Dec. 17, 2003 - 18:16 MST

THE WONDERING JEW

Yet Close

Usually each winter I hie myself to a favorite retreat. It is always warm and somewhat humid and has strange semi-tropical plants, an arched roof that is mostly glass.

Denver Botanic Gardens, such a wonderful place and so attractively planted. Many of the plants have been my friends when we lived in Florida, some I saw when we were in Jamaica. It is almost as if you are in the wild, except for the paths and glassed roof, but the paths make good walking and the roof lets the light in to show off the plants at their best.

I get hankering and finally give up and go just to get it out of my system. Not that I don't like it, but I can't live there all the time -- would if I could but don't think Heather would like to do that. A dose of the gardens is a good wintertime medicine for me, guaranteed to raise my spirits even if I have to walk ankle deep through the snow from the parking lot to get in there.

I dream dreams and have flights of fancy, sometimes finding a place to sit and write in my notebook pretending I own the whole shebang and the people who work there, my employees. It might be a couple of miles from where we live, it is close enough.

It is almost like being in a tropical park I think. While I still had a sense of smell I loved the aroma there. I am sure the aroma is still there but my nose is AWOL. But I can smell it in my memory nevertheless.

Funny thing, I remember the locale being a graveyard, an old, old one for Denver. I think they exhumed many of the bodies and put them in another cemetary somewhere else. That was in my early childhood, that memory.

Next summer I plan for Heather and I to go to Botanic Gardens and see the plantings outdoors. I think they have Christmas lights up now. People rave about what they have outside too. Gotta see that. Admission is not too high, quite affordable.

When I go there it is to a treasured place, far away and Yet Close . . . . . . .

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