Manitou Springs has a long and rich history.  As one walks down the streets and turns to winding back alleys and small nooks throughout it is tempting to want to become a tourist in your own way.  To be drawn in and become a piece of the actively occurring history and somehow connected to the history that has already come to pass. 

I first came into Manitou Springs as such a tourist, but rather than being a part of a larger faceless body of tourism I stepped outside the role and attempted to become aware.  Looking at the leaves individually and listening to their song overcoming the beat of traffic noise.  I saw people begin to pop up in chairs and benches along shops where they once simply blended with the glass and knick knacks for sale.  I could smell fresh mountain air in summer over the many wafts of pretzels and mountain made fudge. 

Then I noticed something else.  Everywhere there was art.  Pieces intertwined into the sidewalks.  In back alleys.  In small porticos.  I had never realized so much art. The theme was then very easily visible.  There was a striking pride in all the pieces.  Individuality yet community.  There was a presence in each piece crying out to be recognized as an individual achievement, but each piece played into not only art expression as a whole, representing community and harmony.

There is an amazing amount of pieces that pay respect to sacrifices for others, like the animals that represent the loss of habitat or gift of nourishment they have played into existence.  The pieces that commemorate the casualties of war and their sacrifices so we may walk in peace.  The playful pieces that remind us that not everything is so serious and that we must remember to look at the world through the eyes of a child, with wonder. 

If you can swim through the river of conformation, cell phones, private space and materialistic endeavors, you can wash upon the shores things that literally hid right in front of your eyes.