Ouray Yoga™

  After the Snowstorm Cora brushed the sleep-straggled hair from her daughter’s forehead and secured Katniss’ car-seat. Tonight was their escape. For two months she hid their go-bag under the emergency kit. She thought Frank really meant it when he said he would sober up.  She checked her rear-view mirror, Katniss slept, a residual hick from fearful crying shuddered her tiny rib cage. Cora’s left eye socket was swelling purple and blue; she had shielded Katniss from her daddy. When Frank turned his drunken-wrath towards Katniss, Cora knew it was time to flee.  He had not yet harmed Katniss -- his size and bellow were frightening enough. Cora took the hit. But it was only a question of time before Katniss drew his physical wrath, or became a cowering husk of a human -- like Cora had been. If they didn’t run now, if Cora didn’t stand tall, one of them was going to get felled by his inebriated axe.    The blizzard was lifting. Earlier, when Frank left for his plo...

  Embrace the Suck It’s mid-October, I am hiking my last trail. I have set a goal: 20 trails in 2020 -- it was my middle finger extension to the pandemic -- and it was my last hike. Not because it was #20, not because Ice Lake Trail was closed a few days later due to idiot-car-campers walking away from a campfire (burning 600 acres and countless animals' winter nests); not because the season would soon transition to snowshoeing (thankfully, the fire was extinguished by an early snowstorm); but, it was my last hike because it was the final straw to my own back.  The hike was similar to most hikes in Colorado -- to climb a mountain you must go up. Doesn’t matter if it’s hiking, snowshoeing, or backcountry skiing: to get to the top, to experience the glory, to relish the downhill -- you must embrace the suck. Isn’t that why people pay the big bucks on lift tickets, ATVs and snorkled-monster-tire-bullbar-slider-4X4s? So they don’t have to embrace the suck. Most trails in the San J...

     There is a woman, frayed, agitated, hunched. She braces herself on the hospital exam table, willing her arms to grow longer, holding her up, lengthening to decompress her spine;  her head tilts to one side, her eyes dart around the emergency room with imploring  shadows for pupils. She is neatly kept - but only by a thread. The woman has a grown-out  dye-job, it’s been months since her last touch-up, her grey hair stripes her scalp. Seated  near, in a blue-speckled, molded chair, playing with her teddy-bear is a little girl in pink  pajamas, her elastic pull-ups peek over her waistband, and a disheveled strand of hair  keeps falling-out from behind her ear. It’s Saturday night.  “You need to understand, my granddaughter accidentally poured my pain meds into the toilet to watch it swirl and go ‘bye-bye’.” “I’m sorry ma’am, I can’t refill your hydrocodone. Your record indicates you are not due for a refill for another two weeks, y...