Jane Pettibone

Sometimes you run into messengers or they run into you. Two of them happened to appear in my life on Wednesday of Holy Week before Easter. One had two legs, the other four. A young man probably in his late twenties or early thirties ran up behind my husband and I as we were hiking. He was running with a white mixed-breed Labrador Retriever trailing on his heels. Immediately, I noticed the young man’s bright … Read more

There’s always a mountain. When disappointment comes, lineages fray, tragedy breaks a heart . . . what to do? Sometimes what you need to see, when you need to see it, becomes visible before your very eyes. Four Peaks – I looked over my shoulder and saw something that literally took my breath away. A mountain I’ve known since my childhood in the desert, four glorious peaks rising up to the clouds, was cloaked entirely … Read more

“Gonna hear the beat-heart.” When my daughter was about one and a half years old she scurried ahead of me into the obstetrician’s office with a snack baggie of teddy grahams and all the determination she could muster to listen to the beat of her not-yet-born brother’s heart. An ultrasound is a useful tool to access the pulse of life and she was intent to hear that beautiful sound. Years later, I walked into the … Read more

The month of January often invokes a reset of sorts and many people become aware of internal nudges signaling a deeper desire, a sense that something more exists in the way of fulfillment. Perhaps that nudge(s) at the deep-down core of a person is actually a calling right smack in the heavy shuffle of daily living. Or maybe that nudge arrives not in a heavy shuffle at all, but rather in the slightest shuffle of … Read more

There’s something holy in the blue-black night. I feel it every Advent when the heavens darken earlier and longer in the rhythmic cycle towards the winter solstice in the northern hemisphere and in the circular dance of earthly clocks sweeping analog hands round the face of the dial. A sense of longing beckons me back to something eternal and I find myself mesmerized by the shimmering stars and to “Love” bestowed to our broken world in … Read more

Something suggesting travel or passage from one place to another. This is how Merriam Webster’s Dictionary defines the word journey. I looked out my kitchen window this month and saw a flock of Canadian Geese flying in formation out in the distance. They positioned themselves as a perfect arrow in the sky flapping their wings in consolidated purpose. Eventually, I began to hear their playful honking and barking as they neared my home and flew overhead. … Read more

Oh, there’s something beautiful in the foothills! The hogback and the foothills near my home are ablaze with the deepest hues of spices and herbs this autumn. The air is cool and fragrant with earthen scents. The beauty whisks one’s breath away. Something resonates deep in my thoughts while hiking in that glorious palette of color…. I remind myself no human scheduler or logistician programmed the mountain’s transformation from summer green to autumn sienna. The … Read more

There’s more to bread and salt than meets the palate! This adventure started a couple of years ago when I happened upon a restaurant in the mountain town of Frisco, Colorado. There on Main Street in that pristine and quaint community rimmed with purple peaks all around, hung a sign denoting Bread+Salt. That sign immediately captured my attention. Bread and salt? From the sidewalk I wondered if that charming restaurant featured anything else. As it turned out, there … Read more

I came across this photo from earlier this summer when I was hiking in the mountains of Colorado near my home. I am as astonished now as I was then to happen upon this little tree growing out of this enormous multi-ton rock. Somehow it spoke of unexpected things—big and small. Somehow it suggested supple possibility emerging out of unwavering granite. I wondered how enough soil had accumulated in the small depression on the top … Read more

Oh, a magnificent story can captivate even the most complacent listeners! Rimsky-Korsakov’s shimmering Scheherazade elevates storytelling through the magic of four movements in a symphonic suite that draws on the Indian, Persian, and Arabic tales of The One Thousand and One Nights (commonly known as The Arabian Nights). The symphony includes all the elements of a literary masterpiece: A Problem or Dilemma; Unforgettable Characters; Passionate Dialogue; Rising Actions of Intrigue; A Satisfying Conclusion The Colorado Music Festival … Read more