Clandestine Confessions

“So, what brought you back here? I thought you were really vibing with Colorado.”
I was sitting in my car at Rocky Mountain National Park when I sent him an S.O.S text over the summer – needing more suggestions of places to go out west to extend my stay.
I never wanted to leave.
“I did love it there but not so much that it ever made it as my phone background.”
I took my phone out of my coat pocket and handed it to him across the table.
We were at a bar in Park City killing time before the dinner reservation he made for us.
“Cottonwood,” he said. His face slowly lit up as the realization sunk in. “This was from the day I took you for that drive.”
“It was. My favorite of the entire trip.”
It was then I had reached what I thought was the peak of bliss.
Existing in such an intense euphoria of being alive.
But was overwhelmingly reminded every day after that there is always more.
You can always climb higher.
A “more” I was living in on this trip.
–
“But wait. Question. How is it that we were in the same place at the same time and THAT is what you saw? I have lived here for five years and have never been able to capture it from that perspective.”
5,289 photos/videos taken over those three weeks and that one will exist forever as my favorite.
I took a pause before speaking, circling my finger around the edge of my glass.
A habit I do whenever deep in thought.
He took a long sip of his beer – I could tell an intentional gesture to buy me time to compile what I wanted to say.
“You see what you are looking for,” I said. “And on that day, I happened to be looking for a view that would remind me of the beauty of this world. That every time I would look at it, I would come alive a little more, fall more in love with life. And it has done just that.”
I lifted my head, looked directly into his eyes, and smiled.
“So much so that here I am again.”
–
Not only the image itself but the capturing of it will forever be engrained on my heart.
That spot was the destination he was adamant we reach by the end of the day.
To provide me with the ultimate depiction of the magnificence that is the scenery of Salt Lake City.
Driving roads that seemed too narrow for his car to get there, no guardrails to stop us from going over the edge.
Glass Animals playing the entire way.
Stories told of adventures lived out on various mountains we passed by.
Him searching for a moose so I could live out my dream of seeing one (trying to do so “secretly” but I could tell by his concentrated scoping of the terrain what he was attempting to accomplish…I tried to hide my smile watching him hide his mission.)
Friends who choose to see you are the ones who make you better…
Choose wisely.
–
Upon arriving we did a small climb.
Increasing our elevation to enlarge our vision.
A simultaneous perspective expansion of the mountains and of life.
I was partly expecting him to say something when he reached the top but he never did.
Feeling no need to talk over the gentle whisper the world was speaking.
He just watched as I took it all in.
In silence.
In stillness.
As if understanding you only get one first time to see something for the first time.
I would never get this moment again.
And he let me have it – fully to myself.
And I have never been the same since…
–
It became a course corrector for my future – the compass for all my subsequent choices.
A creator of my identity – igniting passions and rewriting memories to direct the path of my becoming.
It made the healing real.
It was a homecoming…
–
“So, what’s next for you while here?” he asked.
“To be determined. We know me,” I said with a laugh. “I make most of these trips up as I go. But whatever it is, I promise you will be the first to know.”
And he was.
Four days later.
When my pursuit of life brought me down an unexpected path…