Just sit right back, and you’ll hear a tale, a tale of a birthday grump, and how she managed to claw her way out of the slump.

Ye olde birthdays bring about mixed feelings for me. On one decrepit hand, I’m delighted and grateful to receive the gift of yet one more. On the other decaying hand, they can be fraught and cause many complicated feelings.

For what it’s worth, though, my birthday has caused many feels since practically the first one. It’s pretty much a given that I’ll shed some tears at some point. I probably even wept as a sprightly 5-year-old, lamenting to my mom how time was going too fast and I’d be in elementary school faster than I could finish this can of Chef Boyardee Cheese Ravioli.

The numerals this year weren’t the big ones we typically celebrate, though aren’t they all big ones? You only turn a particular number once, though it has crossed my mind to shave a few or 10 years off sometimes. But no, I shall rise above. I shall wear that number proudly.

As birthdays tend to run together, I decided to start taking trips to differentiate them. A couple of years ago, it was Sedona, Ariz. Last year was Santa Fe, N.M. This year, I floundered until the penultimate minute when a tiny voice in my head said, “Crestone,” and I found an Airbnb to my liking in the tiny town, population of about 150, at the foot of the Sangre de Cristo Mountains.

This was my fourth trip to the International Dark Sky Community, so dubbed in 2021 thanks to a dearth of light pollution.

I don’t stay in Crestone proper, where housing is limited, but in Baca Grande, a community on the outskirts of town, where about 1,200 residents call the remote high desert of the San Luis Valley home.

The day before my birthday dawned partly cloudy and warmish on this prickly pear, thanks to poor sleep and anxiety about the upcoming highway drive. But onward. This trip wasn’t going to take itself.

After packing the car with what felt like the contents of my house, including two small dogs, who were also having large feelings about everything, we sped off.

Almost three hours later, we turned left off Colorado 17 onto County Road T, an hour north of the Great Sand Dunes National Park and Preserve, and inhaled the sight of the Blood of Christ mountains looming in the distance, a view I’ll never tire of. There’s something about this village, off the main highways and byways, that some have heard of but most have never visited. Visiting Crestone takes a concerted effort. You won’t pass by on the way to somewhere else, as there’s only one road in and out, and that road is 18 miles to the hamlet.

Some say the mystical vibe stems from the Baca Grande’s wealth of spiritual centers representing several major world religions, as well as stupas (Buddhist monuments) and the Crestone Ziggurat. I like to describe the town as “Twin Peaks” meets “The X-Files” meets “Stand by Me.”

Part of that is due to the famed UFO Watchtower, 30 miles south. For decades, people have reported seeing numerous confounding objects in the skies above the San Luis Valley. With its vast expanse of desert and minimal light pollution, there’s an unshakeable feeling that anything is possible out there, and that some of it might land you on an episode of “Dateline.” There was that whole Love Has Won cult, led by Mother God, after all.

But then I watch a band of pre-teen boys walk through a town park, holding skateboards and baseball bats, jibber jabbering amongst themselves, and I’m transported into the pages of Stephen King’s 1982 novella, “The Body,” which inspired the 1986 film “Stand by Me.”

Road trip complete. Lodging located. Birthday approaching. Bad mood still crackling. A nap would help, but nay, there is no nap in my future. Instead, there are a few incidents that add fuel to the fire of my mood.

Just as I go to open the sliding glass door onto the amazing backyard and let the dogs out, I turn around to see dog No. 1 marking his territory on an innocent coffee table. I yell, stop him, go to open the door, and turn around to see him doing more of his business on the rug. I scurry him outside, just in time for dog No. 2 to finally get brave enough to walk on the wood floors and traipse right through dog No. 1’s business, leaving a few tiny brown footprints across the floor. I deeply consider turning the car around and heading home.

But we stick. Dusk spreads. Coyotes cry in the distance. And the San Luis Valley rewards us with a canopy of stars, planets and galaxies slowly revealing themselves as the setting sun strips the sky of light. There’s the hazy Milky Way and the Orion constellation, with his gleaming belt and sword, brighter than I’ve seen all fall and winter.

The morning dawns, but not before dog No. 2 has sung his song loudly since 4 a.m., upset that he wasn’t able to sleep with his pack on the bed. Unbeknownst to the birthday girl, he has also left a perfectly round yellow urine stain the size of a cantaloupe on the corner of the snow-white comforter that rests on the ground. But I won’t discover that until mid-morning, when I surrender to the fact I’ll likely be paying for the purchase of said comforter and hopefully not be getting banned on Airbnb.

Tired and grouchy, there was only one solution – German chocolate cake for breakfast. I stick a pink candle in a gooey slice, light it, conjure a wish, and blow. Godspeed, tiny wish, may you come to fruition.

And then the birthday wishes begin to roll in. Each text softens my cranky soul and kneads my heart into a mushy gruel of gratitude. This is what truly makes a birthday special – people remembering you and feeling seen.

Later, after attempting and failing to find a new trail in town and feeling frustrated, I make my way to an old favorite. But on the slow drive up the deeply rutted dirt road, I spill half a can of Olipop Vintage Cola in my lap, the cold liquid soaking through me to the seat. Yep, I think, this seems about right. Birthday grinch, activate.

And then the trailhead, which I previously had no trouble finding, proved elusive. So I asked the nice family of three hiking down where it was. It’s good to make human contact on a strange trail, just in case you go missing later. I imagined what they might say if one of those UFOs or cults plucked me up: “Woman in a fuchsia puffer jacket, pigtails, huge bucket hat, looks like she peed her pants? Yeah, she asked us about the trailhead.” Thus inspiring the title of my memoir: “She Could Never Find the Trailhead.”

But my pants slowly dried as I hiked the mountain, and my spirits lifted as I sat on a rock in the silence, eating a too-ripe banana, listening to a birthday voice memo from a best friend, and gazing at the captivating craggy mountains.

Later, I drove 30 miles to Joyful Journey Hot Springs, hoping they would deliver on their promise. I soaked my crumbling bones in the hot stew of boron, calcium, lithium and magnesium, while hiding under my hat and listening to the conversations.

Two couples, one in their 70s and the other in their late 40s, strangers to each other, discovered they’d both married, divorced and remarried their partners.

“People always ask what makes it different the second time around,” the older woman said. “I tell them we have better manners.”

I tucked that gem in my pocket and headed back. Two days later, feeling sunnier (maybe it was the lithium?), we left Crestone for the last time until who knows when. And on the way out, I drove past a turkey vulture, picking at a carcass on the side of the road, and thought, yes, that somehow seems right.