It was nothing. It was everything.

It was one morning 11 years ago. Heath Gay woke in his Colorado Springs home. He was not yet 40 at the time.

“I had a growth on my forehead,” he says. “By the end of the day, it doubled in size. … I was freaking out.”

So much so “that I decided I needed to visit cemeteries for my headstone,” he says.

That’s how he spent his days after a doctor’s visit, wandering graveyards near and far. They were resting places well maintained and forgotten, crumbling and overgrown across the state’s mountains. It was a different kind of exploring for the native, adventurous Coloradan.

Finally, the tests came back. Gay was reassured: The growth could be treated.

“I don’t want it to sound like a big deal,” he says 11 years later.

And yet it was a time of life-changing inspiration. At the cemeteries, he came by names and learned stories. He came by ghost towns — more stories to be learned.

“And then realizing it all comes together,” Gay recalls. “That just sent me on the adventure I’ve been on.”

It’s the adventure of Colorado’s biggest fan.

Gay might claim the title. He is, after all, the man behind Colorado Fan Club, a Facebook page with close to 40,000 followers.

Here Gay posts about the expected (Pikes Peak, among all of the state’s 14,000-foot summits he has reached) and the unexpected (1891 photos of the King Coal and Silver Queen statues inside Pueblo’s Colorado Mineral Palace, which was lost to highway construction in the 1950s).

Gay posts the familiar, places for which every Colorado fan is grateful, but he is clearly more interested in the unfamiliar. Downpage from the Colorado Mineral Palace photos are photos of an abandoned schoolhouse on the Eastern Plains; further down scenes from the old town of Wild Horse; and further down scenes from Severance and Bruce’s Bar. “Where’s the best place in Colorado to get Rocky Mountain Oysters? I know where!”

As of late the content has been filling pages of books. Gay’s “Forgotten Colorado” series has explored the state’s eastern, northern and southern regions the past few years.

“And then I wanted to honor the town I live in,” he says.

He just published “Colorado Springs: The Most Significant Sites in the City.” It’s a book of pictures and short descriptions of 75 sites that could not all be called “significant” or well-known.

True to the author’s form, there’s the triangular piece of an old barn, displaying Sol’s Dairy, which started in 1929. There’s a tuberculosis hut, along with several others scattered across private yards.

There’s an unremarkable corner of the Knob Hill neighborhood, around where Nikola Tesla experimented. There’s an unremarkable, brick wall on the west side — one of the city’s oldest commercial walls, dating back to 1868, Gay found.

He grew up close by, in an apartment building that was once called Coronado Auto Court. That’s the name in the 1950s postcard seen in an opening page of the book.

“What I discovered during my research is that history is all around us if we’re just willing to take the time to see it,” Gay writes.

Which explains his mission with the Colorado Fan Club and the books. From the famous, the forgotten and the weird, there is his hope: “to inspire other people to discover the history and the people and the places that make their community and also their state so amazing.”

Gay is a fourth-generation Coloradan, the son and grandson of miners in Leadville. From there, he moved to the Pikes Peak region at the age of 8, initially to Cripple Creek, the once-great mining district that rivaled Leadville.

Yes, history was all around him at an early age.

“But honestly, I did not care about history until I had that health scare and thought I was going to become history myself,” he says.

He would not need a headstone after all. But he would need more adventures to cemeteries and abandoned places. Between his corporate work as a health and wellness professional, Gay would become “an unquenchable Colorado history hunter.”

So reads his bio in “Forgotten Colorado: The Eastern Plains,” which follows railroad tracks that spelled the rise and demise of towns. Gay followed the rusted tracks past collapsed homes, schools, churches, motels and stores.

“I grew up and lived in the mountains and I’ve climbed the mountains for decades. The plains have been something new,” Gay says. “It seems like there’s not much out there, but the more you’re on the ground, the more you start to see.”

For instance, he says: “This may sound silly, but I didn’t realize the Eastern Plains had turtles and porcupines. And people think there’s no water, but there is.” (He was recently delighted by Adobe Creek Reservoir.)

Also for instance: “the most welcoming outhouse.” That was in Arlington — a wooden commode Gay found to be adorned with art and flowers beside a guestbook.

In Haswell, he found what was marked as “the nation’s smallest jail,” apparently housing up to four inmates through the 1920s and ‘30s. Elsewhere, in Merino, he found the story of Holon Godfrey’s ranch, which became known as Fort Wicked after a battle with Native Americans in 1865.

Lately, Gay has been swapping the plains for some of the state’s most rugged peaks. The Western Slope is next in the “Forgotten Colorado” series.

He’s on the move again — just as he likes it.

“I go home to sleep occasionally, but I have a hard time sitting still,” he says.

It’s a problem, he admits. “I know I need to chill.”

But what might he miss sitting on his couch? he wonders.

“I’m afraid I’m not going to be able to see or do or accomplish everything I’d like to before my time,” he says. He grows quiet. “To be honest, the death thing is still a factor.”

He’s been sitting down long enough now. He has a destination in mind, another “hidden gem” as he sees it, often missed by city dwellers in Colorado Springs. To the south is Fountain Creek Nature Center, where trails sprawl around woods and wetlands.

“I’m looking for tadpoles. I want to see if the frogs are doing their thing right now,” Gay says. “And the turtles, the turtles should be out soon. And the great blue herons.”

He’ll later post in the Colorado Fan Club page: photos of the creek running on, the cottonwoods turning green again, reflecting upon the water under a big sky aglow by the setting sun.