Colorado morning. (part 1)

At Logwood B&B outside of Durango...

This is how Colorado greeted me. Morning had touched everything in sight - from tips of oak tree leaves, to petunia petals in baskets, to rosemary needles peeking out the openings of a strawberry pot. When I awoke just thirty minutes earlier, I could have touched the cooled tips of the trees outside the screen of my open window, a luxury that is non-existent in Texas in the summer. I was not going to miss this - my first real mountain morning. So I threw on a jacket and skirt and could not get outside soon enough. Dew was still covering the rustic wooden porch and its carved wood rails and every blade of grass.

I sat in a rocking chair and opened my journal to a fresh page, closed my eyes, and took a deep breath.

Then I began to record the sounds...the gentle, constant flowing of the Animas River just past the edge of the yard {a river which is so swift in other areas that it can be unnavigable}...the ca-caw of a blackbird...the sprinkler system's hiss....muffled sounds of pots and pans from the kitchen as the owners began preparing breakfast. This whole landscape welcomed morning without cars or horns or smog or Starbucks. Thank God, without Starbucks. Silence. Sweet silence.

I began to smell bacon cooking and ventured back inside to find the great room bathed in a golden light.

Mom and I ate breakfast in peace, the only two guests in the dining room at such an early hour. French toast casserole. Fresh-squeezed orange juice. Crisp bacon. Blueberries and strawberries in a cup.

We ate every last morsel. And then we set off to catch the 8:15am Durango-Silverton Narrow Gauge Railroad for our three-and-a-half hour ride through the mountains and valleys to an old mining town...

(see Part 2: A Mountain ride.)