Having watched Other Patti be unusually confused as to driving directions yesterday on our way to the airport, I was finally able to define one subtle yet important difference between Colorado and Ohio, to wit: the spaces are different.
Here where I sit in Cincinnati, my view of our neighborhood is largely obscured by trees close by. When they’ve lost their leaves in a few more weeks, my view will still be obscured by the hills that the trees are rooted in. The farthest parts of my vista are hemmed in by hills everywhere I look, even at the most extreme edges, where I can (sort of) see a tip of northern Kentucky, maybe 7 or 8 miles away as the alleged crow flies. More hills.
In Colorado, you have… space. Great big chunks of it. Endless. The plains do have some undulation about them and aren’t completely flat around the Greater Denver/Boulder area, but your eye-line is unstopped by anything until it passes the horizon some 50 (?) miles distant. The start of the Front Range on one side of your view only serves to emphasize the limitlessness of the rest of the horizon.
All my Ohio-grown sensibilities must be re-adjusted for Colorado… How do I guess how far away something is, for instance. If I say to Other Patti, “The gas station is just over there,” how does her Ohio definition of “over there” translate to Colorado distances? [editor’s note: not too well, it would seem]
This is the geographical version of that point in your mathematical learning when you discover that there are far more ways than one to define “space” and “distance.” I won’t go into the details (save your thanks till later) save to say that when you realize what a metric is, it is a rather jaw-dropping experience.
white pebble 