My nose hurts

Once my leg stopped hurting my nose took over

This is a free post from The Real Sarah Miller. Want to pay for it? You can!

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Colorado is a land of unmatchable beauty. Few places on earth offer such geological richness, such depth of green, such generosity of decoration in blue, red, yellow and purple.

There is all that, and then there is also the unique opportunity, with each breath of clean mountain air, of feeling your sinuses transform themselves from a web of capillaries pulsing inside cartilage into wall of crumbling rocks. (If I have made errors in my description of sinuses and what they are ideally made out of please let me know.)

In Colorado, which is called “The Centennial State” because it was admitted to the union exactly one hundred years after the signing of the Constitution, lol, whatever, you can drift off to sleep recalling your day spent wandering alongside twinkling streams and wake up breathing through your mouth as the left side of your nose constricts, a constriction that turns into searing pain. It gets you out of bed. You will hover in that pain for a few moments until you sneeze three times, with locomotive force.

(You can get a mug at any Colorado Starbucks that says “The Centennial State.” I actually have a weakness for these Starbucks mugs but I do not own more than one and I would never get this one.)

Look at this beautiful footbridge, stand here and watch the Eagle River wind its way to the mighty Colorado, absently wiggle your noise because it itches a little and feel it begin to bleed. The bleeding increases and because you have no tissues you lean over the railing and let the drops fall and join with the flow, later on, when you read articles about the west drying out and the grave threat to the Colorado River you can say don’t look at me, I helped, I bled into that thing, I was there.