Last summer, when Christo and Jeanne-Claude installed The Gates in Central Park, all New York was a twitter with the orange rustling fabric. I just smiled. I knew that they would never know how it felt to stand in what I consider Christo's first gate, hearing, seeing a massive orange wave of fabric dance overhead against a deep blue sky.
In 1972, I was home from college for the summer. I was oblivious, like most of the locals, to the fact that a major art event, the installation of Christo's Valley Curtain, was being staged less than 25 miles away in Rifle Gap. The man who years later would become my husband first got wind of it from his extended family living down valley from the Curtain. So the day after it was scheduled to be completed we packed a picnic lunch and headed for Rifle Gap, two ranch hands, a want-a-be artist and her childhood friend. We looped through the back country, approaching the Valley Curtain in reverse of most visitors. But instead of a taunt curtain stretched across the road between outcrops of rock, a portion of the fabric rippled overhead, roaring, floating like a giant wave through the blue sky. The volunteers and professional crew were milling around in stunned defeat. My friends tolerated my determination to capture the orange rolling waves with my father's borrowed camera. 
Out of concerns for safety, the Curtain was removed within days, weeks before schedule. The locals chattered irreverently about it throughout the summer, about the meaningless of modern art, the wasted money and the foolishness of putting it in a place known for it constant, prevailing winds. When the Curtain is included in books and information on Christo's long career, only pictures from its first day of being are included.
I have always wondered why Christo did not seem to value the magic of both Valley Curtains, the one he envisioned and the one that nature imposed a collaborative role with. Both were beautiful. But the later was my favorite, it was so dynamic and fleeting, impossible to ever recreate again. Sometimes it is what we can't plan and never foresee, that humbles us and teaches us our most valuable lessons.
Pictures and project information on the Valley Curtain can be found at http://christojeanneclaude.net/vc.html. Pictures and information on The Gates are at http://christojeanneclaude.net/tg.html.
