From LA to Aspen

"You may have your eyes wide open

You may have your journey planned
You know just where you're going to
You know just where you'll land

But you can't see life coming
In every color, every form
It's like wind at lightening's speed
The hour before the storm"

~Lyrics from Life ... a song I wrote in college.

Once again ... the universe is showing me life does not always go according to plan. One week ago I checked my e-mail and saw an e-ticket for a flight from LA to Aspen from Derrek. We'd been talking everyday since he left LA, despite our decision to "take some time apart." It felt good to stay in touch, but I finally told him I wasn't interested in a phone call based relationship that kept my heart on hold. I wanted to be strong and love him from afar ... be fine with daily phone calls ... but in truth, that's not possible when you love someone so much. When I got the plane ticket I was thrilled, but confused. What did this mean? A two week vacation for me in Colorado didn't change the fact he was moving there permanently. Hmmmmm ... what to do, what to do? Some friends told me not to go ... that I would just be setting myself up for future disappointment. My dad told me to follow my heart and my mom told me to go ... because she knows I love him more than I've loved anyone before.

So, here I am ... sitting in The Little Nell hotel bar in Aspen, across from Derrek, across from a roaring fire place, blogging, back together with the man who knows me and understands me like no one else. We've gone skiing, ice skating, and out to dinner with his sisters. Today we tried snowshoeing for the first time.
As we began our ascent up the steep, crowded ski hill, our adventure was cut short by a lift operator telling us we could not snowshoe up this particular mountain. She sensed our sincere disappointment and proceeded to do something VERY KARMALIZED.
She let us ride up the gondola for free and told us we could snowshoe in the back country, which is far more peaceful and beautiful than trudging up a ski hill, dodging people cruising down the mountain at 40 mph.
After spending two hours romping through untouched fields of marshmallow soft snow, making snow angels, and listening to a silence that doesn't exist in LA, we rode down the gondola ... happy, pink cheeked and deliriously tired.
Snowshoeing is hard ... but not as hard as Bikram Yoga ... which we did yesterday and I'll tell you about later this week.

With Love & Gratitude,
D&L