Almost-Missed Magic
When people imagine Christmas in Colorado, they picture blankets of snow, maybe skiing in Breck, coat-hat-mitten type weather. Maybe that would have been the case years ago, but those classic white Christmases are becoming less and less of a sure thing.
I grew up in a suburb North of Denver and spent a significant percentage of my childhood in the mountains. While I will always love Colorado, the cold winters were part of the reason I chose to move to a more moderate climate. Now, when I visit my family for the holidays, I long for just a little snow. Just a little bit of that magic I experienced as a kid running around little ski towns in my snow boats.
Two Christmases ago, my family and I stayed in a cabin just outside Rocky Mountain National Park for a few days. I kept checking the weather app hoping to see a little snowflake emoji, but the sun was relentless.
My sister and I have a Christmas tradition we fondly refer to as our annual “Emo Drive”. Each year we go a long drive, usually to nowhere special, and blast all the emo-ish music we loved in high school. Think Hawthorne Heights, Fall Out Boy, Blink 182… the classics. Since we were in the mountains for this years drive, we cruised around the Estes Park side of Rocky Mountain National Park.
As we neared the end of our drive, somewhere likely in between Red Jumpsuit Apparatus and Good Charlotte, a small pocket of clouds formed over one of the peaks ahead of us. I noticed it had that tell-tale blurry quality indicating snowfall. Since there was no snow in the forecast for Estes Park, I figured the snow was at a higher elevation than we willing to drive to. But, we chanced it.
As we drove closer, little tiny specks of snow softly traveled across the windshield. It was sparse, the kind of snow you hardly notice and assume will pass in a few minutes. We almost turned around to head home, almost called it quits, almost missed the magic.
As we rounded a corner, my sister pointed at something in the distance. Given how many shades of brown I was looking at (if you know Colorado in winter, you know), I didn’t see what she was pointing at right away. When my eyes focused, I could see she spotted three enormous bull elk sitting beneath a stand of lodgepole pines.
I’m not sure I’ve ever pulled over or grabbed my 200-500 lens so fast.
They were like statues, regal and completely still. Just beautiful.
As I took more photos than I needed, the snow slowly picked up. At one point it was snowing hard enough, my camera could not autofocus on the elk anymore. Eventually, the elk stood up, grazed a bit, and then wandered off into the snow to find their next resting place.
If we hadn’t driven towards the little squall, if we hadn’t decided to stay in the park for a few minutes, if my sister didn’t have her eagle-eyes on, we would’ve missed the most gorgeous, quintessential Colorado Christmas scene.
And, isn’t that always how it is?
Sometimes, we do just have to call it quits. We run out of time. We run out of daylight. The day just doesn’t turn out. But, sometimes it does. Sometimes, the magic is in the very final moments of the adventure. Sometimes, it’s just past where you believe it will be.
That kind of magic, the magic we almost miss, is the kind I will always seek <3
