Going Home Again

I love Denver.

When the plane landed yesterday morning, the pilot said it was 12 degrees out. But the high desert sun was above the vast brown quilt of dry creekbeds and wrinkled range, and it felt much warmer than it had in Chicago where, after more than a week in which the temperature never got above 16 degrees, everything was radiating cold -- even coffee pots.

When you land at Denver International Airport, you can't even see downtown Denver -- certainly not in the winter, when the cold-air inversion traps the smog at the base of the Front Range. Sprawl has crept out toward the airport, which just recently had its 10th birthday.  Still -- even from that remove -- the city seems amiable and manageable. It seems welcoming. It isn't stuck on itself and it isn't menacing the way many cities are.

Most travelers won't even stop in Denver: they're passing through on their way to Vail or Beaver Creek or Breckenridge. Good riddance.

Denver itself is not gorgeous. Its arid terrain and suburban architecture and planning are the result of the gold-camp mentality: just get out here, settle in, and start panning. Never mind what you live in: just throw a shack together, thrown on some clothes and get out there.

The city, as a result, is informal and welcoming, easy to navigate and easy to feel at home in. I've been gone almost 10 years and only lived here for about four, but I still miss it.

My old college friend, born and raised here, took me to the JCC and got me a massage from Boris, a muscle-bound Russian with hands like anvils. He delivered a glorious beating.

And of course, my reading at the Tattered Cover last night was like old home week. Joyce Meskis, the proprietor of the TC, the largest independent bookstore in the country, was a board member of the nonprofit I worked for when I came to Denver. She welcomed me warmly and introduced me to an audience comprised mostly of old friends. (That's OK: they bought books.) Afterward, returned to my brother's house; he, his wife and I drank wine while their daughter pulled the entire household -- people, bolts of cloth, pets, pieces of furniture -- into an art project due at her high school this morning.

Once again, I left the One True Wife to deal with a big Midwestern snowstorm, whilst I enjoyed a warming Sun I felt I hadn't seen in weeks. (She joins me in Denver today, but yesterday she had to deal with snowbound cars and terrible traffic. It seems the big storms only happen when I leave town.) Here, we get to say hello to the birthplace of our marriage, our children, our life together. It warms into the 40s today.

The mountains still look impressed with their new mantles of snow.

Once you've lived here, some part of you never leaves.

--T.A.

Comments

[Yehoshua Karsh]

I love the Tattered Cover. It's a place of pilgrimage.

This Shabbat, my children were visiting their grandparents in Milwaukee, my wife was napping on a couch. The outside was cold, with a snow blanket muting the sounds of the streets. I curled up on the couch, with a great book, yours (I cannot get enough of it). I love Shabbat in winter for just those kinds of moments.