One of the things I miss about Colorado is the air at night, that mix of warm and cold, the rush of cool sweeping down from the front range and across the plains. It is like opening a window by a radiator on a first spring day and watching the curtains rustle, but that is a comparison made in Ohio that falls far short of the real thing.

I remember specific times: Sitting, sometimes for hours, on the concrete back stoop of my little house in Colorado Springs, feeling the air and maybe only getting another sweater to keep feeling the air and watching the Peak as the night got deeper. The Peak might be saying something, brooding and glistening, if I could only hear it.

Or the air in the park by the apartment in Lakewood where I lived during the dark year when I was afraid to drive or talk to people and would walk the dogs at 3 or 4 a.m. We would walk in silence and Grace or Picasso would seize a scent on the cold air and try to follow, lunging forward and side to side. I would listen to their panting and my feet crunching resolutely on the gravel and, at one point on the trail, it would turn and face Denver, laid out beneath like a glowing ember.

I'm on the road that bobs and darts with the stream through a shallow canyon, driving from Boulder up, back, forth. West to Nederland. It is the end of September and we haven't slept much in days. The mountain air rushes into the car as Elliot Smith strums his guitar and sings in his reedy voice above heavy bass.

"Hey," says my friend, slouched on the passenger side of the car, so tall his knees crunch into the dashboard. He reaches for the console and turns the volume down.

Hey I say back because it seemed like he was going to start a sentence and then didn't.

"I'm in a weird mood," he says. "The weirdest. Like I don't know if I can explain it. The Festival. It was a success and now it's over. It's like looking at the sky and seeing the blue sky and it looks so solid -- but then, you know, the sky doesn't stop, it's not solid, it keeps on going into space.

A day or two ago I was rushing around freaking out about the cameras, the sound, would everyone get their films in and would they make it to the airport and stuff on time, or sitting around at Breakfast King with Brenda and Kethan and you and everyone and now here I am sitting in a car driving into the mountains, like it never happened."

"Looked to me like this was the most successful one yet. It's catching on."

"Yeah. It's this thing I've been working on for the last six or seven years and it's been that and nothing else, and that's OK, I wanted it to be my life, even with all the drama. And I'm looking around, and I see what the Festival is, what it's become; it's established now, it runs on its own. And then I deal with all these filmmakers and they're so young and I think, for the first time, that the Festival will go on without me; that it could change, you know? That it doesn't need me anymore. I feel so weird."

"Geez - where's my Walker? You're not giving up the Festival, are you?"

"'Where's my Walker', hah! No, I don't want to do that - but it's almost getting more than I can handle. All the people, all the items I had to do, maybe I should hand it over to someone else, a new generation of people will give it a new direction, some fresh ideas. That would be good, too."

The walls of red rock have fallen back and the road is flattening out. Ahead, Nederland twinkles around the black of the reservoir. "You're the Boss, meaning you can do whatever you want, I mean if it's too much then it's too much. But I guess I didn't think it was too much, I've been there all along, I've watched how you handled yourself, it's just as well as you always have, better even. If you were going to turn over the reins, I was thinking you wouldn't do something like that for years yet."

My friend doesn't say anything, just hooking one arm in the window.

"Man, am I coked up on that Matte. Maybe you just need a vacation."