Place Where The Spirits Dwell

Back in 1981ish I lived and worked in Cheyenne, Wyoming. It was dull for an 19 year old and I was motivated to seek out adventure or create my own.

One weekend my friend Patty Pickles and I felt like chocolate chip cookies, and rather than shop at the Cheyenne supermarket, we decided to drive to Denver on a cookie run. I had the cutest little 1979 Mazda RX7... with little flip up lights.

Before leaving, Patty and I cut shapes out of heavy black cardboard and duck taped our makeshift "eyelashes" onto the flip lights of the little car. We "fluttered our eyelashes" at everyone we passes all the way to Denver and back with our back of Chips Ahoy. Laughing all the while.

Another time we drove half way to Laramie very late at night to Vedauwoo (vee-dah-voo) which we had been told was an Indian word for "place where the spirits dwell."

Patty and I climbed to the top of the huge rounded granite boulders and spent the night sleeping on our backs with the massive, starry sky completely blanketing even our peripheral vision. We were so far out that even the modest lights of Cheyenne or Laramie couldn't be seen. Just blackness and more stars than I could ever have imagined.

I will forever have the view of that night sky vividly in my memory from the place where the spirits dwell.

Eco-Grass

I can see my neighbor peeking out of the very edge of his window, shaking his fist in a jealous rage as he spits "curse your damned eco-grass" through his clenched teeth.

Of course that's not at all true... I just have a vivid imagination. In truth, T is probably rolling his eyes at the big bald spots left all over my back yard as I continue to labor month after month to turn crabgrass into lawn. Sweating to convert what used to be a yard filled with coarse weeds into a lush cool climate meadow of tender, green mow-less grass. That's why they call it eco-grass.

In my mind's eye, our yard will be a carpet of soft bright green grass, bent over gently, blowing in the breeze. Instead we have patches of meadow surrounded by patches of dirt. I have read that it takes several seasons of over-seeding to fill in these dead spots. Although eventually we should end up with a lovely eco-lawn... no-mow and weed-resistant (so they say), T already has a beautiful green lush lawn.

While I'm out there with a sod cutter and a shovel manually ripping up the crabgrass in my free time over the past three summers, then scattering eco-grass seed with hopes and dreams, T just lays fresh sod every few years. He has a perfect, beautiful lawn.

But I can still see him peeking out the edge of his window shaking his fist with envy at my lush meadow of eco-grass... in my dreams at night... after I drop in bed dead tired and aching after another day of sod cutting, hauling, and seeding.