I’m side-stepping over rocks down the incline on the shore of Dillion reservoir in Frisco, Colorado.  I have a travel washing cup in hand and a tuna sandwich parked alongside my bicycle in the waiting. I left my Garmin watch back in New York, but I think this stop was about 12 miles since the start of the trail in Breckenridge.

I am a Chabad on Campus Rebbetzin in Queens and this is a ‘rebbetzin retreat’ of sorts.   Chabad on Campus International gave us a stipend to get started on planning a getaway so we could refresh and recharge.  One of the women has a brother with a house in Breckenridge – the mountains and fresh air were beckoning, so we packed our bags and made our way to the high altitude.

The journey began two days prior in Denver.   We met some of the local Chabad on Campus Rebbetzins for lunch.   “I asked my son what he misses most about Colorado,” said my Denverite friend Chanie whose son is in Brooklyn, “and he said, ‘the open sky.’”

“I know,” I say a mere two hours after landing.  “I noticed the difference as soon as we got in the car.”  I spend a lot of time behind the wheel at home, zig-zaging around cars on tight NYC streets. The expanse of the Colorado sky was a real change.

At the restaurant I hug an old friend, Leah, and regret that I won’t have a chance to visit her Chabad House in Boulder.  “They say Colorado is like a magnet,” she tells me with a smile, “if you come once, you’ll come again.”  Leah and I met on a different mountain in the Holy City of Tzfat 25 years ago.  I’m so happy to see her and the seeds she planted for a return trip start to take root in my mind.

The locals remind us to drink.  “Not just water, you need electrolytes,” they say with wisdom.  “You’re going up the mountain and altitude sickness is real.”  Hydration becomes a full-time job and indeed I down a bottle of vitamin water at a gas station on our way.

Leah throws a few belongings into a plastic bag from Empire Kosher (in Crown Heights) and I laugh as I bid her farewell.  “You’re using bags from NY?” I tease her.

“We can’t get them here,” she and Esti (another former NYer and current Denverite) reply with a wink and a gentle reminder that I’m out of my element.

Indeed the local supermarket only had paper bags (for a fee) WITHOUT HANDLES.  “What is this??,” I ask no one in particular. I text my son who was recently describing the futility of paper bags without handles that he encountered on the coast of Oregon.   I revel in what I presume to be a mother-son bond of shared experiences on the alternate coast.  (A couple days later he would call and ask if I’m still in Florida…).

I offer to walk Leah to her car, she’s one of the characters that helped shape my 20s.  I was soul-searching in the Holy City of Tzfat.  She was grounded in a strong family heritage.  I was trying to carve a new path for myself.  She was mourning the recent loss of her father that summer and I was drinking in the thrill of new possibilities that didn’t include (and weren’t impressed by) my BA in psychology.

It was the summer of 2001, email was a thing – a new and exciting thing.  You paid 20 NIS for an hour timeslot at the local café to check your Hotmail account.  Bezek phone cards slid into little slots on the bottom of the public phones and written letters were becoming rare.  When Leah’s wedding invitation in a white linen envelope showed up at my seminary in Tzfat with my name inscribed, I was touched.  About a year later, Leah took a bus from Brooklyn to Monsey to attend my wedding in the ninth month of her first pregnancy.

She’s not the friend I talk to while I’m folding laundry and washing dishes.  She holds a special place in my heart.  She left us with hiking gear and a reminder to stay hydrated.

Our crew of 5 out-of-towners eventually made our way up the mountain.  We hoped for warm weather after an east coast summer.  “Sixty degrees in Colorado,” said the guy in the airport, “is a lot warmer than sixty in NY.   There’s no humidity.”  And so it was, we sat in the sun and breathed in the crisp mountain air.

“Let’s take a walk,” I threw at Sarah from PA as we finished our morning coffee in the sun.  “I just need to put on my wig.”

By the time my wig was in place and my shoes tied, the walk for two had become a group of five.  We found a store that rents e-bikes just as we made it down hill to Main Street.  It was vacation and there was no rigid plan, so a bike ride fit perfectly on our non-existent itinerary.

Before biking, we went back to our house, made sandwiches, and drank more water.  I took along the collapsible washing cup.

I am only part of this group because I am a Chabad on Campus rebbetzin.  I was not born into the role – I came to it.  I was an adolescent knowing there must be more – there must be something bigger than the self.  A college student that spent every Thursday night in the Chabad House kitchen; I believe there is a spiritual mound of potato peels that can testify on my behalf.   The search gifted me a year of study at Machon Alte seminary on a mountain top in Tzfat.

I came to this.  I spoke about having a college campus Chabad House on my first date with my husband.  I am on this trip, on this bike with a wig under my helmet and a skirt over my leggings because of those choices.  I am so grateful to Hashem for the life that I am living.  But I digress….

The bike ride continues and we find a beautiful clearing alongside the water.  It’s time for lunch.  Shira takes pictures because that’s what Shira does.  Sarah accompanies me down to the water with the washing cup in hand.  I’m not oblivious that it’s kind of crazy to hike down a hill just to eat a sandwich.   I dunk the cup into the water trying not to fill it with sand.

As I pour the crystal-clear mountain water over my hands, I think to myself, Thank You Hashem for Sanctifying ME with the Commandment to wash my hands!  It is with a heart full of gratitude that I alight the side of the hill to bless and eat my sandwich.

© The Times of Israel (Blogs)