“My hands are sweating. Keep talking,” my husband said.
We were driving on a road that was on a scraggly strip of very tall rock. It was a narrow strip, like this particular bit of mountain had been in a lot of fist fights with the other mountains over the last few million years, and it was the frequent loser. It was a narrow, haggard thing, and in some places it only had enough room on its top for the road and about a two-foot shoulder, then a drop off to the equivalent of maybe a four-story building. I am a horrible judge of depth, so that is probably wrong, but it doesn’t matter—trust me when I say it wasn’t something one ought to drive off.
We were there because it is a scenic drive. I don’t think my husband could attest to this, because his eyes were glued straight ahead. Apparently my husband is afraid of heights. Who knew? I figured because he spent a fair amount of time snowboarding on a mountain years ago, that meant he wasn’t afraid of high things. Also apparently, snowboarding down a mountain and driving your family along the edge of a cliff are not exactly the same thing.
“It is beautiful up here!” I said cheerfully, basking in the bright light, and shuffling my feet around restlessly in their boots.
I am the designated anxious member of my family, and my husband is the designated person that tells me I am irrational. I can think of a hundred things to worry about at any given time, and have a sprinkling of phobias, but heights aren’t one of them. It was a beautiful moment of role reversal in Cañon City, Colorado.
We were passing through this area on our way farther north, and had stopped off to check out a few places my husband remembered seeing twenty-five years ago. The Royal Gorge—a big fat crack between two mountainous butt cheeks with a bridge like a very uncomfortably situated thong strap—was first on the list and it was well…not the same.
“A Hundred and Eighteen Dollars for Four People to Walk Across the Bridge!”
Apparently sometime in the last twenty-five years The Royal Gorge figured out how to make their fortune. There were a slew of better uses for $118 that we could come up with on the spot. I had visions of turning that one hundred and eighteen into a whole lot of fancy cheese. I could see it there, just spread out across the picnic table, and even a couple packs of those stupidly overpriced water crackers, and me worrying about how I was going to get it all snuggled into the cooler after I had gorged myself. My husband was probably having something similar going on in his head, only his purchase was probably a variety of beers.
The Royal Gorge was a hard pass. Instead, we drove up to one of the “lookouts” on the property (which happen to be free.) There you can follow a vague path through lots of dry earth littered with shinning bits of gold that catch the sun. Odd little baby cacti and plants that looked like they’ve been smoking cigarettes for the past forty years sat there all dry and thin and sallow looking. This may not sound lovely, but it was.
That was when I initially noted my husband’s heights phobia, and when I first noticed something strange happening to me. I wasn’t anxious about the fact that my children were hanging out ten feet from the edge of a cliff. They are cautious children, I said to myself, they won’t do anything stupid. And indeed, they did not. Meanwhile, I was considering shimmying down a small ledge to get to a better view on the rocky platform below. This was a little out of character.
My husband was in the background commenting on how it felt like the wind could blow you right off the edge, had clear instructions for the children on where they had to stop, and was then saying something about how it would be terrible if they lost mama on vacation at the absurdly overpriced Royal Gorge. I decided it was probably best to take his cautious stance too and avoid dying.
“Strange,” I mumbled as I walked back up the path. I felt steady on my feet and entirely in control. The children were picking out the best faux-gold rock to take home, while I looked down at my boots.
We had stopped off in Albuquerque at a thrift store to pick up a few things before heading to Colorado, one of which ended up being those boots. We hadn’t planned our trip entirely, and therefore hadn’t packed everything we might need. Boots weren’t on the list of needs…but these boots seemed to call to me.
I’m only $7.99. Buy me. Wear me. Follow me…
The boots were ridiculously comfortable. They fit me perfectly. It was a done deal.
So After We Left the Regally Priced Royal Gorge, We Went on that Scenic Drive I Was Talking About
A slight widening of the available earth atop the mountain made for a short break in the intense drive. There was enough space to pull-off and park, which we did, to give my husband a chance to dry his hands, and my boots and I a chance to do some tromping. My boots and I hurried up the nearest slope, and stood on top of the world, regally gazing down at the little toy cars going about their business below.
We inhaled some of that blue sky, and the feeling of fragility one has being a hundred and twenty pound breakable object on top of something infinitely harder and larger. Then my boots and I scurried down the path of small loose rocks without the least instance of slipping. Those boots had me solid in their grip. I may have lived my anxious existence in some form of damsel in distress, but finally my knight in shining armor had come. Two of them, actually—one for each foot.
We moved on, and got off that somewhat perilous scenic drive, after seeing a tarantula scurry across the road in front of us, and headed to what I assume was little downtown Cañon City. Old-timey brick store fronts lined the street, and only a few people were milling about. We found a pizza place and ordered to go—we had a trail with old railroad tunnels we wanted to walk before it got dark.
As I bit into a large, hot slice of what the menu had titled The Colorado Pizza, my thoughts solidified.
“It’s the boots,” I announced. “I’m possessed by the boots.”
I decided that for the rest of the trip the boots and I would be constant, close companions. I was going to wear those things like a crusty old cowboy sleeping in the dirt while a bunch of coyotes howled at the moon. Those boots and I were going to be like Lady and the Tramp, only we’d be sharing a foot instead of a noodle. We were going to face life together fearlessly.
Those wonderful boots and I.