Steamboat Stillness Calling

“ The answers you seek never come when the mind is busy, they come when the mind is still.” (Leon Brown)

Every once in awhile in my mentally taxing urban life in South Florida, I daydream of a lone wolf howling atop a snowy mountain in the utter stillness of wild mountainous nature. That event means its time for Ruth and us to plan visiting Steamboat Springs, Colorado again for a heavy dose of Rocky Mountain solitude. So it would become no surprise that we would spend a well needed two weeks of our current road trip “lying low” in Steamboat in Mid October to savor the simple pleasures of autumn’s silent seasonal glories.

Consider then that I am the kind of person who struggles to sustain his minute by minute concentration on everyday activities like reading, writing, and listening. Yet I had no problem allotting a sizable amount of time during our present Steamboat visit to focus my extended attention out my motel bedroom window at wild nature’s changing presence. At such times I fixated with imaginative pleasure at such details as a colorful mass of falling leaves, the subtle shading of sun/cloud colors, or first falling, mountaintop snowfall. Adventuring out of town to Pearl Lake and Stagecoach State Parks, I felt my rhythmic breaths of the chilly Colorado air suddenly slow in yogic like meditation as I stood in stoic silence for several minutes amid the nearby presence of two mountainside lakes.

Yes, I am truly hooked on living the illusion of Steamboat stillness reminiscent perhaps of a timeless Monet painting. For while Steamboat functions clearly as a tourist town with an abundance of local eateries, western shops and trendy outdoor activities, I prefer the simple therapeutic “high” of doing nothing here but being sensory- alive. So take a close look at each of the following photographs from our latest Steamboat stopover. You might imagine such activity stillness as an integral part of your own life story.