When you join the Army at 18, and then wake up in your 40s, you get accustomed to living everywhere. A place is just a place, and every place can be changed for another place. So I once thought.
Not anymore. My family recently moved back to Manitou Springs. I’m told this happens often. People leave town, then come back, as if 80829 was the Hotel California’s zip code.
Why? Why do so many boomerang back?
Every one of them, no doubt, has individual idiosyncratic reasons. Jobs, families, life circumstances.
For us, in part, it was the clear contrast. We lived here for six years, then moved to Park City, Utah, for the past two years. Park City is a resort that happens to have some year-round residents. Manitou Springs is a community that happens to sit next to the world’s most-visited mountain.
There’s no comparison. It’s better to be in a community – this community.
A community isn’t just a pile of people. It’s a balance between the good that the many can do together all while maintaining the individual’s passion and commitment. The thing is, in Manitou, everyone’s just one conversation away from plugging in to this community.
I had one of those conversations recently. Cassandra Bresnahan, emitting an almost-radioactive enthusiasm for Manitou Springs, asked me to pitch in with the Manitou 5K she’s helping organize for Saturday, Oct. 5.
She convinced me instantly. I’ve got to be there. You’ve got to be there.
No really, you do. Because you won’t want to miss it when Manitou moves together.
The Manitou 5K is for everyone. Each and every Manitoid and all the other Manitoids at heart. Everyone means everyone, whether you run, walk, roll, stroll or float like a butterfly and sing for the bees (lookin’ at you, pollinator people!).
Every town gets a dot on the map. But not every town is so blessed with the memories, creativities and natural beauties that this Manitou 5K will put on display.
You won’t want to miss it when Manitou moves together.
It begins in Fields Park and heads east into history, to Adams Crossing, where running races passed through a century ago. The new bridge there is in honor of Charles Adams, a German immigrant who fought for the Union in the Civil War, was America’s ambassador to Bolivia and who now rests in Crystal Valley Cemetery in Manitou Springs.
Just above the bridge, within sight on Pikes Peak Avenue, was where Inestine Roberts lived. Five feet tall, she was an amateur botanist and mountaineer who climbed Pikes Peak right up until she passed away on America’s Mountain at age 87. When searchers found her body, inside her pack was a small container of Alpine flowers.
From there the Manitou 5K turns and heads west along Manitou’s Seine – Fountain Creek – highlighting the hard work and laudable stewardship that’s gone in for decades to preserve this little natural wonder. Look left as you pass the Chamber of Commerce and you’ll see some just-dry, gorgeous Jennifer Davis murals.
Art is at the heart of this event. As you move, you’ll get a front seat to some of the Front Range’s finest, and also on your own front and center. Manitou Springs Middle School seventh grader Mirka Neppl won the t-shirt logo contest, and her mustang-forward design is featured on every race shirt.
Then comes a spin around Memorial Park, dedicated to local boy George “Eber” Duclo, who won a speed-walking contest from Soda Springs Park to the Cave of the Winds in 1911. He died protecting Paris from German artillery attacks in 1918, which is where that bronze statue comes from.
Then – whew! – you’re on the straightaway back, headed east back along Manitou Avenue, past the cog rail engine, “Old No. 2,” and on past the Manitou Springs Heritage Center and Manitou Arts Center, and right on in to the Fields Park finish line celebration.
What’s to celebrate? ‘Manitoid’ is a noun that carries a bit of verb. It presumes action, activity, movement. Whether you’re here to climb Pikes Peak or Red or Iron, at work on artwork, or making the world a better place one kind act at a time, you’re here in Manitou Springs more for the doing and less for the being.
That action is yet another hallmark of a community. It settles differences kindly, it disagrees agreeably and it brings everyone together prodigiously-for activities like fruitcake throwing, coffin racing and, later this year, library re-opening.
But this 5K is even simpler than all those and, I dare say, even more potent as a metaphor for Manitou Springs. It is Manitou moving together, literally, from the students and folks at the local school district who are putting this event on, to the local businesses and city leadership who have committed dollars and time and sweat to making it happen too. They’ve made it possible on Oct. 5 for this great big herd of mustang-loving Manitoids to move together toward a common destination. I can’t think of any activity more appropriate or inspiring for this Hippie Mayberry.
That’s a community I want to sign up for. Again.
ML Cavanaugh is-again-a Manitou Springs resident and hopes that everyone signs up for the Manitou 5K at: https://runsignup.com/Race/CO/ManitouSprings/Manitou5K