In August 2023, we moved one of our twin daughters to Boulder, Colorado for grad school. I wrote the following passage for BeyondtheNest upon our return:

I always marvel at how travel makes strangers so much more open to conversations. Maybe it has to do with the fact that they’ll probably never seen each other again, so there’s a sense of anonymity. Despite that “anonymity,” or maybe because of it, those interactions create powerful memories.

On the shuttle from the airport to the first night’s hotel in Denver, I got talking to a man who was a resident of Nebraska, but who had lived in Boulder for four years and was returning to visit. In addition to giving us some great tips of things to do, he also shared that he was returning from Maui where he had been in Lahaina the morning immediately before the wildfires had started. Although his family had been staying on the other side of the island, he spoke of the dire circumstances across the island without access to food or water. Fortunately, as he spoke of it in the immediate past tense, the anxiety he must have experienced seemed to be fading, as if talking about it helped give him distance and perspective.

Toward the end of the week, we had a more uplifting encounter high up in the Rockies at a place called Lost Gulch Overlook. At the 7,300-foot summit, we got talking to a woman and her 96-year-old husband, who was on oxygen. As we gazed across the valley to Longs Point, the highest point within view, Arnold shared that he had first climbed the 14,259-foot-high mountain when he was 12 years old. They returned to their car, but Millie came back to tell us more about Longs Peak, sharing that she had climbed the mountain four times. She seemed pleased when I asked if I could take her photo.

“I don’t think we’ll be climbing that mountain again. Four times is enough,” she quipped.

I’m sure Millie and Arnold Williams will remain among my favorite memories from Colorado. I just wish I had a photo of both of them.