Of All the Places I've Lived (in Vail)

by Tracey Flower

In the spirit of apartment hunting, taking stock of my life and my pending six-year anniversary with Vail, I’d like to share a list of all the places I’ve lived since I’ve been here. A list that, in writing it, I realized tells the story of my time here, of where I’ve been, who I was and how I’ve grown.

All the place I have lived (in Vail):

• May 2005-May 2006: My first home in Vail was Timber Ridge Unit N5. (NOTE: Timber Ridge is Vail Resorts employee housing and dirt-cheap because it’s dirty, old and likely to crumble at any moment. Also fondly known by nicknames such as The Ghetto and Timber Ritz, I’ve mostly bopped around units in this complex as the location and the price fit my needs to a T. Yes I get made fun of for it. Yes I’m slightly embarrassed to get off at the bus stop here. But at least the rent doesn’t break me.) This is still the address listed on my Colorado driver’s license and I was once refused a Town of Vail Library card because I had since moved from that address but never changed my license. I lived in that unit with three guys and it was quite the experience for someone who had up until that point lived with mostly women.
• May 2006-November 2006: I moved into a two-bedroom condo in Simba Run, just down the road from Timber Ridge, with three of my girlfriends. It had a washer/dryer (jackpot!) in the unit and a pool and gym on the premise. We may have been twenty-something’s sharing bedrooms but we felt like we were living the highlife.
• November 2006-November 2008: Timber Ridge Unit I8. The longest I’ve lived in one place since living in my parent’s house and I’m quite sure the longest anyone’s ever lived in the same Timber Ridge unit. Almost all of my closest girlfriends in Vail lived with me in that unit at one time or another, and our second winter in I8 marks the only six months when we were all single at the same time. Some of my favorite adventures in Vail housing moments happened in that unit.
• November 2008-February 2009: Timber Ridge Unit K3. I lived here with two guys, one of whom was my boyfriend. He broke up with me. I moved out. End of story.
• February 2009-April 2009: Timber Ridge Unit C5. This was the unit my friends were forced to move into when the house they were renting in West Vail caught fire one night. The fire destroyed the home and most of their belongings. I moved in, devastated, a few months later when my boyfriend and I broke up. We weren’t thrilled to be living in that place, it was crowded and the reasons we were there were lousy, but I must say at least we all had a place to go. 
• April 2009-November 2009: My girlfriends and I moved out of C5 and into a townhome in the Telemark Condos. By far the biggest and nicest place I’ve lived since my parent’s house, it was a relief and a treat to be there after the winter we had all had. It had three bedrooms, three bathrooms and a washer/dryer. It had something like four floors and there was a pool on the premise. This was the only time in my life that I have had my own bathroom.  Alas, it was only a six-month lease and at 2,400 buckaroos a month (800 of those my responsibility) not really affordable. It was also the reason for the great landlord security deposit debacle of 2009, but that’s another story for another time.
• November 2009-April 2010: Timber Ridge Unit K14. With all my former roomies either shacked up with their significant others or moved away, I was left to fend for myself so I sucked it up and went for the cheapest option for a room. I ran into a friend I knew through work when signing my lease and he moved in to the unit’s second bedroom. I’ve had better and worse roommates than this one but it was, in all, a pleasant living experience (and a huge weight off my wallet after that pricy condo). 
• May 2010: Month of my botched move to Australia. I packed up my life and squeezed it into the world’s tiniest storage unit and whatever didn’t fit I gave away. I loaded up my oversized bags and headed home to Michigan, where I had planned to spend two weeks with friends and family before departing for Australia, where I was going to live for at least the next year. As we all know it turns out life had absolutely no regard for those plans and after a confusing, frustrating, upside down, life-changing month I was back in Vail.
• June 2010-present: Timber Ridge Unit K14. And home again? My roommate was still in this unit when I returned, and still had all the stuff I had given him that wouldn’t fit in my storage unit, so I moved back in and reclaimed my stuff and my space (and, eventually, my life). He moved out about a month later and I enjoyed a summer of living alone before the housing office gave me two brand new roommates. It hasn’t been the most pleasant living arrangement ever but I’ve made it work and now I’m looking forward to what’s next, both in the world of apartments and for my life in general. 

What stories do the places you've lived have to tell?

Six Months at a Time

by Tracey Flower

As another season comes to an end here in Vail, it’s time to take stock of my life and solidify my plans for work and housing for the next six months. In May I will have lived in Vail for six years. In that time I’ve moved from one apartment to another nine times, and I’m getting ready to do it again.

Such is the life when you live in a place where rent costs a small fortune. I remember a conversation a few years ago with a friend who lives in Michigan about rent. She was shocked when she realized my room in a small condo was more than the monthly price tag on the house she and her husband were renting, 200 bucks more in fact. I envied her for a fleeting moment, and then I looked out my window at the Gore Range and remembered that steep rent is a small price to pay to live in paradise. As I tell bar patrons who regularly ask me how one affords to live here, you have to really love the lifestyle and not mind being a little bit poor.

Home sweet home with the Gore Range in view

While I’ve managed to consistently, if only barely sometimes, make ends meet in my six years here in Vail I must admit that re-configuring my life every six months becomes a pain sometimes, especially the moving part. But even as I daydream about finding that sweet spot in the world of high country housing, where long-term leases exist in harmony with reasonable rent and wonderful roommates (because, let’s be honest, few folks make enough to afford their own places around these parts), I wonder if I’m ready for such a commitment.

I’ve realized (happily) that Vail’s my home and I have no intention of leaving anytime in the near future. But I must admit I experience a small panic at the end of each winter and summer here, when seasonal jobs end and decisions about where to live need to be made, when everything’s flying up in the air around me, waiting for me to pull it all into place. But when it all comes together (and it always comes together) I feel such sweet relief that I have a plan, even if it is only for another six months. I almost feel incapable of planning my life out any farther than that. Perhaps that’s immature for a 28-year-old. Perhaps some of it comes from my botched plans to move to Australia. Whatever it is I don’t see it changing anytime soon. I’ve realized, however immature it seems or stressful it may be at times, that taking life six months at a time works for me, at least at this point in my life.


Check out my next post for a list of all the apartments I've lived in since I moved to Vail.

And Home Again (From Flower Blog Two: Stories From Down Under)

My time in Melbourne has come to an end. I was there just over two weeks but it felt like months. I was going to live and work in Australia initially because someone I loved asked me to go there and because I wanted to be with him. Now that I no longer have that person in my life I know that living and working in Australia is not something I want to do. I also know that I had to go to Australia despite my loss, if only for a short time, so that my loss could become real to me. It was like going to the funeral of the relationship that has just died. I had to go to say good-bye.

Farewell Melbourne. The city from St. Kilda Pier.

When I left Michigan for Melbourne I was in shock. I had been dumped and rejected quite coldly and it was devastating. Everything I had believed to be true was false and everything I had been looking forward to for the past few months was gone. This was, and still is, a lot to take and it makes me feel light and dizzy and wonder if I’m dreaming. And so, I believe my mind went into shock to keep me moving forward, to protect me from pain that might have been too intense to handle right away.

The shock wore off quickly when I got to Melbourne. What I have lost became real to me there and grief set in. I sat in the bedroom I was renting while Melbourne’s winter gloom loomed outside and let my grief make itself known. And I cried. I sobbed and sobbed and I let the grief become part of me. I wandered and explored the city by myself and let all the aspects of my grief appear, the heartache, the loneliness, and the anger. I made the decision to return home almost immediately but I let it twist and turn in my mind for a while to give it time to separate from the grief (because let’s be honest, grief itself doesn’t always make the best decisions). I went to Australia with a sick feeling in my gut and while I have returned with my grief in tow, that sick feeling is gone and I at least feel calm and content that my purpose for being there was fulfilled and home is where I should be right now.

I keep thinking about the insect exhibit in the Melbourne Museum. There is an area dedicated to all the large, ugly, and slightly terrifying spiders that call Australia home. Next to the live tarantulas is a display of one of the largest of these beasts’ old skins. It seems tarantulas have the same habit of shedding their exoskeleton as they grow as snakes. It made me wonder if these creatures are aware of this shedding as it is taking place, if they know how hideous they look when it’s happening and if it hurts at all. I wonder if they know that they are growing and that when they finally lose that old skin they will be changed, they will be larger and stronger.

I feel like a tarantula right now. I have returned home in poor shape. I’ve lost weight and sleep and I have a bad cold. Every time I look in the mirror at the moment I’m shocked to see the person looking back at me. I don’t recognize her, she looks drained, this person, she looks pale and weary and it’s hard to believe this person is me. I look back at photos of myself taken in Moab just weeks ago when I started this blog and I also have a hard time believing the person in those photos is me. I don't feel like her anymore and the truth is I will never be her again. I’m in transition right now and I’m growing, which isn’t always a particularly pretty process and is usually quite painful, but when it’s finished the shell of who I used to be will remain and I will crawl out of it still me but changed and, hopefully, stronger.



This will be my last post on this blog. My time in Australia is done and it’s time to move on to new adventures. I have plenty more stories to tell and thoughts to share, though, so stay tuned.

NOTE: To read about what I learned last time I visited Australia read Breathe.

Home is Where the Moon Sets (From Flower Blog Two: Stories From Down Under)

Had someone told me five years ago that after living in Vail for awhile I would think the best way to celebrate the end of a winter season is to spend a few days camping and playing in Moab, Utah, I would have been skeptical. When I moved to Vail sleeping in a tent and not showering for a few days did not excite me (click here to read about my first camping trip in Colorado on Flower Blog). Five years later and I found myself squeezing in a 4-day trip to Moab between finishing work, packing my life into a very small storage unit, and tying knots in all the ends that needed to be tied before I leave Vail for Australia. And it was worth it.

The view from my tent in Moab, Utah

There’s something exhilarating and cleansing about that annual pilgrimage of Vail residents to the high desert. It’s the moment when everyone breathes a collective sigh of relief that the chaos of winter has ended. People let their hair down. They whoop and laugh loudly on the river and continue to eat, drink, and be merry into the night while gathered around big campfires. It’s a big familial celebration and always a good time.

I was sitting around the campfire on the last night of the trip this year watching my friends, many of whom have become family to me over the years, laugh and talk and I realized that I was home. Not home in Moab but home with these people and home in moments like that. This epiphany shocked me at first. I’ve called Vail home over the years but I’ve also called Michigan home, although somewhere during the past year or so I believe I stopped calling Michigan home. I never expected Vail to become home, never knew when I moved there that it would become home. But that’s what it is, and not just because all of my stuff’s there or because I have a 970 area code or a Colorado driver’s license; because those aren’t really the things that make a place home. It’s the people you love and the experiences you share with them that make a place home, that shape who you are and tie your heart to a place.

Vail has a very transient population and I realized early in my time there that as long as I live there I would always be saying good-bye to people. I hate that. Good-byes are exhausting. I learned quickly that these farewells had to be quick and, sometimes, even a little impersonal. A hug and a “see you later” and that’s all that’s needed, especially because I’ve also realized that many of the people who leave come back. Vail has that kind of pull on folks.

With the end of this year’s Moab trip came my turn to say good-bye. This time I was on the opposite end of quick hugs and “see you laters.” It was harder for me than I thought it would be to be the one leaving and I almost wanted everyone to be sadder to see me go.

The morning I left Vail was cold and clear. It was 4:30 in the morning and I went outside to take the trash out before my 5:00 am airport shuttle arrived. It was still dark, right before the first hints of daylight arrive, and the moon was incredible. It was setting in the west over the mountains and it was glowing and huge. It felt like a little “see you later” from Vail. And it struck me that there was no need for myself or anyone else to be sadder to see me go because the best thing about knowing where home is, is that you can and will always find yourself there again. And, if home really is with the people you love, and the people you love are scattered around the globe, then you’re really never that far away from home.

Christmas Letter 2005

Greetings:

I’m currently finding myself in the midst of my first holiday season away from home. And, while good friends and Rocky Mountain paradise surround me, I’m a bit nostalgic for Christmastimes past. There are certain Flower family holiday traditions that can only be shared at home, however there are a couple I’ve found I can preserve on my own. The first is listening to Christmas music for the entire month of December. The second is writing my very own Christmas letter in a way I can only hope will make my father proud. With that I give you the past year of my life (and a how-to for stepping out on your own for the first time).


Make the decision to move away from home, let it twist and turn in your head, pray it’s the right one, and hope that Colorado’s the Promised Land they say it is. Remember that it’s been almost a year now since you graduated from college and that, as much as you love Mom, Dad, and working at that little local coffee shop, as scary as this move is, you have a nagging hunger to see what else it out there. Write your last article for Allegan County Living magazine and make one last vanilla latte for your favorite regular. Send your resume to the Starbucks in Vail, get hired over the phone, and promise them you’ll be there by May.

The day when you have to say good-bye to your sisters, brother, cats, dog and mom will come way too fast. Cry when you hug your mom, she’ll hold you so tight it hurts a little, hug her back just as tightly.

You’ll feel a little nervous on the car ride to Colorado but mostly you’ll find it strange that you feel so confident, so assured that this is right. As you pass through Iowa, Nebraska, and into Eastern Colorado realize that you have, indeed, discovered the Middle-of-Nowhere. Try to call Rand McNally to let him know where to mark it on the map. Don’t be surprised when you can’t get through because you don’t have cell service.

Naturally your stomach will flutter a bit as you near Denver, but don’t worry, as soon as you start winding up through those majestic mountains in the distance, you’ll feel at home.

Try not to cry too much when you have to say good-bye to your dad.

Start your new job right away and love it because your co-workers are great and the atmosphere there is more that of a small-town coffee shop than a Starbucks. You’ll be promoted to Shift Supervisor within the first month.

Be in awe of your surroundings in that little mountain resort town. You’ll mostly be in the company of your boyfriend and his buddies. Try to keep up with them. Go for lots of hikes in those first few weeks, huff and puff as your lungs try to acclimate to the altitude. Don’t cry or complain when thorny weeds scratch deep into your legs or when you slip on a rock crossing a stream and bruise your shin. Get over the layer of dirt that has covered your entire body and keep trekking. Take note of your surroundings, of rushing waterfalls, alpine lakes, sapphire skies, and blooming wildflowers. Be humbled by it all.

Go camping at a place that has no modern plumbing. Sleep in a tent, cook over the fire, don’t shower for a couple days, and love it. These camping adventures will take you swimming in the Colorado River, bathing in natural hot springs, and star-gazing under a sparkly black blanket you never knew existed. Wish on more shooting stars under those brightly lit nights than you ever have before.

The summer won’t be all fun and games. You’ll be homesick, particularly after seeing your family when they come out to bring your brother to college. You’ll miss your girlfriends and your old job. You’ll miss all the things about home that you hated when you were living there.

Turn 23 in September and wonder if you’re a grown-up yet.

Plan a trip with your boyfriend to visit home in the fall. Decide to also visit Seattle and San Francisco and everything in between. A month or so before you depart for this trip quit your job at Starbucks because, somewhere around July, it stopped being fun and you didn’t move to Colorado to work, at least not at a lousy job. Decide to work at Bailey’s, the little Vail Resorts-owned coffee shop on top of the mountain.

In Seattle visit the Pike’s Place Market and see the famous fish-tossing fishermen. Stop by the first Starbucks and listen to the street musicians playing outside. It will rain a lot all the way down the coast. Appreciate all that you see anyway. You’ll touch the Pacific Ocean for the first time, drive through a redwood, and cross the Golden Gate Bridge. Oh, and don’t forget to have lunch with your dad once you reach San Francisco, he’ll be there on business.

Once you’re back in Vail snow will start to fall and you’ll begin making friends with all the people who have moved there for the winter. Start riding the gondola up the mountain to work every day and taking snowboarding lessons on your days off. You’ll soon see more snowfall in one week than you’ve seen in two months in Michigan. After the storms pass the sun will shine for days on end.

Realize on the way home from work one night, while you’re sitting alone in a gondola car watching the rising moon cast a soft glow on fresh powder as it peeks over the mountains, that you’re content. Realize that this is true even though you still miss your friends and family sometimes, that this is true even though you can’t be with them on Christmas. Something in the moon will remind you that you’re never too far away from the ones you love, and for that reason you can find joy in this holiday season away from home.

Have a blessed Christmas and New Year.

Love,
Tracey

Journal Entry 02/09/05

This blog is not a personal diary for me. My journal, however, is. I use my journal as a place to rant, to document events, and to help me sort through my thoughts. The entries aren’t always well written and sometimes don’t even make much sense to me when I read them later. Some of the entries are deeply personal and I hope no one will ever read them. And some of them, like the one posted here, I think are worth sharing.

I was reading an old journal the other day, looking for ideas and inspiration and this entry made me smile. It made me think about who I was then and where I was at that point in my life. I wrote it after my first visit to Colorado before I decided to move to Vail.


February 9, 2005

I feel a bit like I’m cheating by writing in this at the moment. See I have another journal going right now that still has blank pages. One entry left of bank pages to be exact. When I fill those pages it will be the last entry in a book that has chronicled the past few years of my life. It’s a book full of rambling notes, stories and thoughts about life. Not much of a page-turner, but it’s my life nonetheless and it deserves a good ending.

It doesn’t feel right to start the next book without finishing the last. It’s tough, though, because my life is in limbo right now. I can see where I’m going and where I’ve been but I’m finding myself somewhere in the middle of it all. I’ve yet to close that last chapter, to experience the ending there, or perhaps I have but I haven’t realized it. In any case I’m not ready to write it.

As for the beginning of this next chapter, I suppose I’m writing it right now. I’m not quite sure why the beginning is easier to write than the ending. Perhaps it’s because the beginning is more exciting than the ending. Perhaps it’s because I’m scared of the ending. Perhaps it’s because I’ve already experienced this chapter’s first adventure. Because I’ve already learned from it, already grown from it and already changed from it. This volume begins after a six-day trip to Colorado with stops in Vail, Glenwood Springs, and Aspen.

I learned on that trip that people who vacation in Vail or Aspen have considerably more money than people who vacation in Florida (most of my vacations until recently were family road trips to Florida). The people I observed vacationing in high-end Colorado resort towns do not seem the type to pack up the minivan, throw on some Bermuda shorts and join the caravan of families trekking down to Orlando or Tampa for spring break. They wear fur coats, shop in stores like Prada, drink expensive wine, and spend vacation days skiing. People who vacation in Florida wear tacky floral shirts, shop in discount souvenir shops, sip brightly colored drinks, and spend vacation days getting sunburned at Sea World. This is not to say that those who spend time in Vail or Aspen do not like to spend a day at Sea World, shop for souvenirs, or wear Bermuda shorts. They just seem to go about it in a more expensive, classier way.

That observation is one of many from my recent trip, more stories to come later. Colorado was definitely different, though. Good different. The trip has left me thinking a lot about that place as a potential new home. We will see what happens in the months to come.

RE: Life With Boys, DATE: June 27, 2005

The following is another email I wrote to my dad during my first summer in Vail. I am, and always have been, a girly girl. I was living with three guys at the time and, after growing up in a female-dominated household, it was a bit of a challenge.


Dad:

I’m sitting in an apartment that looks like a college pad inhabited by guys. Why? Because it is an apartment inhabited by guys, three of them to be exact. This is a rare moment when I'm sitting in the living room enjoying (if that's what you call it) the company of both Joe and Dave, two of the guys I'm lucky enough to call my roommates at the moment. Both are currently sloppily enjoying pasta and, in case Aaron (my little brother) hasn't eaten any lately, let me remind you of how guys tend to eat pasta. It's not pretty. Guys don't eat pasta. Nope, they slurp it then belch it, which adds to the foul boy smell that has dug its talons into the furniture and carpet in this place. I spend a good majority of the time holding my breath. The other part of the time I'm passed out from holding my breath for too long in the altitude. I enjoy my living arrangement much more when I'm passed out.

Let me give you a visual. First there's the kitchen. It's sort of a toss up which room grosses me out more: the bathroom or the kitchen. If I clean either they remain in that state only until one of the guys enters the room. The kitchen isn't a large area. The floors are stained and the stove must have a birth date circa 1980. This can all easily be overlooked when the space is clean as, in general, I tend not to spend a great deal of time in any kitchen. On a good day there is only one pasta-crusted pot left on the stove, only two cupboard doors left open and I only have to brush the crumbs from the floor off my feet a couple times. On a bad day I put flip-flops and a face mask on before entering the room.

The living room has two tattered brownish couches and a chair to match. Guy-type magazines are strewn across the coffee table (if ever I leave one of mine there it is quickly re-distributed elsewhere). The room's highlight is the entertainment system, a large TV complete with a DVD player, a VHS player, and a multi-disc CD player. They've got it rigged so the sound for the TV comes through the CD player’s speakers resulting in offensively loud movie watching. Did I mention it smells in here? The walls in the living room are relatively bare, which the guys see as a problem. Their solution, go online and buy a giant Michigan flag, as we all hail from the state. The flag will arrive in the mail at a later date and they plan to hang it dead center above one of the couches. They were pretty proud of themselves on that one.

Should I touch on the bathroom or just leave that one to your imagination? Let's just say that I finally broke down and cleaned it a week ago. I had to buy rubber gloves and Lysol with bleach. It wasn't pretty. It's already dirty again.

I'm allowed to decorate my room to my taste (I say allowed because I put three magnets on the refrigerator at one point and was ridiculed for them so much that I removed them). I'm tempted to put up pink ruffled curtains just to balance out the rest of the apartment, or maybe a vanity in one corner with a pink satin chair and lots of perfume and makeup. I'll sing "Girls Just Want to Have Fun" at the top of my lungs while putting curlers in my hair. I have an overwhelming urge to fully embrace every girly part of me right now and not hold back. We're talking singing along to the Dirty Dancing soundtrack while staring dreamily at a poster of Patrick Swayze. We're talking fuchsia nail polish and lots of lace. I'm being pushed over the edge here. I'm not sure I can be held responsible for my actions from this point forward.

Things aren't all that bad I suppose. After all I’m in Rocky Mountain paradise and it's beautiful. Things have been a little rough, though. I miss my friends and I've had it with being around guys all the time. But I don't want to go home. When things get really tough, which they have, I tell myself I can go home, and ask myself if that's what I really want to do. I don't. I'm not overwhelmingly happy yet, which bothers me sometimes, but I still feel like this is the right move and I trust that in time this place will become home.

Well, Dad, I'm off for now. Write to you later.

Love, Tracey

Jump

It was during my first summer in Colorado, on one of my first camping trips, that I found myself standing on the edge of a fifty-foot cliff that hovered over the Colorado River prepared to jump. When we first arrived at the spot I feigned excitement when my male companions realized this was the ideal spot for cliff jumping, encouraged them to go for it, and settled into a nearby hot spring.

As I watched them leap off the edge, splash, and sink into the water once, twice, three times I began to get inspired. They emerged each time laughing and looking alive and refreshed. I wondered how it feels to be floating in air for that split second, to meet the cold quick-moving water with such speed and force. It seemed like one of those once-in-a-lifetime deals, jumping from a cliff in the sparkling Colorado sunshine, landing in the renowned Colorado River. I thought about it to the point where I knew if I didn’t do it I’d regret it. I suggested to the other female camping with us that weekend that we make like the boys and jump. She thought it was a fabulous idea and we decided we’d at least make our way to the top of the cliff and look down.

I became even more inspired when we got to the top. We were at a cliff-lined bend in the river, a Union Pacific train whistled past on a cliff on the other side of the river then disappeared into a tunnel, traveling a path paved long ago. I wondered how long it had taken the river to shape this cliff to make it a good jumping spot. I wondered if this had been the perfect jumping spot back when the Union Pacific railroad tracks were first constructed and if ancient versions of ourselves, donned in dusty bathing costumes, had found this place long before we had.

Looking down, down, down at the water I cleared my mind of cluttered thoughts and concentrated only on summoning the courage to jump. Just thinking about it now, recalling the height, the feel of the warm rocky ground my feet were clinging to, makes my stomach tumble. My companion and I counted to four (because three is just not enough time), took a deep breath, and leapt.

I remember floating in air for a brief moment, my stomach fluttering somewhere in my head. I remember hitting the water. I remember the pain. I jumped with what the guys were quick to point out was “the wrong form” and hit the water hard. The water was cold and swirling and the force with which I hit ripped my eyes open and twisted my bathing suit in an unflattering way. I kicked my way to the surface and grabbed onto the closest, sturdiest rock. I was shaking, laughing uncontrollably, and praying the pain would leave me quickly. The guys told me when I first surfaced the look on my face was that of pure panic. I assured them that the feeling in my gut at that moment was that of pure panic.

Under the stars that night I reflected on the day. I had spent the year after college, before moving to Vail, on the edge of a cliff, waiting and wishing for the courage to jump. I had felt unable to move in any direction, with no motivation to observe or create. It wasn’t a horrible place to be, on the edge of a cliff looking over the beauty and possibility in front of me, knowing it was only a quick leap away. The ground under my feet was sturdy and familiar, comforting. But, I have found, I can only stand on the edge of a cliff for so long before I start to fear falling or being pushed against my will, or worse, before I lose my courage. So because I didn’t want an opportunity to pass, because it was either jump or step away from the cliff, I counted to four and I leapt.