Strangely, as I lay there in the bed, I stared at the wall on my side and remembered back to the exact feeling at the end of last summer when I woke up and stared at my blank wall, back in my room, thinking it was all a dream. That's what prompted me to cover it with pictures from the summer so I would know it all really happened. Looking at that blank wall yesterday though, I realized that waking up back in Estes, I was going to realize I was back home again but was that going to make me feel like the last five years (especially the most recent!) in Flagstaff were going to seem just as surreal? As all these thoughts of walls and deeper meanings were going through my head and I was chewing on my lip to think about something other than crying, Drew pulled up a C.S. Lewis quote,
"And just as there are moments when simply to lie in bed and see the daylight pouring through your window and to hear the cheerful voice of an early postman or milkman down below and to realise that it was only a dream: it wasn't real, is so heavenly that it was very nearly worth having the nightmare in order to have the joy of waking, so they all felt when they came out of the dark."
-The Voyage of the Dawn Treader
The irony of how well that lined up with what I had been thinking about set me off again, and as I willed the tears to stop, I couldn't even say anything at all. Reading another passage--this one from the Bible--kept the tears coming as I thought about how I was leaving the town where I lived the past five years.
"We don't see things clearly. We're squinting in a fog, peering through a mist. But it won't be long before the weather clears and the sun shines bright!"
After saying the final tearful goodbyes to D, D, and L, I got in the car, made a quick stop at the MVD, and headed on my way. On the drive, I started with Mahler 1, using it as a memory of one of the highlights of my playing career in Flag. After that, I went through some of the fifths, with Shostakovich 5, Beethoven 5, and Mahler 5. The first two brought back memories of playing with the Flagstaff Symphony, and while I never performed the full Mahler 5, the horn excerpts were used on my last horn audition at NAU. After those four symphonies, I tried listening to the mix Kelly made me for my birthday last summer. With that music though, I found myself zoning out and not listening as intently as I had been with the symphonies.
I found it strange that I was more unfocused listening to the music that actually had words to sing along with. At my first gas stop in Kayenta, AZ, I was on the phone with Aaron Walker. He said he couldn't listen to classical music when driving because he has to sing along to stay awake. When I got back in the car, I realized I had been singing along to all the different instrumental parts of the piece. I was immersing myself in the music and able to listen so intently for the first time in a while because there was nothing else to distract me.
Utah found me listening to Pictures at an Exhibition and Night on Bald Mountain, both an FSO and high school memory, respectively. Tchaikovsky 4 took me to Moab (the halfway point) while Sheherazade took me away. I70 gave me a chance to listen to all four Brahms symphonies, with the final, triumphant chord of the first symphony lining up directly with my cross over the Colorado border. I70 went on forever, so I was able to get Dvorak 8, Schubert 8, and Dvorak 9, totaling at twelve complete symphonies and a few other works combined with Denver radio for the 836 mile drive.
Waking up this morning in my bed in Estes, I opened the window and let the daylight pour in. Long's Peak was outside, covered in snow, and there were so many shades of green I didn't know what to do with myself. Kristin was sleeping on the mattress on the floor and my suitcases were shoved in the corner from unloading half my car after stopping at The Rock last night before heading home. The cheerful voices I heard were of the wind sweeping through the grasses and trees, combined with the chirping of the birds and rustling of the small rodents running around outside. The best part--it wasn't a dream. Even though I'm here now in the mountains where I belong, Flagstaff is still just as real to me and I am not losing touch with that feeling yet.
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