Generation, … What?

I was in Denver for a conference. Being a mountain girl, I squeezed in a hike early one morning at Red Rocks, Colorado. I shared the idea with a few fellow nature lovers in our cohort. Three signed up. We took an Uber from our hotel downtown and made it to the mountains just after sunrise.

I’ve always dreamed of hiking in Colorado, but I never thought it would happen during a conference trip packed with business meetings.

First, we visited the Red Rocks Amphitheatre — extraordinary. The way the built form blended with nature was so thoughtful, so harmonized. I loved the space so much, I was almost tempted to skip the fancy business dinners and get a ticket for the DJ concert happening there that night.

We climbed the amphitheater stairs under the soft light of sunrise. We were lucky — it was spring, and the fresh greens set off the red rocks in a way I’d never seen before. Majestic doesn’t quite capture it, but I can’t think of a better word.

But the real magic began when we left the amphitheater behind and hit the real trails. Red rock, red sand beneath our feet, the scent of wild thyme, the soft sound of trickling springs, wildflowers dancing along the edges. We walked in silence, the four of us — mesmerized.

At one point, the trail wound around a large boulder. I stopped to look at a small white flower clinging to the rock. I leaned in close — my face nearly touching it. The scent took me straight back to my grandmother’s place in Tehran.

Behind the flower was that same red stone. I touched the petal — soft, fragile. Then I touched the rock — rough, hardened by centuries of wind and heat. I could feel the tension in it, the weight of time. Later, in my hotel room, I looked it up: the rocks at Red Rocks are over 300 million years old. They were separated from the Rockies themselves. The flower, on the other hand, might live for a week. Maybe two.

I thought back to our family conversation we had in the car earlier that week with my husband and daughter, debating generation names — Millennials, Gen Z, Alpha… what’s next? When did we start naming generations? Why do we feel the need to separate ourselves into such small, rigid time boxes? Forty years apart, if that.

I wonder — what would the generation name of the Red Rocks be, compared to the white flower?

Just think for a moment, nature doesn’t bother naming generations. It will be too much work. What I saw that morning was a harmony of lifespans — beings from different ages coexisting, teaching, nourishing one another.

The 300 million years old rock needs the young white flower, the same as the other way. That’s what is called harmony. No textbook will teach us this, only nature.

So tell me — what generation are you?

The red rock? Or the white flower?

Hey, I’m Gracie. I’m working on my debut novella, Is the sun a he or a she? a romance.