Ode to FIBArk

Thanks to Shawn and Dina for buying this year’s FIBArk poster. This means a lot to me. Shawn has become a root. One of the first people I met here in the valley. If you enjoy the Tenderfoot trails, go ahead and thank Shawn and his team at Absolute Bikes. Thanks also to Jack and Linda for the donation of framing. I can always count on you for a beautiful framing, and simply being people I can count on.   -b

OK, it’s here in all of its fresh, beautiful small town self. A time when we find ourselves drunk with summer.

Staring at an eddy as a primary-colored boat slips into our soft focus, then another. A raft piles through. Waving. Plastic bumping and paddles scraping on rocks.

We spend the year wondering where life will lead us, and how we can get a handle on age, family, health and time. Our parents, our kids and our friends surround our thoughts, as they swirl into a haze of laughter and wind.

Everything is changing, but it always has, except for the feeling that FIBArk stirs in us.

We put aside the big ideas and we talk too much. Drink too much. Stay up too late. In the mornings we ride our bikes over hoses and extension cords as busy street fair venders jossle with red-eyed locals, all of whom are busy and helpful and efficient with familiarity.

We all have a job or a duty. Like cleaning the house before a party, or doing the dishes whiles guests babble oblivious. This pride in the park, the river and our neighbors spills out onto the front range as we act like a light. A beacon of something real. FIBArk attracts family and friends, like moths carrying bowls of fruit and hugging gently in greeting. They leave their cares behind and come to summer. The urban visitors with small town blood, the locals and the van-truck athletes. We are all moths, and we are each fortunate guests throwing a party for eachother. On each father’s day weekend, the river and the color and sounds infect us and draw us home —or keep us here.

We become roots by a river. We become butterflies. Intertwined.