A month of Sundays and then some

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 7 Comments
The Colorado Mountain College running team’s 2024 graduates: bottom, (l-r), Brooklyn German, Aslynn Wardall; top: Nate Encinias, Harrison Walter, Adaline Fulmer, Paulo Aponte. Not pictured: Kenneth Obregon.

By Hal Walter

For the first Sunday in a month of them, there is no long training run on tap for cross-country or track. There is no homework. There will be no evening commute to Leadville to deliver Harrison Walter to Colorado Mountain College.

The Blur, it seems, graduated from CMC this past Friday with an Associate of General Studies degree and proficiency certificates in welding.

It’s really a strange feeling and I am still processing it all. For the past two years life around here has revolved around Mary and me supporting Harrison through college. We’ve put about 30,000 miles on vehicles in doing so, and untold mileage on our brains. We knew it was a big risk sending him to Leadville to live in a dorm, but anything worth doing is worth the risk of failing. We also didn’t have a clue what we were getting ourselves into.

Between the ages of 62 and 64 I spent about 150 nights in a dorm room. We traveled to six states to watch Harrison and teammates run for the CMC Eagles. As his academic aide I learned how to operate Canvas and Basecamp. I read textbooks alongside him and helped guide him through countless assignments. During both summers I coached him through his running workouts.

All of this was out of the belief that a person on the autism spectrum deserved a shot at a college education and experience. He graduated teetering on the brink of the Dean’s List with a GPA of 3.46 (final grades are not yet in). It wasn’t all rainbows and unicorns, as he is surely on another Dean’s List for the number of write-ups received, all related to autistic behaviors.

Harrison at Huntsville (third from left). Photo: Hal Walter

As an athlete he left CMC with the school record for the track 10K, and runner-up best times for the 5K and 3K. In cross-country he holds CMC’s third-best cross-country 5K and fifth-fastest 8K, which he ran at the NJCAA National Championships in Huntsville, Ala. He also won the 5K Colorado Cup Snowshoe Race, hosted annually by CMC.

He received the running team’s Most Valuable Runner Award, as well as an award for his GPA and a letter.

And when he wasn’t studying or running he worked part time at Community Threads in Leadville.

There are too many people to thank in this space, but we owe a world of gratitude to his teammates and fellow students, coach and professors, faculty, staff and administration for the patience, support and compassion over these two years. There is a book in the works.

Perhaps rather than a month of Sundays it was an era of Sundays. The future, as Tom Petty sang, is wide open.

Harrison Walter, come on down!

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 7 Comments
Harrison Walter, en route to graduating from Colorado Mountain College.

Congratulations and a tip of the Mad Dog mortarboard to Harrison Walter, who yesterday collected his Associate of General Studies degree from Colorado Mountain College in Leadville.

The big day kicked off with the traditional “Ski Down” of Dutch Henry Hill. Harrison — a letterman named Most Valuable Runner of the 2023-24 CMC Eagles’ men’s team — chose to leg it down on snowshoes.

Sen. Michael Bennet (D-Colo.) delivered the commencement address, after which Harrison, his family and friends adjourned to the City on a Hill coffee shop for what his father, Hal, described as “a gala soiree.”

En route to his degree, Harrison also collected certificates of proficiency in basic welding and cutting and welding design and fabrication, and earned yet another certificate from the Eagles for maintaining a 3.0+ GPA as a student athlete. So it was a busy couple of years for the young fella.

Today the freshly minted graduate was reported to be resting comfortably at the family compound outside Weirdcliffe while his father examined the upshot of clearing out his dorm room.

“My truck, which looked like The Beverly Hillbillies’ … has been emptied into the living room,” he confided via Messages. “What a mess.”

Pistache! Gesundheit!

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 11 Comments
Our young pistache erupted in leaves practically overnight.

It was a gloomy morning, or maybe it just felt that way because I slept poorly.

Weird dreams and plenty of ’em, with lots of abrupt and unscheduled wake-ups. I didn’t check the clock because I didn’t want to know. What little remains of my mind was churning like a Samsung clothes washer on the brink of catastrophic failure.

My restlessness could’ve been due to seasonal allergies, which have been unusually fierce this spring. Or perhaps it was the upshot of two consecutive nights of Sarah DiGregorio’s chipotle-honey chicken tacos. I did opt for two sizable chipotles in their preparation. And I did eat two of those fat tacos both nights, topped with diced avocado, accompanied by a large green salad.

Maybe at 70 it’s time to reconsider the spicy foods?

Nah.

I’ve been eating chile since I was 8 and it hasn’t killed me yet. And if it ever does, I’ll depart this vale of tears with a smile on my face and the bedclothes floating a few aromatic inches above the rest of me. I can sleep when I’m dead.

• Editor’s note: Speaking of my mind and how it works (or doesn’t), when I went to Radio Free Dogpatch for the Samsung-washer link I was reminded that it’s been a year since I recorded a podcast. So here it is, a rerun from April 16, 2023.