For some reason this morning I am haunted by an old memory of a place. Ever get that? The sense of a place comes up from your memory so crisp and clear you almost expect to draw back the shutters and find that you are there?
I was in Colorado four or five years ago and took a day out to visit Leadville; the highest town in the States. One had a real sense of it being a hard bitten frontier town. Still had clapboard sidewalks, a swing door Irish saloon and a few gun shops. Curiously, there was a plethora of antique shops dealing in children’s toys.
It took a good few hours driving higher and higher into the mountains to find the place. All of the outlying streets seemed to have fences made from rows of old wooden skis. And the air was so thin you were conscious of having to work at getting every breath.
What I am trying to get at is that it was a hard enough place to reach with the modern convenience of a car.
So, what really struck me was the plaque outside the Tabor Opera House making mention of a stop that Oscar Wilde made on his lecture tour of the States. He’d entertained some of the Silver miners in the Opera House and, having seen the sign outside the saloon saying “Please do not shoot the pianist, he is trying his best” remarked that it was “the only rational method of art criticism I have ever come across”
The odd feeling that such a man should make his way up there, the thin, thin air, the cold, the ring of mountains filling the horizon, the piercing winter light, the darkest interior of any bar anywhere, the wooden skis, the clapboard… I can smell, feel and visualise every little detail of that curious trip. Yet the clarity is that of a dream; unreal and inexplicable.
My first traces of wanderlust for 2007?
