Last year I wrote about the turtles — no, not the ones with four legs, a hard shell and small face with beady eyes. The turtles of the variety the move at a very slow pace are the ones I’m referring to. A friend of ours from Nederland coined the term, when explaining why she was late arriving for a party we were at, saying it too a lot longer driving up Boulder Canyon because of the “turtles.”
You see, the turtles return every summer because summer is the time when many out-of-towners and out-of-staters visit the scenic state of Colorado. Who can blame them. Many of the turtles come from states with high heat and high humidity. I love our summers here with moderate temperatures and comfortable dry temps. We actually think it’s humid here right now because humidity has reached 40% — something my East Coast friends would scoff at.
But I’ve noticed ever since Memorial Day, there are an abundance of turtles populating our mountain roads once again. I try to take a grateful attitude towards this, when I am stuck behind someone driving 25 mph on a 45 mph road. I try to think to myself, take it easy, enjoy the drive, aren’t I the lucky one to be living in this paradise that other people come from far and wide to visit? But when I’m running late to work, it really doesn’t work. All I’m really thinking is, “Why is this person driving sooooo slowly? Why doesn’t this person pull out, when they are six cars all stacked up behind them? Why, why, why?”
But inevitably, they proceed along at their glacial pace, enjoying the splendid mountain scenery, and I learn to accept this too as part of the deal of life in the mountains.
