Page 5 of Cowboy in Colorado

And now, I still have my trust fund sitting there, accruing, and I rarely touch it—I’m too busy working, and since my apartment was a graduation gift from Dad, I have few actual expenses. I live in the city and take public transportation, or use an office car. My biggest expense, actually, is clothing…I have a three-bedroom penthouse in Uptown Manhattan, and both of the extra rooms are full of clothing. It’s a problem, but it’s my only vice.

Three and a half hours after receiving my flight info, I’m in the first-class cabin, sipping a glass of red wine, and perusing Dad’s holdings again—looking for more gaps, more places to expand. Dad has a private jet—in fact, he has a small fleet of them—but I refuse to use them until this office he’s given me has started turning a profit. Once I’m in the black, I’ll have earned—in my own eyes—the privilege of flying private. Until then, I fly commercial. First class, albeit, but still commercial.

I try not to overthink what I’m getting into. I’ve discovered, out of long habit, that when you anticipate too closely, you tend to be more closed off to the reality. It’s difficult, in this situation, though—this is so far outside my normal experiences that I’m totally unsure what to expect. I’ve never been to rural Colorado before. Come to think of it, I’ve never been to rural anywhere—all my work has been urban—high-rises, resorts, offices, strip malls, suburban developments.

I doze off halfway to Denver, only to dream of stepping in cow pies, and wearing cowboy hats, and fanning myself in an un-air-conditioned little white church in a dusty cornfield.

3

Once I arrive at DIA I decide to do things a little differently, now that I’m in charge of this project. I don’t zip right out of Denver like I normally would; instead I take the entire next day to hang out in Denver. I sample local restaurants, pop into a recreational marijuana store just out of curiosity—even though I have no plans of buying or using any of it. I even buy a single ticket for a concert at Red Rocks—it’s not an artist I’m familiar with, some kind of folk or bluegrass performer, but it’s the principle of the thing—and while I don’t super love or identify with the music itself, I do enjoy the experience.

A day turns into two before I head out in search of the target location. I rent a cute little red BMW Z4 convertible, plug the address Tina gave me into the GPS, and head out of Denver. The GPS says the trip should take an hour and forty-five minutes, bringing me past Colorado Springs, and south and east into the open, rolling hills.

It’s a breathtaking drive, winding and descending out of the mountains, rolling through the foothills with the mountains towering behind and around me in a blue-gray haze. Zipping through Colorado Springs with the top down and my favorite spin class playlist blaring at a deafening volume, the wind in my hair, I feel freer than I’ve ever felt in my life. The sun is shining, the sky is blue and the air is warm and, for the first time in my life, I’m the boss. I’m working forme. I mean, for Dad, yes, but the buck stops with me. Success or failure rests with me. My team is only as good as my leadership, and I’ve spent enough time with my team to know they really are the best.

Mile after mile, and the mountains fall away, receding and shrinking into nothing, while the landscape around me flattens and opens, the space between trees expanding, the sky growing larger and larger. Suburbs fade, and soon the freeway is more of a highway, and then the GPS leads me off the freeway and onto a true two-lane county highway, with cattle fencing running mile after mile on both sides, cows and horses grazing in clusters and alone. There’s scrub and shrubs and a few trees here and there, but it’s mostly open grassland as far as the eye can see.

I’ve felt tremors of claustrophobia before—live your life in high-rises like I have, and you get stuck in elevators rather frequently, and it’s never pleasant. I’ve been trapped in crowds of humanity surging in rush hour on the sidewalks of Hong Kong and Tokyo, feeling unable to breathe for the sheer overwhelming mass of humanity. I’ve taken tours of subway systems far underground—nothing but rock and earth and train tracks and that eerie underground stillness and silence.

But this…is different.

I’ve never been overwhelmed by the sheer absence of…anything. I’m still in the car, yet I’m already feeling—whatever the reverse of claustrophobia is.

I turn the music up, mash the pedal down, and focus on the road ahead. Mile after mile, nothing but cows and cattle fences and horses and grass and the clear blue sky with puffs of white cloud like little shreds of torn-up cotton balls.

Eventually, the GPS tells me to turn off the highway—I have to slow way down, because it’s not immediately apparent where to even turn onto: a narrow dirt road that cuts between fenced-off pastures. The BMW isn’t really made for this, I discover, as the bottom scrapes and bumps over ruts, and the rear end wants to squirrel to one side or another if I touch the gas too hard—I regret not asking for an X-drive version, but I hadn’t realized it would matter—the Z4 was just so sleek and sexy and fun-looking, I couldn’t resist. Now, though, I find myself wishing I’d gone for an SUV.

The road winds and bumps away from the highway, gravel spitting under the tires, dust kicking up. At this slow speed, there’s no wind noise, and the engine is fairly quiet, so I can hear amoooooin the distance, an answer from somewhere else.

What the hell have I gotten myself into?

Ahead, it seems like the landscape is actually beginning to vary from a straight, flat nothing—to curving up to a plateau, another long arc, and then a descent—and the downward journey takes my breath away anew.

Rippling and rolling hills in the distance, with hazy hints of the mountains beyond them, the hills folding and flexing and rolling down to green grass pastures spreading to either side for…I don’t even know how far. Miles—mile upon mile, nothing but verdant, vivid green fields crisscrossed with fencing, dotted with horses. I slow to a stop at the top of the hill, taking it all in. Wide-open space, breathtakingly beautiful. I’m a city girl through and through, but this is…incredible.

God’s country.

The phrase pops into my head, and I snort out loud. I’m not religious or spiritual in any way at all, and I have no idea where that thought came from. But it sticks in my head and won’t go away. It’s so beautiful here that it makes my chest clench.

A herd of horses gallops off to my left in a glinting, gleaming, roiling tumult of heaving backs and flashing legs and tossing manes, and I can hear them—snorting and whinnying, hooves pounding, grunts and sighs and shrieks and growls in a deafening chorus, and the herd isn’t even what I would call close to me.

It’s terrifying.

I gun the gas, and the tires spit gravel and my Z4 squirts forward down the hill. For the first time, I notice the…um—village? “Town” is far too magnanimous of a term. The gravel road I’m on goes right through it, becoming the main street before resuming its course toward the hills. I see immediately, when I’m still a couple miles away at least, why Tina was so struck by this place: it probably hasn’t changed much at all for…god, two hundred years, or close to it?

It’s nothing but two strips of old wood and brick buildings lining the road, and I’m not sure at first why this particular spot was chosen for a settlement—and then as I draw closer I see the glint of sunlight off of water beyond the village, and a hint of movement from a watermill of some sort, and I see a narrow ribbon of silver-blue snaking down out of the hills, and realize the town was placed, as people have built settlements from time immemorial, near a water source—in this case, a river close to the road.

As I approach and enter the town itself, I see a few signs of life: an older pickup parked on the street, a few bicycles on the boardwalk, a pair of older guys ambling across the street, decked out in blue jeans, short-sleeve plaid western shirts with pearl buttons tucked in behind oversize belt buckles, dusty boots, and cowboy hats. Real, actual cowboy hats. These guys weren’t dressed in costume either, weren’t going to a rodeo or line dancing or whatever, this was just how they dressed for everyday life.

It’s not funny, I tell myself.

But it kind of is.

But it’s also not, because here they’re not at all out of place.

They both eye the sight before them—my fancy red car, and the fancy gal behind the wheel. One spits in the road to one side, a thick dark stream of something foul, and mutters something to his friend; it’s a decidedly unfriendly action.

The GPS unit is still telling me to go straight, and I realize I’m not sure exactly where the address Tina gave me is located. I decide to make a quick pit stop and check out this little town while I’m here, since it’s what we’re talking about purchasing. Also, I want to check in with Tina.