For every valley there’s a peak or two.

I’ve had to write a lot of depressing news lately and, naturally, focusing on the darkest parts of the human soul affects my own.

For me, at least, it is impossible to gather details of some nasty, violent event and organize them into a coherent account without the process coloring my outlook on life. So even though I am essentially an optimist who tries to keep in mind that these sorts of evil doings represent the very worst in us, sometimes the suspicion grows they reveal our true nature instead.

Which is enough to set anyone on the road to despair.

Then to add yet another, albeit trivial, cause for even more gloom and cynicism to the mix, my billfold disappeared during a recent visit to Durango that I was hoping might lighten my mood. (Ever since seeing the "Seinfeld" episode in which George Costanza’s overstuffed wallet explodes, I’ve carried mine somewhere other than a hip pocket, which makes it easier on my spine but also, obviously, easier to lose.)

Although the only things in it of sentimental value were an old picture of a friend’s daughter and $30 or so, it is still a big pain to go through all the hoops to replace ID and cancel credits cards and so on.

I immediately called the downtown store where, because of the clerk’s ineptitude, it had taken me approximately 15 minutes to buy some socks, thinking I might have laid it on the counter during the interminable wait. But someone unenthusiastically alleged, after a 30-second pause, that he had looked thoroughly and found nothing.

Then I called the Durango police and spoke to a very considerate cop who asked me to describe the parameters of my travels so he could go and look. Jeremiah Lee said he’d get back to me if anything turned up, but again, nothing.

After the weekend, I also called the Durango post office to see if someone might have dropped my wallet into a mail box. A woman who sounded as if I had interrupted her nail-polishing said if anybody had, the post office would have mailed it back to me at the address on my driver’s license, but she couldn’t say either way because they kept no records of such events.

I suppressed my great urge to ask her just how many lost billfolds were turned in that they didn’t have time to make a cursory note of these happy occasions. Instead I gritted out a slightly sarcastic "Thanks for the help" and resigned myself to the seemingly inevitable:

My nearly new Levi’s tri-fold wallet was gone for good, along with Meriel’s picture and those of Hamilton and Jackson.

And all the positive pronouncements I’d made to Gail about how most folks are honest and how I fully expected to get it back started sounding pretty silly. People being what they are, I blackly mused, maybe I should consider myself lucky if no one used my ID to create an alter ego for a life of crime. (After all, I’ve seen those accounts of hapless souls being repeatedly arrested because another person had assumed their identity for nefarious purposes, not to mention having their credit ruined and their lives made miserable in myriad other ways.)

Then, the other afternoon at the office my phone rang and Lisa from the Durango Threadworks asked me if I were the person to whom she was speaking, so to speak.

She had my billfold, Lisa then revealed, and thought I might want it back because of "all the press stuff" inside. (This amounted to a couple of Colorado Press Association membership cards, commonly referred to as press passes, and I was concerned about recovering them least of all, since usually they prove to be of little practical worth in a small community.)

The good Lisa explained that a pedestrian had found my wallet on the sidewalk and brought it into the store, but because my name was not in the phone book, it had been thrown into a drawer and gone unnoticed for a few days.

After I expressed my heartfelt joy and gratitude at some length, she agreed to take the wayward wallet across the street to The Durango Herald’s offices, where Nancy, my publisher’s able assistant, was nice enough to send it along the next morning.

Everything was there —even my invaluable City Market Valu Card!

I wouldn’t have minded a bit if the anonymous finder had taken the cash as a self-imposed reward. But seeing the big faces on those somewhat soiled bills staring back at me was icing on the cake, because it further shored up my sagging belief in humankindbasic decency.