Loves frequent foundation; innocence, infatuation, admiration, and the wonderfully, divine blissful state of renewal. Ebbing, flowing, maturing to include its understated underbelly of work, trials and tribulations, loss and sorrow and repeated repeats of such process(es) over and over again. Even in Steamboat.

In the summer of 1977 my father packed up his truck, and left the suburban New York City home where my younger brother Antonio, aged four, my mother and myself, seven were living. As a pipeline welder the lure of the west’s open spaces, the chance to move his young boys to Colorado - a lifelong dream of Dad’s and the promise of plenty of work lured him to Steamboat.

By early winter our house was on the market, and we had moved into Storm Meadows which I believe was the sole condo complex on Mt. Werner at the time.

At seven I had traded pedaling my bike up and down the driveway for popping back flips off the balcony into snow banks taller than myself. Antonio or Anti as I called him would dig me out when I wasn’t hurling him into the snow, then digging him out.

Mom hiked the trails and gathered dead wildflowers; she could never pick a live flower. It irked her when I did. Dad worked sixty-five hour weeks in the oil field, facing the sunny fifty below wind-chill Wyoming days with a smile every day.

When my grandmother came out to visit, the snow banks that lined Lincoln Ave., or Main as locals regarded it were taller than the Ford trucks that slowly cruised back and forth over the arrow straight main drag. Advanced stages of breast cancer left her with mere weeks to live. Dad took her up to Strawberry Park Hot springs where a good soak and top-notch scenery provided most welcome respite from her pain.

Over lasagna that night Grandma, who never spoke an ill word of anyone said,” What a lovely place. Isn’t it wonderful they let the hippies splash around like that.”

Dad laughed hard. Watching him laugh made me laugh.

Less than a month later right after dinner, Mom broke the news of Grandma’s passing to Dad behind their closed bedroom door. I heard Dad sobbing and grasping for air, something I’d never heard before. It startled me.

I heard Mom say,” Do you think we should go back Jack?”

With a horrible cacophony of choking, sputtering and sobbing, Dad sputtered,” To New York. Are ya kiddin’, we love Steamboat.”

Love or not, pragmatics, economics and their desire to be closer to the big city (it once took Mom and us boys three days in mid-winter to do an errand run to Denver and back) moved us a half hour west of Denver. Ten acres of pines and a newly built home became our actuality within a year of arrival to Steamboat.

Over the next fourteen years my family’s love for Steamboat was primarily relegated to a mixed nostalgia, a reminder of our initiation to The West. We missed the copious snowfalls and ranching culture.

In 1992 at the University of Colorado Boulder I met what was to be my first romantic love. She worked in Boulder, but was born and raised in Steamboat. We’d head up to ski, camp, visit her family and relax when possible. Returning to the Boat, I was now referring to it as such with my romantic love, I became re-acquainted with my childhood Steamboat love. Layers upon layers of love, centered on Steamboat made me feel rich beyond measure.

The day after graduation, May 20,1993, I drove up to Alaska. The following week she moved back to Steamboat and worked for the family business.

Our relationship was strained and difficult after that. Neither of us was particularly happy with our lives. I was living in the foothills west of Denver in between expeditions in South America and Europe. Even with a foundation of love, such relations inevitably end.

In the summer of 1995 I took a gamble to be near her and moved to Steamboat. I worked twelve hours a day six days a week building the Haymaker golf course. Cutting and laying pipe, digging and building a golf course without a tree for shade twelve hours a day. It was a tough way to make a living.

I lived in my tent on Rabbit Ears Pass and fell asleep to the burbling sound of a creek and the buzz of mosquitoes within minutes. To this day I’ve never received such deep sleep and felt so healthy.

I was a year or two late and lacking the requisite communication skills to keep my lady love. We spent a little time together, but it was evident things weren’t going to progress, that the relationship was beyond repair. I vigorously took my post heartache love to the local trails. I ran, fished and mountain biked when I wasn’t working. It helped ease the pain.

Once the valley’s color disappeared and the leaves fell off the aspens I moved into a Walton Pond town home with a couple of guys, delivering pizzas for Domino’s. I enjoyed the challenge of navigating (at a time before Mapquest took the skill out of delivery) Steamboat’s myriads of residential dirt roads while bopping along to the Mountain’s rock 'n' roll radio station. I still loved Steamboat, all the more so with a manageable forty-hour workweek.

I got my truck stuck up to the doors in fresh powder at the Mad Creek trailhead parking lot. A man passing by on Elk River Road in a Ford F-250 witnessed the spectacle and pulled me out in two minutes. I’ve cart wheeled down Mt. Werner’s chutes on my snowboard, broken trail in three feet of powder on snowshoes. At Rabbit Ears, on my first tabletop jump on a snowmobile, I was determined to not land short. I over compensated, cleared the landing, pancaked the flat, went over the bars slamming my helmeted head onto the hood, and my body fell in front of the sled. The track ran over my left ankle. I got lucky, limped it off and kept riding.

A year later I left Steamboat for metropolitan Denver once again. Too many chance run-ins with my ex and her large family made it harder for me to enjoy myself. The love I felt for her made it too painful for me to stay in the town I loved. It was a cruel paradox and one that I figured I could deal with no longer.

Over the next decade or so I’d return a couple times a year to re-visit my favorite haunts and people. Tubing the Yampa, snowboarding, camping, Strawberry Park, burger night at the Old Town Pub, killing a sub-zero morning reading at the library. Who couldn’t love the Boat?

For such reasons on Sunday, July 14, 2008, I headed toward Steamboat in my Nissan truck and new girlfriend Stephanie to celebrate her 36^th birthday.

10:15 am. -  It’s nearly ninety degrees as Stephanie and I finish packing up the tubes, tent, sleeping bags, running shoes, birthday dinner duds and a bottle of wine at her house in Denver and into the back of my truck.

11:45. -  We stop in Kremmling for gas, Stephanie points to a small spot of antifreeze under the radiator. I start the engine and immediately it overheats. Fortunately we’re a block from the local auto mechanics shop. The mechanic and I suspect the culprit is a stuck thermostat.

An acquaintance of the mechanic hanging around the shop suggests we look into renting a car at the local airport. My brother is a pilot and has often with great success rented cars from small airports.

The mechanics acquaintance drives us the mile and a quarter to the airport. A sole landing strip and a Quonset hut comprise the airport.

In the Quonset hut behind a desk sits a small bearded man. I tell him of our dilemma and how our whole Steamboat birthday weekend could be saved if he had a rental car for us. He said,”Well yeah, we’ve got a Suburban and an Audi.” He second checks and concludes only the Audi remains.

I say we’ll take it. I give him my credit card, sign a contract and out we go behind the hut to a 1983 Audi with a dented front quarter panel and 177,000 miles on the odometer. We head off in the car happy to continue on to Steamboat.

Heading toward Rabbit Ears I realize the car has minimal brakes, no shocks, struts and intermittent electric windows.

I stop by the auto parts store in Steamboat and pick up the thermostat for the mechanic to install and head right back to Kremmling. After dropping off the thermostat, we turn around and head back up and down the pass and into Steamboat.

“My, Rabbit Ears and Steamboat is so pretty I could drive it three times a day every day,” Stephanie oozed with her Oklahoma drawl, implying that all this mess wasn’t getting her a bit down. The quaking aspens and cool air certainly made us feel as though we had arrived, even though we were still on the go.

Once in Steamboat the day’s stressors faded into the quaking aspen leaves above. At Strawberry Park Hot Springs we soaked away the sunset and then headed down town to grill our own steaks and sip wine at Antares.

After breakfast at the Springs City Diner at 9:30 am. we headed back up Rabbit Ears and over to Kremmling to pick up my truck.

In between the West and East summit at 55 miles per hour the car died. The engine shut off, the power steering and brakes ceased and it took a bit of driving skills to slow the car on the windy road and get it stopped smack dab in the middle of the center line. For fifteen long, desperate seconds I cranked on the ignition to get the car started. We looked at each other and quickly exited the car and away from the road. With hand signals we re-directed a tanker truck that was bearing down on the Audi at sixty miles an hour.

After two or three extremely tense minutes, I got back in the car and Stephanie directed traffic. I got it started on the first try.

We get to the mechanics shop. We’re visibly shaken and tell the mechanic the story about the Audi. He tells me my worst fear, that I cracked the head gasket. I was more than upset as the engine had been totally rebuilt less than 15,000 miles previous.

We drive to the airport and I tell the man behind the desk “we’ve got some big problems with the Audi.” He states, “Uh, it’s a rental.” I ask to trade the Audi for another, as it will be a week before my truck gets repaired.

He says they don’t have another. “If that’s the case, we’re heading back to Steamboat to get another car,” I explain.

We head back over that long, twin pass of aspens and tall pines that comprise Rabbit Ears again. We end up renting a Jeep Liberty in Hayden. When we tell the two middle-aged women behind the desk about our weekend and show them the car, they feel sorry for us and give us a screaming deal on the Jeep.

“I’d call that airport up and tell them they better come get this wreck, that you’re done with it,” a woman of about fifty years of age tells us.

Leaving Hayden and heading back to Steamboat we do just that. I call the airport and tell the bearded guy that I want the car picked up. “Don’t tell me, call the car’s owner. “I’m completely bewildered by this. The man gives me a number and I call it.

I detail the day’s events in not the friendliest manner. He apologizes, says it’s all a big mistake and acknowledges that the car should have never been rented and that we won’t be charged.

“Is it running now.”? He asks.

“It was.”

He asks if I’d bring it back to him. Driving all-day and still shaken up I say, “We’ll discuss it tomorrow, as I’m still a bit shaken up.” At this point I was into the Steamboat trip for two rental cars, over a hundred dollars in gas and a cracked head gasket. Combined with our near miss (hit) on the pass, I was in no mood to drive the Audi.

We park the cars and meander the slow, scenic, romantic hand holding tube ride down the Yampa under the late day sun. Afterward, down go the sun, beer and calzones on Mazzola’s deck overlooking the Yampa. We wave and toast the last tubers and kayakers of the day.

We drive the Jeep up Rabbit Ears once more and set up camp. We gaze at the stars, sip wine, cuddle and talk late unto the night, the kind of night where you both say, “I love you” a couple times.

Upon arrival in Steamboat for brunch after a hike Stephanie had two messages on her phone. The Audi owner had called at 9:15 a.m. and wanted to know when he was getting his car. At 10:30 he stated that since we were avoiding his messages he could only assume the car had been stolen and that if he didn’t hear from us before noon he’s calling the Colorado State Patrol to report the car as stolen.

12:10 p.m.- I call him and he immediately wants his car back. I tell him I’d be happy for him to come get it at that moment, and he says that doesn’t work for him. Reluctantly, I agree to leave immediately and meet him halfway at Muddy Pass.

12:20 - Brunchless, we drive hungrily up the steep twisting asphalt ribbon. Stephanie follows directly behind me in the Jeep. She calls the man and apologizes for the whole mess as we’re convinced the man is crazy and potentially violent. We want to keep things as civil as possible for our inevitable meeting within the half hour.

12:25 - I smell a hint of smoke, and feel heat radiating from the dashboard. I check the temperature gauge. It’s spiked to the top of the red zone. Miraculously a dirt pullout presents itself within two hundred yards. I pull over. Stephanie pulls over. I get out of the car and we see flames above the passenger side front tire.

Real life suddenly imitates a horrific Hollywood action movie. Stephanie screams, “Honey, get in the Jeep, let’s get outta here before it explodes.”

By the time we come of the pull out, turn around and head back down Rabbit Ears - under a minute - the car is enveloped in flames fifteen feet high. In the rearview mirror I see tires melting into puddles onto asphalt. Liquid and solid melding together like a Salvador Dali painting. Paint and metal in twisted flames. Stephanie tries 911 and somehow the call doesn’t go through. Ninety seconds later we hear sirens coming up the mountain.

Five minutes later, near Walton Pond, I call the Audi owner. “We have good news and bad news.” He opts for the bad, and I tell him.

In a hissing shriek he says, ”Where’s my car?”

“About three miles up Rabbit Ears,” I say. He hangs up.

We anxiously kill time rather than enjoy the day at Fish Creek Falls and on Lincoln Avenue waiting for a call. No one calls. Not the fire department, police, the airport or the car owner. At 6 p.m. we drive back to Denver.

On approximately November 19, 2009 (I have consciously chosen to not remember the date), I am led away in handcuffs by a policeman in front of my boss and co-workers. I am held on no bail for felony arson and felony criminal mischief charges. I am forced to relinquish my gaming license - necessary for my job until the matter is resolved. Three days later bail is set and I bail out.

Over the next fifty days I lose twenty pounds. I denigrate from five hour century road cycling shape to hardly able to walk the three flights of stairs up to my soon to be repossessed condo. I return to Steamboat three more times to hire a lawyer, go before the judge, reject plea bargains… On the sole trip that Dad accompanied me, in a scary blizzard with minimal visibility he fought back tears and choked out, “To think this is where it all began.”

In mid February both cases were thrown out due to lack of evidence. There were no witnesses, and no motive. The car owner lied, the police made mistakes and I didn’t stick around the towering inferno for the aftermath.

I finished a cold, muddy three-hour mountain bike ride a couple months ago and a realization struck me. Steamboat was not a love that turned extremely sour that I will never return to. Police make mistakes, people lie, relationships end, divorces happen, people lose houses, grandmas and jobs. Even in Steamboat. Bad stuff happens to good people everywhere. When such happens in places as magically enchanted as Steamboat we tend to let it destroy the love we had for the place. I let that happen to me. I carried this around and it did not make me a better person.

Nelson Mandela loved South Africa that upon his release of twenty-seven years of incarceration for “sabotage” he did not curse and leave the country, or exile himself, but on the contrary chose to lead it. Mandela’s love for South Africa ran so deep I used it as a template to forgive, move on and continue to love Steamboat, a place that merely appeared to have sabotaged me.

Aspen leaves, the deepest azure sky anywhere and tall pines swaying and shimmering on a windy eighty-degree day as I exited the burning car and became hyper-aware that these could be my last sights. We love you Steamboat.