The Ultimate Vampire Resource and Directory

Saturday, I attended the funeral of a dear friend. Afterwards, a bunch of us went to his land in Guffey, Colorado. I was pretty green around the gills by the time we finally found it - one of those hideaways up in the mountains that seems impossible to get to until you do, and then after that the directions that didn't seem to make any sense before suddenly fall into place. As soon as I saw our destination, though, I understood what a profound shame it would have been not to come and lamented not having gone to share it with him while he was there.



It was beautiful. Maybe the single prettiest place I've ever been. Every view is breathtaking, the sky is close enough to touch, God is in His heaven (just over the next rise…) and all is right with the world. Jon's simple, cozy, meticulously kept home, one of two small dwellings that share that piece of land, is wide open to the morning sun and a magnificent back view of Pikes Peak and the Front Range; the southern side of the building is adorned with a Goddess-figure built right into the wall, surrounded by stars.



Jon was a man who was happiest out in nature; this was the perfect home for his soul. He had taken such care of this place, had dwelt there so completely that everywhere we looked there was some subtle, beautiful evidence of his presence - a pile of carefully arranged wood and shells and pieces of broken tile; an animal bone placed just so, altar-like, on a lichen-covered boulder. The previous residents had apparently been ceramicists who left charming, whimsical pieces of their life there behind; a broken clay horse, for example, has a home in the fork of a tree.



A little way from the houses we discovered another hidden treasure in the wilderness: on the sun-blessed side of a high hill overlooking a green, tranquil valley is a Goddess Circle, big enough for at least twenty-five people and ringed in bales of hay on which to sit. The overgrowth is a couple of decades old, and inside the gentle rise of the circle, undisturbed amongst the vegetation just as they have been all that time, are giant seashells, ceramic Goddess-figures and animal totems. Two live scrub-oak bushes form a natural Eastern gate. There was a fire-pit, too, with wildflowers growing up out of it.



"Oh, Jon," we must have breathed a hundred times that day, full of reverence and affection, each new discovery a gift from him to us. I can't imagine that his spirit, in seeking paradise, would have to look much further than he had already come.



So those who knew him grew to know each other, and laughed and hiked and drummed and danced and filled a day as gentle and warm and bright and full of love as Jon himself. And though we wept for his absence, we felt his presence, too, and in a last act of his wonderful, boundless generosity he helped us all to look past our sorrow and remember our gladness at having known him. When we left our hearts ached at leaving the beauty of that place and day behind, knowing we might never pass that way again.

I decided that kind of gathering, in a place that was utterly me, is the way I'd like my life celebrated after I go.