Summer in Colorado. Mostly sunny or sunny every day. The sun’s intensity amplified by our high altitude’s thin atmosphere. I hear this is some people’s idyll, but it’s certainly not mine. Give me an icy river to forge, numb toes, beer cooling in snow. Right now, I’d even take the spring hailstorm I encountered in a supermarket parking lot last year, the floodwater rising up my car door, my recently purchased frozen peas melting in the backseat. At least that was exciting. But this—my scaley, reptilian lips, my one red shin, my beheaded aloe vera plant—these are just garden-variety consequences of careless sunblock application, my lips worsened by my bad habit of licking them in direct sun. If my van were ready, I’d leave this Colorado summer in a second. Continue reading “The Sun Is a Monster (Or, Three Van Sewing Projects)”
