Originally published on April 16, 2018.

Jay Mann, Nederland.

I don’t know why you say goodbye,

I say…

Seeing as I’m moving to Paonia in a few days, I’ve been thinking about goodbyes. How they gain texture as a relationship deepens. How a trembling lip or a fierce hug can betray what lies beneath the surface, and how over the course of our lives we say goodbye to not just friends and family, but to places, ideas, and to portions of ourselves.

My parents divorced when I was a young child and lived in cities separated by a plane ride. For me, the flights were early experiences of solitude that I filled with books, cloud gazing, and the occasional conversation. It was only years later that I could imagine how difficult those partings must have been for my parents. To imagine the emotions of returning from the airport to an empty home.

Like most people, I fell in love in college. More specifically, with a college town, one that, alas, offered no jobs after graduation, but I also fell for a field of study – ecology.

The field jobs that followed were each in a different place, with a new group of coworkers, and a new study organism and question. In retrospect, it was bizarre to spend nearly every waking moment with a group of people for three months and then part ways, never to see them again.

My departure from ecology was a more drawn out affair, one ended by getting a Master in Library & Information Science. I am grateful that I’ve been able to retain the field part of field ecology, by living in Colorado in beautiful places like Nederland. I know that some of my most vivid memories of the area will be of the bike rides and hikes that I did.

I am contractually obligated to speak about books somewhere in this column. So, speaking of books, most readers have experienced the mixture of excitement and dread that comes from approaching the end of a book full of characters that they’ve come to love. That’s why book series are so popular, you can have new conversations with old friends.

Rather than say goodbye, I have some thank yous:

Thank you to the tireless individuals here in Nederland who do their best to improve the community. Thank you to the NCL Foundation for your book sales and for drumming “the library is awesome” beat. To my District Board – look how much we did together! Thank you to the library volunteers who bring equal parts empathy, wisdom, and goofiness. To my staff, thank you for holding down the front lines and for the laughs. And to our patrons, thank you for the opportunity to serve you these past three years.

If you happen to be in Paonia, please stop by the library and say hello!

Jay Mann is, for a couple more days, the Director of the Nederland Community Library.