Meeker, CO. April 17, 2013. After four days of non-stop snow in Western Colorado, I welcomed the tinge of blue in the distant sky earlier this evening. Although I am usually first in line to get out on a river when it’s snowing, this time I decided to play on the seesaw.
The seesaw played an important part in my playground enjoyment some 50 years ago. I take my grandchildren to the park, but I no longer see this apparatus anymore – too much litigation I imagine. Sometimes when I played on the seesaw, the person on the opposite end wanted to see if we could balance it so that both our feet didn’t touch the ground. Some people wanted to try and see if they could leave me hanging up in the air or crash me to the bottom. There have always been playground bullies.
I have been on a seesaw this week but only metaphorically speaking. When I arrived in Meeker on Monday evening after a great week on the Yampa I found myself in the heart of a snowstorm. My friends could not make it up from Grand Junction and so I prepared myself to figure out this river on my own. I am fortunate once again to be staying at a campground that has free wi-fi and thus I supplemented my folder with some online information about the White.
I decided to spend some time on Tuesday morning taking care of emails, skimming the news headlines, updating sections of my website and editing some book chapters. I kept battling with myself to drive down to the river, which is only about 10 minutes away, but as the early afternoon hours started to pass, I realized that I really wanted to spend the day in my camper just writing. I rode this seesaw all day though, trying to push myself to explore the river, but wanting to just hang out.
On Wednesday I totally succumbed to my desire to hang out and write. The snow came down hard all day, the wind whistled to the tune of 17 mph and fishing just didn’t sound appealing. I felt balanced on my seesaw today – not fighting myself for what I wanted and needed to do.
