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.

Just a Small Town Girl

by Tracey Flower

I really am a small town girl, although it’s a label I’ve only recently learned to embrace (or even accept). When I was in college (hell until just a few months ago) I was convinced that I would have to move to a city at some point. To grow up. To move on. To make something of myself. I mean, Carrie Bradshaw’s “Sex and the City” column would have most definitely not made sense in, say, a little resort town somewhere. I felt especially compelled to make a big move this past summer when my life was all twisted around and turned upside down. After my plans to move to Australia fell through my plan was to come back to Vail just to get my head together, to get my life together, and then move on to something bigger and better. But a funny thing happened as I worked through my grief and found happiness again, I found contentment in this place I call home and instead of resisting it, instead of telling myself I should want something else or something more, I gave into it.

Vail: A small town with big views

Giving into small town contentment has relieved an anxiety I didn’t even know existed in me until it was gone. I love living in this small town, I really really do. I like day-tripping to Denver and visiting cool quirky cities like San Francisco and Melbourne. And whenever I have a rant about tourists (or, ahem, guests as Vail Resorts prefers us to say) my dad oh so gently reminds me that I grew up in a resort town and well, what did I expect moving to another resort town. Why did I move from one small resort town to another? I suppose, simply, because it fits. Because somehow I think in my deepest gut I’ve always known when I visit a city that it doesn’t fit in the same way, because if I’m being really honest (and I finally am) cities are great places to visit but I don’t want to live in Denver or even Melbourne.

Perhaps part of why I can embrace my small-town contentment is because Vail has little bits and pieces that fulfill the bits and pieces of me that crave city life. There’s music, art and culture to be found here and what this town lacks in diversity, alright well there’s actually no redemption there, this town could use a little diversity. I was recently in Crested Butte and I found myself enamored with that town’s rustic charm, there’s something about it that just feels more authentically Colorado than Vail. There’s no hint of Disneyland in Crested Butte, no plastic-y fancy resort feel. As I wandered around a used book store/coffee shop in the Butte I found myself, just for a moment, wishing Vail had a little more quirk to it. But then I returned home and joined my girlfriends for a fancy cocktail at the new hotspot in town, Frost. This posh lounge feels modern and fresh, like something one might find in, yep you guessed it, a city (a locale that wouldn’t be caught dead in a town like Crested Butte). I realized then that perhaps my small-town contentment might just be contentment with making Vail my home. In one day here I can go for a hike in the middle of nowhere, see a concert with my favorite people, and drink cosmos in a swanky new bar just like the one and only Carrie Bradshaw. Vail has bits and pieces of small-town mountain charm but also has tastes of city life that, frankly, towns like Crested Butte (and my hometown of South Haven, Michigan) don’t.

I think, though, more than anything else my contentment with my small town status comes from realizing that I have, in fact, done a lot of growing up in the last year. And a lot of moving on. And when it comes to making something of myself, well, I had my first article (and byline!) in the Vail Daily this week, not to shabby at all.

This One's for the Girls

by Tracey Flower

“Don’t laugh at me but maybe we could be each other’s soul mates. And then we could let men be just these great nice guys to have fun with.” ~Sex and the City’s Charlotte on soul mates

I’ve been thinking again lately about the phrase “soul mates”. I saw a re-run of Grey’s Anatomy the other day where Meredith (Grey, the Grey in Grey’s) called Christina (her best girlfriend) her “soul mate” and Derrick (aka McDreamy, Meredith’s husband) “the love of my life”. This makes sense to me and is right along my line of thinking when it comes to that weighty phrase.

Girls just wanna have fun: myself and a few of my ladies

It’s no secret that friendships between women are unique. Any of that catty crap and mean girl-ness aside, when women form a bond it sticks and it holds across miles, hours, and oceans. Friendships shared between women are unlike any other relationship. There is a level of understanding, of comfort, of intimacy in these relationships that we don’t share with our boyfriends or even our mothers. We share everything from clothes to mascara (even though most women’s magazines say you shouldn’t, due to germs and stuff I guess) to deep dark secrets. We fight. We say things that are very honest and sometimes very awful. We yell and then we don’t talk for days. When we do talk again we know that what we’ve got here is one very solid, very genuine friend. We pop bottles of champagne at the premier of Sex and the City: The Movie and understand that that show was always as much, or perhaps even more so, about the relationship between those four women as it was about their relationships with men.

When I got that fateful message back in May that would change the course my life was on at that moment (yep the one from The Guy) the first person I called was my friend Claire. Now, it wasn’t long before I was racking up phone minutes to each and every one of my lovely ladies, my soul mates if you will, and sobbing in my parent’s kitchen to my dad, but first I had to call Claire. I needed someone who would understand both the emotional sucker punch I felt and my desperate desire to still hold that relationship and myself together in that moment. I needed to talk to someone who had been with me every single uneven cobble stone step of the way during that relationship. I needed someone who would listen and be levelheaded, someone who would support me but not hesitate to question me if she thought I was making a mistake, and who would never say I told you so because chances are she never even thought it because she trusts my judgment and supports me to a fault. I needed to call that person who is nearly impossible to track down on the phone, who often doesn’t respond to a text for days, but who called back the second she got my voicemail because, I’m quite sure, she knew exactly what I needed from her without me saying so. If that’s not a soul mate, I don’t know what is. (And I called her again, sad and lonely and desperate, a couple weeks later from Melbourne as I fell apart and wrestled with the decision to stay there or go home).

I’ve had two serious relationships and at one point during each of them I thought it would last forever. Neither of them did. In the wake of the end of my last relationship I did a lot of kicking and screaming and feeling sorry for myself as one by one more and more of my girlfriends got paired off and married.

And then I got over it. For me life got a whole hell of a lot easier when I admitted that I don’t believe in the idea of “The One”, that I hadn’t missed my fate with either of those failed relationships, and that I had better take the time to find and invest in all the other wonderful bits and pieces of life that fulfill me because, well, frankly that’s the only way I’m ever going to feel complete. That, and I realized that in my girlfriends I already have several very near and dear soul mates nailed down (you know who you are).


And you? Who are your soul mates?

And a Little Giving

by Tracey Flower
Dear Lovely Loyal Reader: I intended to write and share this post weeks ago but due to a hectic holiday schedule and lack of Internet access I wasn’t able to get around to it until now. My apologies.


No more lives torn apart, that wars would never start, and time would heal our hearts. And everyone would have a friend, and right would always win, and love would never end. This is my grown-up Christmas list. 
~ from the Christmas song My Grown-up Christmas List

I recently read the book A Thousand Sisters by Lisa Shannon. The book is about the author’s fundraising efforts to support women in the Democratic Republic of the Congo and her subsequent travels there. Congo is a place she feels compelled to learn more about and lend aid to after she learns about the war and devastation happening there on an episode of Oprah. The book’s subtitle is My Journey into the Worst Place on Earth to be a Woman and her account is just that. The book chronicles tale after heartbreaking tale about the women living in this violence-ridden chunk of the world. In one village it was reported that at least 90 percent of the women living there had been raped. 90 percent. While most of the stories Shannon shares are heartbreaking (and difficult to read at times because they are so incredibly cruel and inhuman) this statistic has stuck with me, and it is because of this statistic that I feel compelled to do something.

(Photo Credit)

I have a lot of really great memories surrounding the holiday season, particularly Christmas (yep many of them of the warm giggly variety that contributed to my blissfully happy childhood). I loved the house all decorated, all warm and glowy. I loved making cookies with Mom and listening to Amy Grant’s Home for Christmas album. I loved a snowy white Christmas day and going to Grandma’s house. And, of course, I loved the presents—the anticipation, the unveiling, the thrill of getting exactly what I wanted. But even with a mother who loves gift giving (and often went overboard when it came to buying for her four wonderful children) it was stressed to me at a young age that there was something more to the season than the material stuff.

My siblings and I stopped giving gifts to each other (because what the heck do you get for your little brother?) and our parents years ago and instead donate to a charity of our choice for Christmas. My mom who, as I mentioned, loves gift giving has continued to spoil us over the years. She asked me what I wanted for Christmas this year (in addition to my stocking stuffers, you can’t not have stocking stuffers!) and, since I can’t help but want to balance out my happiness (and my thankfulness) with a little giving, and because that statistic (90 percent) keeps haunting me—anytime I walk home in the dark or forget to lock my door at night or am alone in a dodgy public restroom I’m reminded of the fact that in Congo women can’t even walk to get food or clean water for their children without being raped, and that I can do all those perhaps risky things without ever experiencing such a horror—I asked for money to help me adopt a Congolese sister.

Women for Women International is the organization that is going to make this possible, and the organization Lisa Shannon works with to aid women in Congo. Their mission (as stated on their website) is to provide women survivors of war, civil strife and other conflicts with the tools and resources to move from crisis and poverty to stability and self-sufficiency, thereby promoting viable civil societies. We're changing the world one woman at a time.

Women for Women offers the opportunity to enroll in a year-long program, through which my financial contributions will aid a woman in my country of choice (Congo). I have yet to enroll so I’m not totally clear on the details yet but it’s a little like adopting a starving bloated belly baby in Africa, a program through which I’ll receive photos of and exchange letters with this woman, my “sister.”

I don’t think this act will change the world. I don’t even know to what extent it will change this woman’s life, if at all. I’m not Mother Theresa and I have no intention of being like her (or desire to be like her for that matter). I’m no saint and I certainly like having nice things and pampering myself. I just think it’s important to balance all that stuff out with a little giving, that and stories about such violence and devastation break my heart and I can’t read about it and not do something.

This world is a big beautiful place and it is full of people, and whether we live here or there, we are all united by the fact that we are human. I’m pretty sure we’re never going to survive unless we can rely on each other to extend a helping hand and a little compassion from time to time. And, while Christmas (or Hanukkah or your birthday or any other gift-giving occasion) is a good time to do so because it’s likely you’re already putting away, or receiving, a little extra spare change, I want to encourage you to do what it is you can to lend some help next time a story breaks, or touches, your heart any time of the year. I encourage you to do what you can with what you have and, just maybe, all us humans can make this world an even more beautiful place together.


Stay tuned for updates on my Congolese sister and please let me know what stories, what charities, are near and dear to your heart.

A Little Thanks

by Tracey Flower

I had—wait for it—an Oprah moment the other day. Well at least that’s what my friend Mel called it but I’m pretty sure the talk show host would have deemed it worthy of a hug and a round of applause (and maybe an all expenses paid trip to somewhere balmy and exotic) had I been sitting with her on that infamous couch. It was a Sunday and my first day off since the (Vail) Mountain had opened for skiing this season. We had been snowboarding all morning and enjoying the better than average early season conditions. We had just gotten off a chairlift and were sitting at the top of a run marveling at the deliciously good snow and breathtaking views (note to self: remember to look up and have your breath taken away on a regular basis) and it hit me. I’m happy. I’M HAPPY. Like really contently freely happy. I shared this revelation with Mel and she declared it an Oprah moment. 

(Photo Credit)

This happiness is so new and so fresh to me that, in the days since that moment, I have found myself repeating it over and over to myself, I’m happy; slipping it on a few times a day like it’s a sparkly new party dress, twirling around in it and checking myself out from all angles. I keep opening the closet door to sneak a peek and touch it and make sure it’s real and still there. 

I’m proud of this happiness; it’s something I worked for, something I fought for, and something I achieved on my own (and with a little help from my friends). It’s something more solid and more palpable than any similar feelings I’ve had in a long time (I’m talking years here people). It’s peace. It’s contentment. And I’m loving every second of it. 

I wanted to share this with you, my lovely loyal readers, and thank you. Writing has always been therapeutic for me, especially in the last six months. Thank you for sitting with me while I kicked, screamed, cried, and muddled through my heartache. Thank you for listening as I exposed every feeling, emotion, and part of my pain, as I allowed them to reveal themselves to me, as I took the time to get to know them so I could eventually release (banish) them. It’s because I took the time to do that, and because you took the time to listen, that I know this happiness is something deep, genuine, and most certainly not fleeting.

There's an image I’ve been holding in my head a lot recently, it’s of myself about six months ago wandering around Melbourne in the rain and I’m too thin, sleep deprived, and incredibly sad and raw (I must note here that since I’ve been hanging out with this happiness I can see that there is something incredibly gothically romantic about wandering around a foreign city heartbroken in the rain). In this daydream myself now—my happy, peaceful, balanced, stronger, wiser self—reaches out to myself then and draws her in, comforts her, and asks her to join me here in this solid oh so happy place.

There’s a passage in the book Eat, Pray, Love (by Elizabeth Gilbert) where the author recalls a similar moment in her own life, where she realizes her current stronger self was always there waiting for her younger broken self to join her. She then uses her favorite Italian word to close the book, and that chapter of her life, attraversiamo. It means let’s cross over. And, so, my friends I invite you to join me as I do just that. 

Stay tuned next time for a little giving.

On Soul Mates and Being Broken

by Tracey Flower

“Well, I like the word soul. I like the word mate. Other than that you got me.” ~Sex and the City’s Mr. Big on soul mates

I’ve been thinking a lot about the phrase “soul mates” lately. In fact this post has been in the drafting stages for several months now, revised over and over while I try to figure out what this term means to me. It’s been swirling and tumbling around in my head with other equally weighty and abstract concepts like fate and destiny. I’m not totally sure why it’s so important to me to define this phrase (blame it on trying to make sense of my heartache) but I think I’m slowly starting to figure it out (blame it on the six months of distance I now have from the day my heart was broken).

(Photo Credit)

I have to start by telling you I don’t believe there is one and only one person out there for everyone; I don’t believe in the idea of The One. I always sort of suspected I felt this way but it’s such a happy little idea and I’ve certainly found myself swept up in the romance of it from time to time but after having friend after well-meaning friend tell me The Guy (who broke my heart) just wasn’t The One I got fed up.

I believe in love. I believe in great love. I believe in marriage and that it can and does last forever (thank you to my grandparents and parents for providing me with excellent examples of this). I also believe in timing and other crazy twisted upside down circumstances that sometimes lead to the end of great love, love that in a different time or place, under different circumstances, would have most certainly lasted forever. I believe that you just don’t get to spend forever with everyone you love and that you can truly madly deeply love someone forever and not spend forever with that person (and still have oodles of love left for the someone you are spending forever with).

And as far as soul mates go, I do think they exist, just not in the traditional sense (as The One).

I think The Guy was my soul mate. Yes I did think I was going to marry him (in fact I was sure of it until the moment he told me, once and for all, that I wasn’t), but that’s not why he was my soul mate. I believe I was meant (ok, destined) to meet him, I believe he was always supposed to come into my life and that, all along, I was going to fall in love with him. And I believe it was always going to, one way or another, end tragically.

There’s a passage in the book Eat, Pray, Love (by Elizabeth Gilbert) that helped me come to this conclusion. It goes like this:

People think a soul mate is your perfect fit, and that’s what everyone wants. But a true soul mate is a mirror, the person who shows you everything that’s holding you back, the person who brings you to your own attention so you can change your life. A true soul mate is probably the most important person you’ll ever meet, because they tear down your walls and smack you awake. But to live with a soul mate forever? Nah. Too painful. Soul mates, they come into your life just to reveal another layer of yourself to you, and then they leave.

BINGO.

When The Guy ended our relationship forever (just hours before I was supposed to get on a plane bound for Sydney to live with him) it crushed me and turned my world upside down. It brought me to my knees, hell it sucked the wind out of me and had me curled up breathless on the floor. I’ve never been so broken in my life.

Once I caught my breath I realized that the thing I thought had certainly killed me, in fact, hadn’t. I slowly lifted myself off the floor and started moving forward again. Since then I have tripped, stumbled and fallen down again. But six months have gone by and I’m still alive. I hate the pain this has brought to my life, I hate how exhausting it is and that it’s not quite gone yet. But I can’t deny that I’ve grown. I can’t deny that I’ve changed or that I’m quite sure I’m becoming someone, that I have become someone, I never would be had I not met, fallen in love with and been so very broken by The Guy.

And that’s the point. Just as muscle has to be broken down by strength training in order to grow stronger, sometimes we must be torn and cracked open emotionally and mentally so we can strengthen those parts of ourselves.  We better ourselves during life's rough patches, we need these tough times to survive and thrive just as our muscles need exercise to do the same.

Some people come into our lives, shake us up, break us down and then, as my friend Neil would say, disappear into the night like a winter wind. I believe these people are our soul mates.

I also believe there are more dimensions and definitions to this weighty phrase and I’ll most certainly continue to muddle through and explore them here. In the meantime what do you think about soul mates?