Another Evolution

The world feels as though it is slowly greening up around me but having lived in Denver for the past nine and a half years I know better than to trust the weather. We folk on the edge of the Front Range have enjoyed seventy-degree temperatures for the past week, sitting out on the grass in our t-shirts and shorts, taking long lunches outside in the shade of our naked trees, biking to work. It has been a bittersweet heaven and there has been something almost rabid in our enjoyment of it because we know it will not last. A few months from now while the rest of the world is warming up and basking in the delicious golden glow of the sun we will be hunkered down under feet of snow and fierce winds desperately clinging to the memory of our brief January and February springtime.


Duncan and I have walked for hours and hours, across the park, where the shirtless boys have gathered at the skate park, showing off for the girls who snap their gum and twist their hair around their nervous fingers while they watch. Bees and fat hairy flies have suddenly appeared, flying recklessly, sometimes smacking right into us before bouncing away. The little birds practically scream their joy from the barren branches outside my windows, which sit open, wide and cool and fresh, filling my apartment with skittish hope. We have walked down Leawood, examining the dry hard patches which will soon overflow with flowers and clover and lavender and make nice little resting spots for the bunnies Duncan loves so much. Duncan and I are perfect companions for we both crave attention to detail nearly as much as air and water and sleep. We take our time, going slow, stopping to check in with each other and share in our discoveries. The world may be evolving around us, but we are in no hurry to reach a destination. After all, it's the journey that matters most, fair or foul weather.

I'm not sure how much longer we'll be here. Ken and I have decided we need to move to a smaller apartment in an effort to save money and although I hope we don't venture too far from where we live now, I'm not sure my windows will continue to overlook the park and lake we have explored and watched over in the dark months and have grown to love so deeply during the light ones. Duncan––who has spent the past two years memorizing the places where the bunnies roost and the trees where the squirrels squat and scream down at us––may have to coax the secrets from a whole new setting, and although it will be tiring and tedious work I'm sure he's up for the task. I've never known him to shy away from exploration. More often than not it's Dunc who has to guide me through the process. The world evolves and pushes on and as challenging as that can sometimes be I would grow quite bored if it didn't.

For now, though, we'll continue to do what we do, walking every morning and afternoon, taking our time along the low hedges and the the gnarled tree trunks along out path, paying special attention to the fattening moon in the afternoon sky and the dimpled edges where the craters seem to jut out beyond her edges. We will walk and breath in this deep woodsy and red-scented earth and witness the world change and change back again all around us, each step a memento of the journey we've made together and a promise of steps still to come.

"There is a grandeur in this view of life, with its several powers, having been originally breathed into a few forms or into one another; and that, whilst this planet has gone cycling on according to the fixed law of gravity, from so simple a beginning endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been, and are being, evolved." (Charles Darwin, The Origin of Species)