfit and jewelry for the occasion. The last time I visited MPAC was for a fashion show that my daughter was in. She modeled clothes from True Rumors. I took pictures of her using my camera without fixing the red eye, so she looks like a creature from another planet, a gorgeous one, but still.

Yesterday I read about how the universe works for you all the time, and once you're conscious of it, it is an amazing magical unfolding of events. And that's exactly what happened again for me yesterday in the heart of downtown McKinney. My daughter and I went to Lavender House, a tea shop on the square, for lunch. Tony, who has no title on his business card, plopped down in a chair at the table beside ours and talked with us in between dealing with customers and employees. He ended up going back to my daughter's office with her and I sat outside Strada Verde to read.

Lavender House has a room furnished like a library. Every Friday and Saturday night there is live music while you sip your drinks and eat their special offerings. It's a dream come true to walk through there much less sit and enjoy drinks and music. This is another thing that's so special about McKinney. Every day and every night there's always something going on in the square to bring the people together. Friday and Saturday nights there's always so much going on that it's just nights of going from one event to the next to the next. There's always live music not only at the Lavender House, but at the Londoner, Rick's Chophouse (oh dear god, eat anything there!), and especially Cadillac Pizza Pub. Cadillac may be a dive, but the best local musicians play for us there.

That's where we ended up last night. Thursday at Cadillac's is open mic night. Buzz Andrews, my favorite singer to listen to and to look at (okay, him and Jason Mraz are tied for favorites), is a must see in McKinney. I've discovered that Buzz is not only a pretty face, but a savvy business person and apparently a high school coach beyond compare. Who knew? I just enjoyed looking at him while he sang and played. If you friend him on FB you'll be able to see his beautiful wife and get a feel for how much he adores her. To me, that makes him even more attractive. And last night another new friend got me one of Buzz's new t-shirts. It's pink with a buzzard on top of an electric guitar. "I've been buzzed" is written underneath. And believe me, being around Buzz for me is truly being buzzed.

All of this may sound rather mundane, ordinary, or a classic yawner. It's not a life of jet-setting around the world, blasting through corporate meetings, or rushing through big city highways, but it's a life of friends, of genuine warmth, and of great compassion. This little town, especially the microcosm of these four blocks sheltering the courthouse, has a pulsing heart of its own. Come with me sometime around the square. Meet the people, hug friends, embrace the laughter, and sip wine in the Lavender House library while the piano is played because you will never find the warmth, the open heartedness anywhere else like you will in McKinney's square.

And, by the way, through July 31st you can vote my daughter, Dr. Alyssa Summey, as the best chiropractor in McKinney at www.mckinneyliving.com. Don't forget Rick's as the best romantic Saturday night dinner. I know from experience. Sigh...

Breaking open my heart -- again

I looked at pictures of Aspen and John Denver today and cried. When I was fourteen years old I knew I wanted to be in Colorado and meet John Denver. My dream of moving to Colorado occurred three years later. I saw John quite a few times, spoke with him once, and last September worked with a dear friend of his and co-founder of the Windstar Foundation, Tom Crum. It was easy to fall in love with Tom, his wife, and his daughter, not to mention all those on his team.

Two years ago I moved to Steamboat Springs, Colorado and one of the very first people I met, if not the first one, was a shaman who worked on me and then I worked with him. It was months into our relationship that I found out that he and John had been really good friends. He had pictures of John. We even worked in Aspen together in 2008 and met many of John's friends. It was great hearing all the stories about him. People who knew him really loved him. And, of course, being with Tom Crum for five days last September was really a John Denver lovefest, among many other things.

I moved back to Texas last November after living in Colorado for 34 years. Looking at those pictures of Aspen broke open my heart. I remembered...I remembered how I fell in love with it as a young teenager and later as a woman just a few short years ago. I remembered walking the pedestrian mall, having lunch at Little Annie's with my shaman and talking over our day. I remember kissing under the street light with a lover, having a secret liaison in his condo, talking with the director at the Aspen Athletic Club to get my shaman into their facilities, setting up a TV shoot, and riding in a client's Porsche. I remember watching the lunar eclipse downtown with him and another client, freezing but not daring to leave. I remember the Aspen airport, removing chocks from the wheels of an airplane, wrapping up the bungee cords that tied the cloth around the wings and tail to keep ice from accumulating on them, and climbing up on the wing and sliding into the cockpit before takeoff. I remember the feel of the wheels on the runway as my lover pushed in the throttle. When he pulled back the yoke and raised the landing gear, we flew over the single-engines and the jets, and to this day it's still one of the most amazing memories of my life.

Aspen is my place of many secrets. My secret love life, my secrets with my shaman, my secret longings, my secret life with John Denver that very few know. It all has to be that way. Those experiences are too magical to put into words. It's all secret. And it's all so beautiful.

So, today I cried for Aspen. I longed for Aspen. I long for Aspen. Again. Will it ever stop? Maybe it's not supposed to.

It was an experience over Aspen that changed my life forever in 2004. It was John Denver that got me there and a friend's belief in me that took me to new heights. It was a starting point that led to another leap, leaving everything familiar and moving to the mountains.

It has always been Aspen that has moved me. It has always been John Denver that touched me. And today seeing pictures of both broke open my heart because it was too full to stay in one piece.