I started writing more about last year on my flight to Colorado last weekend. Mary and I were going on vacation with four friends at Steamboat Springs and when I closed my laptop on that flight, 2007 began. Over the course of a week, we snowboard, skied, snowshoed, soaked in outdoor hot tubs, ate too much, slept just enough, went tubing and otherwise unwound. By the end of the trip, neither flight delays on Friday’s return trip nor not getting home until 5:30 am Saturday rankled us much (just don’t ask me about hauling luggage to the car at the airport, the ski bag needed to be kicked and cussed out, and that’s that, ok).

So, adios 2006 and olá 2007. There won’t be any summary of 2006. Instead, here’s some Steamboat Springs photos. (If you want to see larger versions, view them on Flickr).

Today is the first day of 2007. A mix of snow and sleet are falling outside, covering the gray landscape with a fresh layer of white. My dog is at my feet, a warm wood stove at my back and the new year isn’t even 10 hours old. The symbols of contentment and a fresh start abound.

But this “new” year is just a matter of arithmetic, the fresh start more a sense of an annually renewed hope that I will improve upon my flaws than a clean slate, and my contentment is tempered by the fact that 2006 was a difficult year for me – one in which each joy seemed to be paired with a sorrow or worry. It all reminds me of a quote from Spinal Tap, when the band is standing around Elvis’s grave, comedically butchering “Heartbreak Hotel” and gaining some perspective on their lot in life, “Too much fucking perspective,” David St. Hubbins opines and the band falls silent.

I am not one who believes the divine meddles in the minutia of our mortal lives, yet as look back, I can see near perfect balance to all that I experienced in 2006. Good and Bad arrived in roughly equal amounts, often with a twist of irony. (The Buddhists may be on to something after all.) I intended to list some examples here, but the post would grow well past my attention span, let alone that of the average web surfer.

So, I’ll be making a “year in review” list over the next few days, until I’ve either sufficiently made sense of the past year or have grown sufficiently tired of the topic. After all, 2007 is upon us now and, in keeping with my mom’s fiercely optimistic determination that this year will be much better than the last, one can’t easily move forward if too focused upon the past. Still, 2006 is a year I need to understand.