For as much as I’ve lived near and traveled in the mountains, you’d think I’d remember these things. Yet, I frequently forget simply because I’m in love with these massive beasts that defy reason and logic, especially when I cross over their magical lines.
And crossing that magical line of the Continental Divide in the Colorado Rocky Mountains, especially above ten thousand feet, has got to be one of the greatest pleasures of my life. I’ve done it hundreds of times, driving over these passes to tour, to move, to hike, to backpack, to camp: Monarch. Wolf Creek. Cottonwood. Independence. Loveland. Rabbit Ears. Cameron. La Poudre. Fremont. The names themselves hold layers of memories of my life in Colorado, giving me evocative moments and ellipses of exhilaration.
Blended in the sensory whorl are instances of feeling that sensation of driving roads that float in thin air. I can summon the sensory clips of stopping and standing on top of the world as a thin wind slices through you, even in July. This is where sunlight is closer, tingling on your skin as you want to reach out and touch that eagle, touch that hawk, floating over the thousands-of-feet cliff drop. It’s up there, where the evergreen trees have dropped away for lack of atmosphere, and it’s only you, the rocky terrain, air, and sunlight — where everything, every internal sense, every detail around you, is amplified in a way you can’t grasp near sea level. It’s heaven up there. The threads of who you are naturally become a poignant landscape in multidimensional relief. Nothing interferes with the very breath of your existence. It’s one of the spaces on Earth where you can feel the purity of “I am” singing in every cell of your being.
This is one of my magical happy spots. Mountain passes on the Colorado Continental Divide.
So, it makes sense that this is where my Spirit Team (Angels or Ascended Masters or High-Level Spirit Guides or my Star Nation Family) contacted me with a single booming message of “WASHINGTON” in the autumn of 2021, woven in the powerful magnetics of a range of Colorado mountains as I traveled home. I had driven from the North Fork of the Gunnison (in central Colorado) to Denver, Colorado, for an eye appointment. Those meetings were now in my rearview mirror, and I was enjoying the longer, circuitous route home to the North Fork across Colorado, taking in the last of the aspen leaves changing at high altitude. It was only weeks before winter would embrace the mountains with snow, closing access to those thin slips of high roads.
So it turned out that this October 2021 drive was one of the most succulent mountain drives I’d had in a while. I’d left behind the push-pull tensions of the news of the world. I’d left behind the chaos at home of an unfolding divorce and the pending sale of our home. I’d left behind a coaching business that I was allowing to naturally die its own death so it could be re-imagined. I’d left behind all the worries that had been swallowing me for a while, and I sailed in those mountains like a woman in a ship, exploring the vast lands around her. Life felt like a song again.
It was in the middle of that song when the message of “Washington” began as I crested over twelve thousand feet and took in the cathedral-like dome bowl of mountains at the top of Cottonwood Pass outside of Buena Vista, Colorado. Cottonwood Pass is buried in the Collegiate Mountain Range, an epic collection of mountains that exceed fourteen thousand feet, nestled in the middle of Colorado. I parked my car at the top of the pass and stepped out to take in the view, all 360 degrees of it, while I felt something shift beneath my feet and flow through the top of my head.
I breathed in the mountainous magnificence for as long as I could and then gathered myself back into my car to drive the descent. As I drove, wide-open soul-marveling at all of “this” that I was in, the message from my Spirit Team magnetically and loudly began pulsing “Washington! Washington! Washington!” through me with speed and amplification as I descended the west side of the pass with breathtaking views and scary hairpin turns. Then, a softer rhythmic beat of “Washington” pinged through me as I motored along the gentler aspect of the road, descending into evergreens, and eventually curved along the water-tumbling folds of the Taylor River, decked with the last jewels of golden aspen leaves tumbling into the smoothed river rocks and fly-fishing waters below.
I floated down that road, driving the most magnificent real-life dream of my beloved Colorado mountain country with the magnetics of the Continental Divide having undone me in the best way possible. Without realizing it, I was in such a way that it was possible for me to receive the strong imprints of Washington state. You could say in some of those moments I felt completely uprooted, blasted off the mountain and catapulted halfway across the country to the Pacific Northwest like a fluffy piece of popcorn flying out of the popping pot.
By the time I pulled off the tiny road of 742 and turned north on Highway 135, away from Gunnison, Colorado, and headed toward Crested Butte, the mountain magnetics and the message about Washington had done their job. I knew in that drive, my body knew in that drive, that I’d be moving from Colorado to Washington state. That’s a fantastical realization to have when you’re a Colorado native lifer like me. I never thought I’d leave Colorado. I had underestimated the mountains, the magnetics, and what this drive was really all about.
I drove into Crested Butte a bit dazed and confused, navigating through the late autumn dwindling crowds of tourists downtown. I parked and made my way to the Rocky Mountain Chocolate Factory for ice cream and chocolates. Because that’s exactly what you do when a mountain decides to unexpectedly toss you across the country and show you the big decision. These are times of serious business that only rocky road ice cream and chocolate truffles can take care of because that glass of wine is just a bit out of reach. That’s what I did to gather myself.
A little while later, with a cup of ice cream in hand and my booty bag of hearty chocolate truffles, I found one of my favorite benches there on the main drag, right outside the bookstore that’s loaded with the best books in the country and that luscious bookstore smell with a wooden floor that creaks with all the weighted ages of all the seeking souls it has held. As I sat there taking in the street and the comfort of my favorites, I realized this message about Washington had been growing for a while. I just didn’t know how serious it was until the message literally spoke me down off the mountain.
For months, my Spirit Team had been filtering this message to me about leaving Colorado and moving northwest through random messages of the people close to me. None of these people knew what the other was saying. The messages began in mid-to-late summer as I realized my marriage was dying. First one person, then another and another spontaneously said the same thing nearly verbatim: “Dana, I don’t think you’re going to be staying in Colorado much longer. You’re going to be moving northwest.” The messages continued, encouraging me to let go of the blessed state that is my heart and soul. This was a challenging thought to process. I thought I’d at least get to live in Telluride or the Yampa Valley near Steamboat for four or five years before I got called away. But no, it was now.
So, in late summer, I did my due diligence of divination with my pendulum. I printed out a map of Oregon and a map of Washington. I segmented each map into a grid, creating nine boxes in each state (three across, three down, making nine boxes). And I ran my pendulum on a simple “yes/no” polarity to find out where my most beneficial moving zone lit up. Over several test runs, Yakima, Washington, lit up like Christmas Tree lights on Solstice through my pendulum. The divination was conclusive, but I still had my reservations until Cottonwood Pass tossed me off the mountain like popcorn.
I reviewed all of this as I sat on that bench in Crested Butte, scraping the bottom of my paper ice cream cup with my spoon. I felt myself beginning to grieve that I’d be lucky to hike the mountain trails here again. A move was imminent. This might be my last drive over Kebler Pass for a while. So, I left my bench and went into Townie Books for a few selections to get me through travels and a move, soaking up that wood floor creaking beneath my feet. Then I walked down the street, lamenting that I was now turning into a tourist in Crested Butte — my sense of being a local was short-timed the moment I got up from the bench. As I drove out of town, returning to the North Fork, I soaked up, as best I could, the remaining drive over Kebler Pass, past that sweet and busty granite of Mount Marcellina, weaving down along the winding gravel road through one of the largest aspen groves in North America.
Dana Stovern is founder and coach of The Magic of Somatic Money, and author of the blog Along the Learning Curve of Life. Even though her profession is body-based money relationship coaching, her first love is words, writing and exploring the depths of the human conscious (or unconscious) condition in body and soul development.