When I moved from my hometown of Durango, CO almost 33 years ago, I had no idea that I would be “out of the state” for such a tremendous length of time. A freshly minted college graduate, I headed for the Sunshine State, hoping for a few snowless winters before I would likely wind my way back out west.
Clearly the winding my way part never happened.
Still, I do try to get home a few times a year to visit family, including my 97 year old father. Rare, however, is the trip taken in the dead of winter. While most of my trips are of the spring/summer/fall variety, every decade or so I do go home in the wintertime; if for no other reason than to remind myself why I moved to Florida in the first place.
Such is the situation this week, as I am taking a brief vacation to visit family and enjoy Durango’s Annual Winter festival, SnowDown.
For those of you unfamiliar, I can best describe Durango during SnowDown as being most analogous to the quirky 1990’s television show “Northern Exposure”. You have to see it to believe it. My last SnowDown was in 2004, and the theme that year was based on the Flintstone era stone age. Specifically, it was called “Yabba Dabba Doorango”. This year is an Intergalactic theme, and avid participants will likely dress in Buck Rogers era costumes depicting what everyone once thought the future would look like.
Trust me, it is just going to be weird. Fun. But weird.
The highlight of the event is the Friday evening SnowDown Follies, where local talent will entertain and amaze. Fortunately, I have a sister in town who excels at getting these hard to find tickets every year, so we are assured seats at this most important social soiree.
This is just a very long way of saying, “I’m on vacation”, and that this blog will not be producing any new and exciting revelations this week. But you probably knew that – in addition I won’t be writing anything.
This week it is SnowDown 1, Blog 0. While I am off freezing my tuchus to the bone, Peter Rousmaniere’s column will make its debut on the site, and others will be working hard to entertain and inform. It’s about time someone here did that, anyway. I look forward to returning to the fold later next week. Until then….