I will start this little blog with one of the most dreaded phrases in blogdom...."I remember"....
The first time I drove to California I was somewhere on Route 66 when in the distance I saw Pike's Peak and the beginning of the Rocky Mountains appear in front of me. I was in awe. They looked about 30-40 miles away and I anticipated driving into real mountains for the first time in my life. In fact they were a couple of hundred miles distant and it took me hours to reach them.

There are some memories we never forget. They become etched on our brain in a special way usually not reserved for facts and figures. My memory is not of the mountains. I've seen lots of mountains. Mountains almost beyond description. The Swiss Alps, the Austrian Alps, the mountains of the Cascade Range in Washington and Oregon, and the high Rockies of the U.S. and Canada. My memory of Pike's Peak is unique because of the sadness that overcame me because I was experiencing this moment alone. I wanted so much to share it with someone. That shattering loneliness at that moment is what was etched into my memory.

This afternoon I went to see Madama Butterfly. In all seriousness it was wonderful. My sheer joy as I experienced this performance is beyond any words I can write. Butterfly was the first opera I saw in live performance. I was eleven. Those hours at Northrup Auditorium on the U of M campus are a memory I've held for decades. In the years I have left, I will always remember this afternoon, in the dark, moved to tears by a story and performance, unimaginably beautiful. I will also remember the tinge of regret that, like that mountain, I experienced it...alone.