When you wake up each morning, do you ever have that feeling that something is missing? Or that your life to this point hasn’t been what you’d planned? My adult life started I’d say when I was twenty two, down on my luck and apathetic toward everyone and everything I’d ever known or cared about. I’d dropped out of college twice, couldn’t hold a job and didn’t really try to. A partner? Good luck with that buddy. I was a pathetic thing, something to be pitied and forgotten like a stray cat huddled against the outside of a building on a cold day, no one is going to bring it in but they also feel sorry for it. Left alone to fumble through the cold to freeze or survive. I felt like a stray, lost and alone. I had friends and family but I couldn’t find my way to what I truly needed. I couldn’t figure out why I was so unhappy.
Travel was something I came to later in my life than probably most. We didn’t take many vacations when I was a kid and it never even occurred to me that I could go wherever my heart desired whenever I wanted to until I hit my early twenties. A curtain was pulled back and my immediate world was turned upside down. A road trip around the western states opened my eyes, gave me that push I needed to reach ever outward towards the unknown frontiers I’d yet to have seen.
I figured out my life to a certain extent after that twenty second year, got a job and eventually used my new career path to move away from home. In that space of time I found a partner but it wasn’t meant to be and it ended the year I moved away. Spent the next year floating through life, evaluating what I wanted to do and where I wanted to go. I had a few partners none of them very serious, until finally almost two years on I found someone I knew I could spend the rest of my life with. Things were coming back together again, I’d found renewed focus at work and a plan to explore the country as well as plans for further down the line with my recently discovered soulmate. It felt like I’d found a key to the world.
I’d also decided to make 2021 the year of the road trip. After a COVID induced year of minimal exposure and hardly any travel in 2020 I felt the urge to explore at a pace I’d never tried before. My partner and I travelled to Royal Gorge then to Taos, New Mexico. I took a solo journey to the Grand Canyon, the first time I’d ever visited Arizona, on that trip I saw Monument Valley and Bryce Canyon for the first time before traveling through Capitol Reef on the way home. My partner and I ventured to the Badlands and the Black Hills of South Dakota, I was at ease, life was in balance and I could’ve jumped the moon I was so ecstatic and elated with it and what was to come. Everything seemed to be falling into place and every door seemed to be opening. That key to the world was firmly in hand.
But the minute you think this world has given you the key to it you find out the door you thought that key would open disappears and leaves you with another door where only loss and pain are found and you’re left holding the bag.
That door was opened on June 14th of 2021. A phone call on my way in to work from my Mother. The spells my Dad had been having, the dizziness, the confusion, it had come to a head the day before when he was delirious and could hardly walk without almost falling over. He had been having trouble sleeping for quite a while and was diagnosed with sleep apnea but after a few months of fitting his mask and machine he’d been getting better sleep for the first time in forever and lack of sleep was the excuse for the minor moments of delirium and they subsided a bit with his better sleep. But he still had moments where he was a little confused or disoriented. Some remedies were tried but to no real avail and when he almost fell over trying to walk down the hall to the bedroom my Mom got him loaded into the car and headed to the emergency room. A cat scan and an MRI soon followed and later a phone call with news.
Cancer, a tumor on the brain from which there was no real cure. Inoperable.
Part of me died that day. My Dad was my best friend throughout my entire life almost and one of the few people I ever really felt comfortable talking to about the goings on in my life. I don’t remember a lot from that week I had planned on sneaking back home for Father’s Day to surprise him but the surprise wasn’t appropriate anymore. I went back home, drank as heavily as I could to get through the weekend and returned trying to keep from coming unglued from reality.
My partner kept me grounded and sane through one of the most incredible bouts of sadness and pain I’d ever experienced. She was there for me every step of the way especially that first week, when we were a mere 3 months into our relationship. I knew then that I couldn’t be without her, no matter what else happens in my life she’s my rock. I’d never known what that felt like before then, I’d never had a partner that was truly all in like that. It drove me to push myself to do the things I needed to to feel whole again and to find calm and peace that summer. To experience life as it is meant to be.
Since I got my first real taste for it travel had been something that helped soothe my soul and ease my worries. Getting away from the day to day and discovering new and exciting places, adding more maps to my brain’s catalog. I’d already planned on seeing quite a few places in 2021 but now it was imperative. My Dad’s diagnosis kicked my ass emotionally and mentally and I needed to get away more than I’d ever needed it in my life but I also wanted to do my best to see as much as I could and to catalog it for my father to see before the inevitable happened. July featured a trip to Theodore Roosevelt National Park and a camping experience that featured a herd of Buffalo roaming through my campsite. Every step of the way I was documenting, taking photos, video, FaceTimes back to my Mom and Dad. Trying to share the experience with them and hoping my Dad would see things he’d never get to otherwise.
In August my partner and I loaded up the car and explored three of the four national parks in Colorado. Mesa Verde, Black Canyon of the Gunnison and Great Sand Dunes. Camping in the San Juan mountains and then on the Gunnison reservoir all the while traversing the southern half of the state and bringing the wonders of the centennial state back to my Dad.
At the end of that month I brought my partner back to meet my family for the first time and show her from whence I come. She met Dad and he couldn’t have been happier for us. I knew she was who I’d want to spend the rest of my life with and I wanted my Dad to meet her and for her to meet the man who made me who I am for better or worse. I know I’m not perfect but neither was he and he’d be the first to tell you that, but what matters is how you treat those you love and he instilled that in all of us kids so for my partner to get the opportunity to meet him before he was gone meant the world to me.
A week later I was once again heading west first to see some of the oldest living organisms on earth at Great Basin National Park, where a grove of Bristlecone Pines features trees that range from 2000-4000 years old. A walk through this grove was one of the most peaceful experiences of my life a calm serenity fell over me as I wandered amongst the ancient trees and breathed in their air. There’s something to being near organisms that old that makes everything we do feel hurried. I took my time in that grove and spent as much time as I could near the gnarled creatures that cling to the mountain top.
Further west still to Reno, then California, crossing the Golden Gate Bridge and venturing through the Redwoods. Towering giants surrounded me as I sauntered through Lady Bird Johnson Grove I could hear waves crash on the coast in the distance and birds chirping in the forest around me. Peace. I was looking for it, I’d found it.
A journey along the Oregon coast followed and a trip through the Willamette Valley and on to Washington before returning home by way of Idaho and Utah. A massive journey which took 11 days of driving to complete but one I wouldn’t change for the world. Every step of the way I was sending photos back to my Dad, calling when I could, FaceTiming when I had signal. I FaceTimed my brother and showed him the grove of redwoods. Showed my Mom and Dad Mt St Helens, the Oregon coast and hundreds of places in between. I wanted my Dad to see every bit of my trip, I had a feeling he’d not get to see these places on his own and it felt like an obligation to be his eyes. To record every single facet of every trip I took and to relay the information back. It had become so routine that any little trip I took by myself, with my partner or even with friends I would send back photos or FaceTime or call.
I was doing it for me but I couldn’t help but feel like I was also doing it for him giving him something to live through vicariously, one last mega road trip pieced together out of a multitude of trips I’d taken.
I started writing this at the beginning of 2022, in January about 5 months before my father succumbed to his disease. I knew he had precious little time left and I tried my damnedest to see him and talk to him as often as possible but it didn’t make the end any easier. When time was shortest I loaded up and headed for home, I had been torn, I’d seen him a solid week before and he’d been awake and there but also not there and he couldn’t get out of bed. I didn’t want to see him withered away in the last minutes of his life but I also couldn’t help but feel the pull to be there when the final hours were approaching. I’d headed out that Friday morning while he was still alive, he passed 3 hours into my 8 hour drive. I’d prepared for his passing from June 14th on, that first call, a diagnosis for which there was only one possible end and the only variable was time. How much time was left and how could he extend that amount.
A year was the initial estimate. In the end that was about what he got. I’ve travelled since his passing, heading to south Texas and New Mexico on a tour of national parks, Carlsbad Cavern, Guadalupe Mountains, Big Bend and White Sands. Then a solo journey to Rocky Mountain National Park and in every place I couldn’t help but feel his presence, I could almost hear his voice, joyful and excited to see the pictures and videos I was sending him and telling me he’d have to load the truck up and head on down or out to see the places in person when he got the chance.
I cried at mills lake in Rocky Mountain National Park halfway back on a ten mile hike when I stopped to take pictures and realized I couldn’t send them to him anymore. But I smiled at the end of it, knowing that even though he was gone he’d always carry on in me.
Whatever I’d been trying to find ten years ago, be it serenity, love, accomplishment I found it all in one year. Simultaneously the worst and best year of my life. It’s funny how that works out isn’t it, a year that should be so painful to look back on and remember but one so full of new beginnings and wonder.
Nebraska National Forest encompasses an area in northwestern Nebraska that features a set of ridges and rocky hills covered in Ponderosa Pines known as the Pine Ridge Escarpment. When people think of the Great Plains they think of flatland, farms and fields stretching on like an ocean of tall grass or wheat wafting in the breeze and they are right however hidden amongst these vast expanses of nothing are treasures too many of us either ignore or have no knowledge of. So when I woke up that morning after having driven up to near Chadron from Denver, driven through Chadron State park to the National Forest road and set up a tent for a few hours sleep I was floored by what I saw. The sun just starting to change the color of the sky from that deep navy to a brighter blue with bands of oranges and indigos, the moon still hung high in the east a crescent looking down at us, rocky cliffs one of which we were just uphill from, trees in clumps here and there, a fire years past having thinned the area, and a vast expanse to the north down below us. The subtle beauty of where we’d camped was what stuck with me, it reminded me of places I’d been to in Kansas that make up for a lack of grandiosity with a beauty that feels more exclusive. There’s something to knowing you’re taking in a spot that not many people are aware of and when or if you let people know about it they’ll say you’re full of it, but deep down you know that if given the chance for them to see what you saw they’d understand whole heartedly. It had been quite some time since I had been to the Badlands of South Dakota, almost 8 years in fact and though I’d been back to the black hills during the interim I’d longed to once again set foot in that alien landscape yet time and again couldn’t make it work or see a plan through so when the idea formed to travel to the Badlands, Black Hills and Devils Tower I jumped at the chance. Loaded up my car with our gear and headed off toward a state I very rarely ever thought of in my younger days as somewhere I’d intend to go. But over the last couple of years I’ve found in Nebraska quite a few places with that rare subtle beauty that is a nice contrast to the more grandiose. Which in this instance was forthcoming.
The wall of the Badlands from the south
I don’t know from just how far away we could glimpse the wall but it seemed like it took forever to get to and simultaneously no time at all, as if time stopped and jumped us forward without us even realizing it. That’s what seeing it does to you, you pay so little attention to where you are and what you’re doing and so much to what lies ahead. If you ever get the chance to drive to the Badlands do it from the south, as long as the Pine Ridge Reservation is open and allowing travellers through which despite the occasional COVID checkpoint it was, the drive up to the Badlands is astonishing. It feels like you can see it from forever away and as you get closer it looms larger and larger on the horizon. A wall of some strange rocks, of colors not meant to be jutting out of the prairie and shapes that boggle the mind with a vastness that is incomprehensible. An incredible alien landscape that feels as if it would be more at home 20000 leagues under the sea with ocean beasts swimming by, not the beasts of the plains roaming through grazing.
The view from Big Badlands Overlook
As you wind up the road carving through the center and climb atop the plateau above the formations there are moments you could forget entirely where you are and assume you’ve been transported to the surface of the moon surrounded by spires and peaks of red, gray, brown and tan and seemingly devoid of life. Eventually you exit these “canyons” and see the buffalo grass prairie that surrounds you reminding you that yes, you are in South Dakota in the middle of the plains and yes that’s a herd of bison roaming about in the distance. Far off to the south you can see the plains and grassland stretch on forever, look north and see the same it is only this stretch, this band east and west that seemingly roll on endlessly where you can see the beautiful alien formations. I’ve been to badlands in Wyoming, Utah, Colorado, Kansas and Montana but even the biggest of those don’t compare to the vastness and seeming endlessness of these. They are truly one of the wonders of North America, something I think everyone in their life should see before exiting stage right.
Mountains of this beautiful sedimentary rock, spires, hoodoos, monoliths everywhere you look and when it seemed as though you’d seen all of it more emerged into view, a staggering place full of wonder to say the least. With most of the National Parks I’ve been to there is a common theme, Time, it ticks away and little by little, bit by bit these places form, either through slow but massive upheaval, or the wind and rain etching away the shapes from a larger more blank canvas or even a river silt full and slowly grinding away rock until it has dug so deep that a map of geologic history billions of years in the making is exposed to view. Badlands National Park is an exquisite example of time slowly changing the landscape from the bottom of an ocean to a swamp and eventually prairie all the while exposing examples of what lies beneath.
The Yellow Mounds
Green grass flows off and up hills of yellow, reds purples and grays, when I say the colors are such that your mind can barely comprehend I mean it, they don’t belong in an ocean of green grass in the middle of the Great Plains at least not in the rocks that stick out from the soil and the cliffs, the dirt itself, perhaps it would be more appropriate if the colors were experienced through blooming flowers yet no this rock is what showcases it all. Trails lead to the tops of some of the hills, so you can be amongst the mustard colored mounds and see back to the spiny peaks.
Yellow Mounds
Eventually it was time to leave this place and we drove onward out of the park toward Wall, South Dakota and up into the wide open prairie that surrounds the park. But not before one final cruise through an ocean of sediment and spires. My previous time here I’d only stopped briefly and mainly drove through it which is a perfectly fine idea especially on a day as hot as it had reached back then touching triple digits if my mind doesn’t betray me. This time it was in the 70s and 80s during our trip so lingering was much easier to do. There are parks all over like this one that are perfectly usable as drive through National Parks, with only brief stops to look out from the occasional vista and there is nothing wrong with doing that, I feel as if it gives people an option they may not have otherwise and makes a place as ludicrously mind bending as this accessible. However getting out into the Badlands on the trails is an experience you’ll never forget.
The culprit stopping traffic just moments before this
On the way out we hit a spot of stopped traffic near one of the exits from the park and as I began to question why everyone was stopped I saw the culprit a large bull bison just standing in the road looking at the cars patiently waiting for him to finish crossing. A few minutes passed and he started meandering to the western side of the road and began grazing again. As we rolled past the ticket shack we saw the rest of the herd grazing over to the east within the boundary of the park, some laying in the grass some running around, majestic beasts of the plains living free and wild.
The Museum
We had made a pit-stop not long after arriving that morning and stopping at Big Badlands Overlook, we headed north out of the park toward I-90 crossed over the interstate and stopped at a point of interest just across the highway. The Minuteman Missle National Historic Site, a museum detailing the American nuclear weapons program and the buildup of the national arsenal across the vast openness of the Great Plains. Though not above a silo the site detailed where you could tour a control building and a silo itself however they were not conducting tours as such so we enjoyed a bit of air conditioning watched a chunk of the movie they were playing about the program and wandered through the museum itself before heading back down into and through the Badlands. Our next target was Rapid City followed quickly by the Black Hills and a few jewels found within. A story for another day.
The Grand Staircase as seen from the Le Fevre Overlook on the Kaibab Plateau
You can see it from a distance, across a vast open valley at the tip top of what they call The Grand Staircase, a set of plateaus that rises in stepped chunks from a valley floor that starts where the northern bit of the Kaibab plateau ends. Below 4800 feet rising all the way to where Bryce Canyon sits at right around 9000 feet in elevation. Simply staggering to behold, a rainbow of rock with each step being of a different era and color and sitting at one of the high points you can just make out the amphitheater at Yovimpa Point it’s shade of pink standing out just enough to see. Almost a hundred miles away from the Le Fevre Overlook and Rest Area on US-89A at the northern end of the Kaibab Plateau. I had no idea that I would be in for one of the most beautiful drives I’d ever taken when I woke up that morning on the edge of the Grand Canyon, that my trip would just continue to be more and more grandiose with each subsequent mile. I knew Bryce was beautiful, you can tell that from pictures, again without seeing the true scale of everything but you get enough to understand that seeing it will change you, but my oh my was I ill prepared for just how fantastic and fantastically beautiful the drive would be.
I don’t have many pictures after I left the Kaibab, I was too awestruck in that first hour after I left the overlook to have the wherewithal to pull out any sort of camera. Even the lowland valley which is still sitting around 4800 feet in elevation had a magnificence to it I couldn’t quite believe. Kanab, Utah looked like another Moab as I drove through it’s quaint downtown and then as the highway alternates between following rivers, first the Kanab Creek then the East Fork Virgin River, and being atop plateaus each new layer even more brilliant in color than it appeared from that great distance it was too much to focus on all things and try to remember to snap some photos. Stunning country, truly, a place I long to return to so as to explore even more.
An outcropping of pink hoodoos on the drive to Bryce Canyon. The pink rocks are made of limestone, silt some dolomite and mudstone.
As the drive climbed I began seeing the occasional outcropping full of pink Hoodoos, Bryce has the highest concentration of these beautifully odd rock formations within its amphitheaters but smaller ones can be found sprinkled throughout the area leading up to it. The higher parts of the drive were beautiful evergreen forests and alpine meadows, it is truly a spectacular change in scenery from the lowland plains to the rocky desert canyons then higher still into alpine meadows and forests. Diversity of surroundings is what makes Utah especially its southern half so miraculously gorgeous, there’s a joke in Kansas and pretty much everywhere else in the Midwest that if you don’t like the weather wait a minute it’ll change, or that it’s the only place you’ll see four seasons in a day. It’s true, the weather will and does change on a complete dime but the only place I’ve ever been that has a different climate every few miles is southern Utah.
Red sandstone stands high above the road through Red Canyon in Dixie National Forest
Eventually it came time to turn off of US-89A and onto state highway 12, the valley is bordered on the east by a wall of red rocks and as you turn onto Utah-12 you aim right at them. Dixie National Forest and more specifically Red Canyon, the highway slices right through the middle and boy I was again unprepared for what lay before me and again I was staggered. Hoodoos, rusty red dirt and rocks everywhere and beautiful evergreens. I didn’t even mind the slower traffic because it gave me time to take in the sights and actually capture them.
Hoodoos in Red Canyon
I feel like one could spend weeks traipsing across southern Utah and still not see everything there is to see, I wasn’t even aware of Dixie National Forest and Red Canyon when I set out to make this journey and yet here it was blowing my mind and building up the anticipation for what was to come. Campsite turnoffs left and right, at one point even a couple of small tunnels through red cliffs. It truly is the simple things in life that can make all the difference. I’ll confess to you reader I come from the flat(ish) land of Kansas and we didn’t do a lot of travelling when I was younger, I didn’t fly on an airplane until I was 25 and although since turning 23 (almost ten years ago now) I’ve been on a mission to travel and see more and more of the States let alone the world I still haven’t seen enough to keep me from being absolutely floored by things like this. So if I’m waxing too poetic about an area that’s simply a red sandstone canyon I apologize but I just can’t help myself.
One of two “tunnels” in Red Canyon
The first tunnel, yes there was quite a bit of traffic through this section, a small van that had been outfitted as an over landing vehicle was holding us up but in places like this how can you be upset that you get to spend more time enjoying such wonderful landscapes and views. I often feel we make too much of the bad in our experiences visiting National Parks and Monuments, “Too many people” “So crowded” “Just some rocks” “Too many bugs” “Not much to look at” it is almost like there is a movement to just rag on them and a race to be the first person to declare that each one is overrated or not worth it but that’s nonsense. Don’t take the opinion of someone’s tik tok video or tweet or Instagram story or god forbid the fucking google review. DON’T READ THE BAD GOOGLE REVIEWS. Unless of course the desk or wall in your immediate vicinity is in desperate need of a head shaped hole in the center of it. Other people’s experiences matter, don’t get me wrong I’m literally writing a blog about one such experience but the problem becomes parsing such information. Even me, I may be nothing like any of you, I may be insane in your eyes but I hope that through my words I can inspire you to ignore any detractors to any place and try to see the beauty within and to also ignore the crowds because even though yes they are there usually in full force, that’s good it means everyone is utilizing our public lands and with any luck that means we will strive to preserve more. I’ve seen a few of the Instagram Vs Reality Tik Tok videos of National Parks and I understand the premise that just because you see a picture of a view at say Horseshoe Bend and see this majestic stunning place and no people around doesn’t mean it isn’t jam packed but as I’ve said in previous blogs that is inconsequential. The whole idea is that you are in a place so beautiful you can blank out those around you and focus on the view, exactly what I did when I was at Horseshoe Bend on this very trip, I ignored the crowd and focused on the absolutely massive cliff I was on and the beautiful bend in the river. You can also get to the park early in the morning or later in the evening which usually end up being the best times anyway because the lighting is perfect. Anyway end of rant, sorry but I just feel like it needed to be said.
These clouds were a sign of things to come
As you climb out of Red Canyon you come into a wide open valley floor still at elevation, somewhere just below 8000 feet, surrounded by mountain ridges north, south, east, and west. In the distance to my northeast were a set of clouds slowly building, I could see rain pouring from one of them which would be a sort of prelude to what was about to happen a bit further into my journey that day. The road eventually turned into a mass of roadwork, a roundabout being built where there had just been a stoplight and now gravel where asphalt would someday lay. I came into the town of Bryce, which lies directly north and adjacent to the park, I didn’t stop. A surge of adrenaline hit and I had to control myself to keep from speeding as I approached the entrance. The line to get in was maybe 6 cars deep across three ticket shacks so it took almost no time to get through even at 10 in the morning. The visitor center was pretty full but not annoyingly so, parking was still available and the crowd inside wasn’t to hard to navigate. I purchased some typical souvenirs, wandered through the exhibit adjacent to the gift shop then made my way back to my car having settled on my destination. Rainbow Point.
The view from Rainbow Point
I didn’t have enough time, I needed more, I should’ve found a place to stay here somewhere to give myself an extra day to explore, see more of what this beautiful place has to offer. Utah has 5 National Parks after this trip I had been to my third and fourth of them. My first time in Utah was Moab last summer and Arches, beautiful, stunning we didn’t get to see all of it but we saw our fair share. Then this April Canyonlands, the Island in the Sky district floored me and a return to Arches solidified my view of it as an astonishing place. I’d wondered after seeing Canyonlands just how any of the other parks in Utah could beat it but then I looked out across Bryce Canyon from Rainbow Point and I immediately knew.
Yovimpa point amid rain and mist
Time ticked by and I wandered around the point eventually heading toward Yovimpa the amphitheater on Rainbow Point that looks south toward the Kaibab plateau and as I crested the hill and came upon the lookout point the ominous clouds that had been creeping ever closer decided it was time to start watering the forest. Rain came down, wind picked up and I even saw some flurries, it made for a very interesting drive back down but also simply spectacular scenery.
Flurries dropping from the storm above
Along the route to Rainbow Point and back were pull outs for scenic view points which combined with the rain made the drive back into a sort of marathon scavenger hunt. Drive, drive, drive oh quick pull off!! Steady, wait for the rain to slow a bit, okay run. Out of the car up to the edge or up the path to the view point, take in the view as long as you could stand, take a picture and move on to the next one.
Looking back toward Rainbow Point
Even with the hectic nature of my drive back down the spine of Bryce Canyon the views were so spectacular and stunning that it hardly mattered. Eventually I came to the Bryce Natural Bridge a beautiful natural arch that looks as if a gigantic drill bored a near perfect circle through a cliff with its perfectly round top, an astonishing thing to behold and peer through.
Natural Bridge
I finally took in the last of this marvellous place that time allowed before I drove north, stopping for some snacks and gas then heading out of Bryce and into John’s Valley eventually driving the scenic route 14 through Capital Reef National Park. Another beautiful set of places full of wondrous views. Alas, a tale for another time.
This was a trip of “nothing prepares you for the majesty of (insert place)”. From Horseshoe Bend to the Vermillion Cliffs to the Kaibab Plateau and the Grand Canyon itself it seemed like every turn in the road brought me to yet another mesmerizing view in an astonishing landscape. There is something absolutely hypnotic about the American southwest that has rooted itself deep in my soul, a place seemingly so barren and lifeless and yet full of life and great expanses, incredible colors, I feel like when most people think of the desert they think of brown or tan but there are so many colors of desert it hurts my head just contemplating it again. I could prattle on with superlative after superlative but I truly feel like to really understand this part of the world you have to visit. I implore you.
I stopped for a short bit after horseshoe bend to observe a wide open expanse that had appeared before me as the road started down off of a plateau. To the north I could make out the Vermilion Cliffs and off to the west and south a bit the Kaibab Plateau and between it and I, the Colorado River carving its way through Marble Canyon. An alien world, sand and rock but across the valley I could see the trees atop the Kaibab, a dark conglomeration not quite green but definitely not red, brown tan or grey of the rocks. The road took me down into this valley and then across the Colorado and to the base of the Vermilion cliffs, around them and finally across the last bit of expanse before climbing up the side of and onto the Kaibab Plateau where the brown and red gave way to tan and yellow with trees and shrubs clumped here and there and finally up onto a forested wonderland.
Kaibab National Forest
A winding road through a beautiful thick forest gives way to a carpet of young Aspen trees and old charred remains, a former burn slowly recovering, a stark reminder that this is still the southwest and even though I was surrounded by green the lack of rain and snowfall makes it very susceptible to fires. I’ve decided to take a break from campfires anywhere that isn’t an absolute humid jungle almost, I’ve seen too many wildfires even in my short time in the west to let myself risk in even the slightest way contributing to one. I have a single burner camp stove that can run on butane or propane and I plan to use that and that alone unless fire danger is completely zero. I hope you all think similarly in regards to campfires but especially in the delicate climates where droughts have long taken hold. After a while the trees once again gave way to a verdant meadow and up ahead I could glimpse the entrance to the North Rim. My giddiness started to bubble up and over as I sat in line steadily moving toward the pay station. A flash of my park pass “Yes I would like a map and a brochure”. I always love the small interaction with the park ranger, so full of passion and happiness. Onward I go into thicker forest and into a cut that almost felt like a gorge, tall tree cover from the hills on either side of the road but little by little I caught glimpses. Peaking through the trees here and there, by picnic spots and scenic viewpoints but I wouldn’t stop to look I was on a mission to Bright Angel Point and finally I reached the parking lot for the Visitor Center. I lucked out and it only took two laps to find a place to park. Surprisingly though the lot was full to the brim it didn’t feel that crowded and once I had been through the gift shop and wandered out to the edge then over to the trail there might as well have been no one else in the world. I was enthralled by my view.
The view from Bright Angel Point
A deep gash, an expanse seemingly never ending, slight cloud cover and a sky that was a bit hazy added to the mystique. The Grand Canyon, I’ve heard multiple places referenced as similar to it, but no. Nothing can compare to its grandeur, it’s stunning magnificence. I spent some time staring at it from Bright Angel Point, a busy spot but again I hardly noticed the people around me the spell this place had cast upon me was too great. After a time I headed back to my car, not quite sure what to do next but as I walked I overheard a ranger discuss the drive to Cape Royal as an idea to explore if someone had time and so I decided since I had nothing to do that night other than find a spot to camp I’d head North and then East to catch a glimpse of Cape Royal. It didn’t disappoint.
Angel’s Window
Angel’s Window was the first thing I saw after starting down the trail, a gorgeous squared off natural arch of yellow and gold sandstone. Through it I caught a glimpse of the river.
View from Cape Royal
Then came the view from the cape itself and it was simply marvellous. People complain about places like this, that everything looks the same or it’s just a big hole but the subtleties they miss are what makes places like this (even though there really isn’t anything specifically like this) special. You’re staring at time. Looking into the past, each inch down is another year back, rocks that have been eroded for millennia, nay eons, are laid bare at the bottom. Over a mile down to the river in elevation. It’s no wonder Spanish conquistadors thought this was the end of the world and some native tribes believed this is where man first emerged from the underworld. I lingered here for quite some time, just staring out into the canyon and across it taking in the view under the bright Arizona sun. Finally I headed back to my car and wound my way back out of the park and into the National Forest, taking a right and heading east to the edge of the plateau to camp. I didn’t think the views could get any better but as with most of this trip every time I thought I had seen the best I could see I found out how wrong I was.
View of rain in the canyon just south of my campsite
I parked my car and camped at a trailhead for a remarkable looking trail called the Saddle Mountain Overlook, at the edge of the canyon. Just a few hundred yards from this breathtaking view, as the sun began to get lower in the sky a small storm blew through and made for an unforgettable scene of rain coming down into a canyon being overtaken by shadow. The day had been long and sleep the night before nonexistent so I made my bed and turned in just after 7 that evening quickly finding a peaceful rest. Only waking every few hours to add another layer of bedding, but sleeping at 8400 or so feet in elevation will do that. In the morning I woke early to catch the sunrise and once again found myself speechless. I sat watching it and staring out into the canyon again as the suns beams slowly crept into its nooks and crannies.
I’ll not soon forget this place and I long to go back. Do yourself a favor and see it at least once in your lifetime. You may find it’s even more wondrous than you can imagine.
The moon wasn’t full but it was god damned bright when my alarm went off at just after 4 in the morning. A drive to Moab the previous night and a bit south of there towards the Needles district of Canyonlands National Park found us sleeping in our cars on the side of a sandy road. BLM land means you can camp just about anywhere within reason so we drove down the road a ways and then found a nice place to park, rearranged our cars to get them ready for sleeping in and then we each drank a beer and chatted. A bit longer than we probably should have but it was a long weekend and he and I were going separate ways in the morning. We shared a friendly embrace and said our goodbyes at just shy of 1 in the morning under a bright beautiful moon and then crawled into our cars and went to bed. The moon was so bright I thought I’d have trouble sleeping but despite the night light I slept like a log. So when my alarm blared at a bit after 4 and I looked outside I thought I’d overslept. My goal was Monument Valley by sunrise and I’d be damned if I was gonna miss that but the moon had me fooled a bit, bright as it was. There is something spectacular about the desert under moonlight especially as the sun begins to rise, every time I go I am still awestruck by its subtle beauty.
Chasing the dawn
Two hours was the estimate to get to Monument Valley and sun up was at just after 6 so I rearranged my car a bit hastily and got around, then rolled out at 4:30 a bit behind but energized by the task at hand. As I’ve grown older doing crazy shit like this seems harder to muster the energy for sometimes, especially after only sleeping three hours but I couldn’t listen to that stupid voice in my head this time, I told it to shut the hell up and I rolled on down the road as fast as I could to make the valley by dawn. Pictures and video don’t really do justice for anything the American Southwest has to offer, you can’t really capture the magnitude of its beauty on an iPhone or even a dslr. You have to go, experience it on your own, I implore you. The breadth of the expanses, the monoliths, those are that which you see in pictures but what you don’t grasp mainly because they occur during the journey to and fro are the colors. I swear there were at least 5 different colored deserts I drove through. Red, orange, brown, white, grey it was as if I had been deposited in some teleportation machine and each bend in the road zapped me to a different far flung world.
Monument Valley as dawn arrives
I have read about these places all my life, I’ve been infatuated with the southwest long before I ever set foot in it but nothing prepared me for the majesty of everything. The end goal of this trip was the North Rim of the Grand Canyon but that story will come later. This is about the scene wherein I rounded a bend and saw the purple and pink sky behind gigantic monoliths of Navajo Sandstone and shed a few tears as I pulled up to a spot to enjoy the morning. Its beauty overcame me and my eyes moistened.
Monument Valley at dawn with a full moon in view
I sat there and made breakfast on a little camping table, poured a mug of fresh made black gold and took in the view. Coffee never tasted so good.
As it sits, today is the third day in May, 2021. No special holiday commemorates today, nothing but a number on a calendar, nothing noteworthy about today just a rainy Monday in spring and yet I feel like this will be a Monday worth remembering. A day that will register in my mind as the spark that lit the tinder, the cog that spun the engine over and fired it up, the first domino to fall and so on and so forth. Today I have decided that, especially considering some things in retrospect, this will be the year of the National Park. The year of public monuments and public land, the year of getting out there and visiting places I feel we as a country and people take for granted. Everyone loves to travel, see the world go backpacking and what not but I feel like so many people especially of my generation see the grandiose vacations of Instagram influencers and decide; “Hey I want that! I’m going to move to Bali!” Or “I need desperately to bike pack through Kyrgyzstan!” We don’t even try to visit the wealth of beauty in our own back yards. So I am declaring this the year of the National Park (Monument, Grassland, Forest etc)
Rio Grande Gorge Bridge at Rio Grande Del Norte National Monument
I’ve already begun the process, I went to Rocky Mountain National Park for my birthday, then a few weeks back visited the Rio Grande Gorge Bridge in Taos, New Mexico in the Rio Grande Del Norte National Monument, this past weekend I went to Canyonlands National Park and Arches National Park before visiting Colorado National Monument. This is the year. No more saying well maybe next year it’s time to get out there and go visit our public lands. If the pandemic has taught me one thing it’s to not take for granted going outside and enjoying the sights and sounds. So now that I’m vaccinated and things are opening up I’m going to get out there and get after it. It’s our land after all, I know that seems like an old cliché but it is literally owned by the people of the United States. Our taxes pay for its maintenance, our votes insure the people in charge care for it. If we don’t go out and use it, go out and see it we will inevitably let it fall by the wayside.
View from the Island in the Sky in Canyonlands National Park
Our National Parks are always fantastic places full of beauty and grandeur and it’s all accessible. Some people may not find that part appealing, they may feel like too many people is distracting but here’s the thing, it’s not about how many people are around you it’s about how you can center yourself and focus on the now. Live in the moment and enjoy the views it doesn’t matter if there are ten people or ten thousand people you can tune them out, it just takes a little effort and you’re suddenly sitting there staring off at the majestic vista or incredible rock formation or watching the column of water and steam spew forth, all by your lonesome. These places are incredible, let their energy flow into you and push out the negative. As I sat perched on a cliff staring off at the deepest widest canyon I’ve ever seen in my life (Grand Canyon is next on the list) I realized I didn’t care how many people were around or what they were doing.
That’s me at the Delicate Arch, Arches National Park
I didn’t even care how many people were on the trail to the Delicate Arch, or how many people sat there staring as we did. Nor did I care that there was a man in the photo taken of me in the archway. That massive rock arch was incredible, awe inspiring, mind bending. I’ve seen a million pictures and still I had no idea it was as big as it was or as stunning. Everything about that hike was incredible too, a beautiful sandstone desert with gorgeous snow capped peaks in the distance and wonderful rock formations all around. It was easy to be at peace even as the balls of my feet were bubbling up from wearing flip flops.
Independence Monument in Colorado National Monument
And then there was Colorado National Monument, how to describe this exquisite majestic place, a sandstone canyon of red and brown, trees and scrubs it was almost reminiscent of Sedona, Arizona. Gigantic rock formations, from the coke ovens (big dome like monoliths all in a row) to Independence Monument a 450 foot tall monolith in the middle of three sandstone peninsulas imposing I’m sure from down below but from rim rock drive, the road through the canyon up above, it was incredible. It just kept going too, the road takes you on a 23 mile drive above an absolutely stunning canyon with views for miles not only down in but also out to the western slope and Grand Mesa.
The coke ovens in Colorado National Monument
So here’s my plan, I am putting it in writing so I can be held accountable, I aim to hit as many pieces of public land and parks as possible this year. At the end of this month over Memorial Day weekend I will be traveling to the Grand Canyon intent on seeing the north rim as well as Monument Valley on the way down, and Bryce Canyon and potentially even Capitol Reef on the way back. Then in June I plan on visiting Badlands National Park, Wind Cave National Park, Mount Rushmore National Memorial and Devils Tower National Monument, Mesa Verde National Park and Black Canyon of the Gunnison National Park. In July I’m going to Theodore Roosevelt National Park, then in September I’m hitting the road and heading west on a mission to see places I’ve never been and some I have but in my sights are Great Basin National Park, Muir Woods National Monument, Redwood National Park, Mt St Helens National Volcanic Monument, Mt Rainier National Park, Glacier National Park, Yellowstone National Park and Grand Teton National Park. I will be visiting any and every state park, national forest and piece of public land I can on the way. This is a trip that will quite possibly fundamentally change me as a person, seeing so much and exploring like that could unlock a hidden piece of my psyche as of yet untapped that could leave me driven insane from wanting more. I could be ruined from a need to never settle in any place. Stuck roaming the country taking in the sights.
A morning cup of joe, black liquid gold, helps us all feel up to snuff. We know where we are headed but we don’t know what the journey will entail, nor are we aware of the how the trip will end. To drive five hours to a place you’ve never been before and one you plan on hiking up into, to then stay two nights, it seemed daunting enough on the surface but what followed was as simple as pick a place, go to that place, live in that place, search for a small piece of pre-modern life. Home in the mountains with no one around and nothing to do but think and absorb the world around you. As Henry David Thoreau put it so eloquently In wildness is the preservation of the world. Or perhaps even more fitting for this journey are the words of John Muir, The mountains are calling and I must go.
Trail ready… clearly.
Off we went, to destinations known but details unknown. I must admit my knowledge of the trail and place we were aimed toward was virtually nonexistent other than a few bits of anecdotal descriptions of the mountain range and some videos none of which were of the trail we’d finally settled on the night before. From our home in Denver to the trail just south of Ouray, Colorado was two hundred and ninety eight miles and just over five hours. From the northeast part of the state to the southwest, through high country plains surrounded by mountains, across a mighty swath of scrub desert alongside a twenty mile reservoir through a fertile desert river valley green in the center but brown and tan on the sides before climbing up into one of the most staggering rugged looking mountain ranges I’d ever seen. As we made our down we passed by the mountain we’d claimed the weekend before, Mt. Shavano. It is always surreal to drive past a behemoth towering above the valley you are in and know that you have conquered it, that you can look upon it’s rugged complexion and know exactly where it was you took a break or where you had that moment of clarity that you and the mountain were now one.
An upward climb out of the Arkansas River Valley on the road leading to Monarch Pass is one of my favorite drives in the state, beautiful views of the Sawatch range and of the valleys on either side of it. The pass is steep on either side of its eleven thousand foot summit and the way down on the western side shows a beautiful carpet of green, evergreens cover the area all the way down to the rolling green hills and meadows of the first part of the Gunnison River Valley, in the distance you can see the bottom of the Elk range and you can get a tiny glimpse of the San Juans if the sky is clear enough.
The farther west we went the more arid the climate became creating a wonderful juxtaposition between the valley floor, at first with a green marshland but what would eventually turn into a massive reservoir some twenty miles long. Cliffs to the north of us and in the distance small glimpses of the Elk range still coated in a white frosty blanket. Snow won’t fully disappear from these peaks until probably August. We crossed over the reservoir to the south rim and wound our way toward the western edge, the man made dam seemed small from this side but as the road crested a hill you could glimpse just how deep the canyon on the other side of it was, it’s river running steadily some six hundred feet below.
The road turned south and we began to climb out of the river valley and up through a steep walled canyon, the scrub desert gave way to rocky cliffs and evergreens. Cresting the top of a small mesa we could finally glimpse one of the northern most sections of the range we were headed toward, jagged snow capped peaks lay to our south giving us an idea of the rugged terrain which would be our home for the weekend. A strange dichotomy to the valley we now found ourselves in, giant rocky mesas surrounded by scrub desert lay to our north while meadows of rolling green hills that ran up to rocky snow capped peaks lay to our south, lush verdant grasses gently wafting in the breeze as cows grazed, slowly meandering from place to place, while we sat on a black ribbon of asphalt carving our way west across the valley floor. A wall topped with boulders sat to our right, towering above the road, covered in hundreds of shades of green, from burnt almost brown green to bright neon, the small bushes and trees not yet ready to bloom, dormant, yet to reveal their brilliant chartreuse. As we reached Cimarron the road started its slow meander down out of the valley and toward a tan desert stretching out as far as the eye could see. In the distance was the town of Montrose and to our north was Grand Mesa, a flat topped mountain that seemed to stretch on forever. As we looked south we could finally see the full northern rim of the San Juans, craggy and capped in snow, a wall of sharp peaks standing high above the hills below. They called to me, to us all, we needed to be there now. It was no longer a fanciful journey of random choices and spur of the moment ideas, in that moment with that view it became so much more, it was as if we were destined to explore these mountains.
Through Montrose and finally we turned south heading directly toward the snowy crags that called to us. The jagged snow speckled peaks grew larger in our windshield as we rolled along the arrow straight black top, scrub desert sprinkled with trees and farms. An ironic place, dry and arid yet fertile, a place to grow whatever you want smack in the middle of harsh desert. Hop farms stretched along the road to our left, green grass to our right, horses and cows grazed. Out of the scrub desert and into a brilliant emerald valley which stretched out in front of us up toward the rugged peaks covered in snow and rock. Red streaks broke up the green where rocky cliffs disallowed growth. A million dollar highway indeed. Views like this, you could charge any amount of money and it’d be worth it.
Ouray is referred to as the Switzerland of America and my companions who knew of the beauty of the Swiss alps and the quaint towns which line their verdant valleys quickly agreed with that assessment. Our destination lay just south of town, the highway began to climb in a series of switchbacks and the view to the north was breathtaking. Red rocks covered in dark green pines, spruce and firs, a waterfall on a tall cliff to the east falling almost in slow motion and powered by the spring run off. Nestled against the mountain on the other side of a perfectly carved tunnel was the parking lot for our trailhead. Far above the valley floor but far below the gnarly spires and peaks above. We’d reached our destination but the journey hadn’t yet begun.
We crossed the road in front of the tunnel to reach the trailhead and began to climb back toward where we had parked. The trail zigzags up the western side of the tunnel and then crosses directly over it before turning into large switchbacks at first surrounded by trees and consisting of dirt and gravel paths but giving way to exposed hillside to the west and large rocky slabs to the east as the trail turns to a path covered entirely in millions of pieces of what looked like slate but were a mixture of grey, orange and red clearly containing some form of iron or other metallic compound that was oxidizing, broken off the slabs and which cracked and broke underfoot as if we were walking on shards of dull glass with an almost metallic crunch coming from each step. We rose up the side of this mountain steep and fast, climbing from the trailhead perched around eighty-five hundred feet to the end of the switchbacks high above the canyon below at a height of ninety-six hundred feet almost a thousand feet above the raging runoff driven torrent below.
Spring runoff has carved steep gullies all throughout the canyon around us and the water was raging, pummeling it’s way down the face of cliffs and through narrow troughs meeting the main river before cascading down over more cliffs as it wound its way through valleys and canyons farther down stream. It was a land of waterfalls, of steep slab walls, thousand foot drops and trees clinging to the sides of boulders, the margins for error seemed minimal on a trail not much wider than my shoulders in spots. A constant roar was the soundtrack through this scarped gorge of grey slab walls chunks of which could be seen in the form of great boulders littering the stream below. After the switchbacks the trail almost turned into a narrow goat path carved into the cliffs, not so narrow as to spark great fear from exposure but narrow enough to remind you of how high up you are and how far of a fall it would be. Every so often the river below would jump in elevation and get closer to us than it had been, as far down as maybe a thousand feet as close in spots as a hundred or so, large waterfalls showered over the lower reaches in these instances. Water is a mighty force, such power and skill but also patience to carve these gullies and canyons so deep. Onward we trudged up and up and up winding around the northern wall of the gorge, we came across a few hikers enjoying a break and a breathtaking view before we finally made it to a few old and decrepit structures, old out buildings and derelict parts of machinery from the mines this trail was originally built for. At the biggest of these sat an older gentleman with three border collies all friendly beasts glad to see other hikers and excited to follow us on up the trail before their owner whistled at them to come back. Just about a half mile further we reached the entrance to the old mine.
We stopped for a bit and observed the dark, dank hole in the mountain side. I stared into it, this pitch black eye of oblivion, I could not see more than maybe six feet inside it and when one of my companions hollered into it you could not hear an echo. It absorbed all light and sound and if I told you I would not enter that jet black hole for less than a million dollars I’d be lying. It would take far more than that for me to even entertain the idea. Further up the trail a bit we came to a small section maybe a span of twenty or so feet that had been cleared of its washout protection by a rather large boulder at some point in the recent past. Where the inch thick pieces of steel rebar had once held some form of retaining wall was now just dirt and rocks sloping down to the creek now merely thirty or so feet below, the lengths of rebar bent over beyond ninety degrees and as I traced the path with my eyes down to the water I saw the culprit sat dead center in the stream a boulder the size of a tiny home laying up against another boulder slightly smaller in size. My companions crossed the span, the first of them with his gear the second left his bag with me and the two of them carved some foot holds to make the traverse easier for passerby. I did not help in this task, my fear of heights having paralyzed me about halfway across it just moments earlier, I took the time to regain my courage and refocus my mind. Their efforts to somewhat rebuild the trail had worked marvelously and it became much easier to cross. We carried on back on well maintained trail until finally we came across a spur of the creek which we would have to ford. It wasn’t a very wide stream nor very deep but where the trail seemed to cross would not work so we meandered up its shores for a bit before finding a pair of downed logs spanning a small gap. We crossed mostly without incident and made our way back to and up the trail. We carried on a ways before spotting the perfect campsite, a little recess down below the trail next to a large arrowhead shaped boulder a few hundred feet from the main creek. A fire ring down hill from the camp gave us the idea that the area had been used before and might make a great base camp for the weekend. We kept it in mind but continued on up the trail into a beautiful green meadow at the base of a steep grass covered hill, at the far end was a large stand of aspen trees their leaves finally starting to bloom in a light green. Beneath them were a few small boulders where we decided to sit down for lunch and to discuss where to set up camp. We carried on up the trail for a bit before deciding that our first idea for camp was probably best which my aching feet would’ve definitely agreed with and we made our way back down to the large boulder near the river.
As one of us started setting up his tent the other two of us used the opportunity to test the paths up the boulder, it had been too long since I had put my hands to holds in hopes of climbing something and I hadn’t ever really done it out in the wild so I was eager to test the large house sized rock that sat right next to where we would pop our tents. A five sided pyramid of rough lichen covered stone, one side looked very much like an arrowhead the other sides less so, it featured routes in varying degrees of difficulty on all sides and provided a nice activity to wind down with after the long hike. After the first of us popped his tent I began stetting mine up, we tried setting them as close to each other as possible so as to insulate ourselves from any wind we would endure. With the housing part of camp set up we climbed the arrowhead again with my two compatriots both reaching the top from opposite sides whilst I stood below watching.
As the sun started dipping lower we set about getting a fire going, firewood had been left in neat bundles just across from the stone fire ring and it proved decent enough. Sat around the fire we enjoyed our dinner for the evening, for me a rehydrated meal of red beans and rice paired nicely with a few handfuls of cashews and a few pieces of beef jerky, washed down with a German style Pilsner from Upslope Brewing, it may as well have been a king’s feast. Smoke billowed out from our small encampment shrouded in trees wafting slowly up and out over the raging spring torrent to the south and up to the high peaks above us. Compatriots, companions, brothers in arms, we sat around the campfire that night enjoying the company of each other and the cold crispness of our aluminum clad refreshment. A few swills of tequila from a flask passed around the circle and tales of life, love, laughs and all the in between were tossed back and forth. In the amber glow of the flames we explored our own histories, lamented our failures but championed our successes, we grew as we found the common ground between our lives as humans. I enjoyed a cigar as the twilight grew darker still and the temperatures started to dip lower and lower. We decided it was probably best to make our way to the tents for the night, so we grabbed our food and trash, stuffed it all in our dry bags and headed up to the aspens at the far side of the meadow to string them up away from whatever curious creatures may happen through that night.
Our home
I have yet to experience a normal sleep while camping, I seem to either be comfortable but too aware of the sounds around me or dead to the noises but sleeping on sharp stones, however with the glacial waters bullying their way down the valley and roaring just to our south I found it incredibly easy to drift off, although I woke up to turn this way or that fairly often, I found no trouble in drifting back to dreamland shortly thereafter.
I awoke for good shortly after seven that morning and after one of my companions had finished retrieving our dry bags and completing his morning maneuvers we made breakfast and coffee. My breakfast was a couple of pop tarts and some beef jerky, my coffee was brewed with glacial runoff from the stream, boiled so as to kill any foreign objects and although my brew wasn’t the best I’ve done the water with which I had brewed it gave it such a crystal clear taste, if we’d have had to spend several days in this lush forest I doubt we’d have needed any other drink. After breakfast we gathered a small amount of snacks and gear before heading up trail to try and summit one of the thirteen thousand foot peaks at the end of it. After the meadow the trail started climbing again from our campsite which stood at just over ten thousand feet in elevation we rose to another derelict mine encampment perched at eleven thousand feet. We observed the rusted chunks of metal that used to be mining equipment and the semi-collapsed old bunk house. It was hard to date the structure but a few ceramic isolators attached to the outside indicated that it may have had electricity or at least perhaps a telegraph line at some point.
There were still a few bunks left inside as well as a wood stove, meager housing for heartier souls than I can even imagine. I long to see places like this, relics of a bygone age, to peer backwards in time to when we really could be disconnected. I don’t long for isolation, but I like to remind myself that people lived in an age where being able to contact each other at a moment’s notice wasn’t a thing to be taken for granted. When warmth and shelter, food and drink weren’t so readily available. I’m sure the people that worked and lived here weren’t treated as kings and I’m sure they are forgotten in the annals of history, their names, faces gone away, their memories buried over the past hundred and fifty years like pebbles carried down stream and out to sea. Gold, silver, lead and various other precious metals and minerals were dug out from under the peaks that topped this steep gorge and I’m sure the folk that dug it out rarely saw the majority of the fortunes.
A cave just below the trees on this hill to our south east gave us brief pause.
Higher up and farther down the trail the once steep and narrow gulch widened and turned into a high valley, the river being fed from several tributaries running down from the large swathes of snow on the faces of peaks above us. We reached a point where the trail crossed the stream again only this time there was no real way to cross and we didn’t linger on the idea of attempting to ford what were surely waters of a dangerously low temperature and of indiscernible depth. So we made our way up the hillside following game trails through the dormant meadows and alpine forests. Marshy at times but mostly dried out from the sun we climbed higher and higher until we reached a point somewhere between twelve thousand and thirteen thousand feet where we decided it would make no sense to continue upward as the game trails disappeared in a boulder field. We sat down and enjoyed a midday snack perched high above the valley, to our east we could see Engineer Pass carved across the face of a snow speckled peak, that is where our trail was to end were it not for the lack of river crossing and the thick blanket of snow that had yet to thaw. Back down we headed, down the route we had travelled up, until we reached the trail by the river once again and headed back to camp.
A few patches of wildflowers were blooming in the alpine zone
I couldn’t have imagined a more perfect time to hike in this staggeringly beautiful place, waterfalls were found all over and even though the upper regions had yet to shed their winter brown for their summer green it was a place abound with life. Birds singing their songs of love, small woodland creatures scurrying beneath the trees foraging for nuts and berries, we even spied a few mule deer grazing high up the slope above the meadow near our camp. Later that evening we saw a young Elk as well grazing at the feet of the aspens.
We slowly wound our way back down into the canyon, past the decaying mine remnants, through stands of firs, pine and spruce, of aspens with their pale almost cream colored bark, brown alpine grasses turned to green as we reached lower elevations, crossing small streams and tributaries feeding the larger torrent down below. By now my feet had seen about ten miles of rough uneven terrain and even though my new boots were mostly comfortable they weren’t quite broken in and my heels had developed half dollar sized blisters where the stiff heel structure had rubbed them raw. We made it back to camp and I immediately took off my boots and socks to let them breath a bit. While my friends explored the area around and continued to find new routes up the arrowhead I laid down in my tent and read one of the two books I had brought. Into The Wild by John Krakauer, a very interesting true story about a man named Chris McCandless who disappeared into the Alaskan wilderness in the early nineties after bumming across the country searching for a life beyond the consumerism and materialism that had jaded him. He tragically perished pursuing a self sustained life in the last frontier.
That afternoon brought snow showers, small flakes but coming down relatively heavy, fear began to creep into my mind. I wondered aloud if perhaps the snow coming down was going to present problems returning to civilization but my companions, although cognizant of the possibility, quickly posited the idea that the snow was light and would most likely blow through fast enough that nothing would stick. I remained skeptical but their optimism proved true and shortly after four in the afternoon the clouds gave way to blue skies and the sun once again warmed our bodies through the gaps in the trees. We enjoyed each other’s company standing and sitting around the fire for quite some time taking in as much of this disconnected life as we could on what was our last night in the wilderness. Dinner that night was a can of baked beans and the last of my cashews, my compatriots were glad they didn’t have to share a tent with me after the copious amount of beans I had ingested, I joked that I was trying to recreate that infamous scene from Blazing Saddles. Laughter filled the gorge and our spirits were high as the sun dipped ever lower bathing the campsite in twilight. Once again we grabbed our food and trash and walked it up to the meadow and the aspens, there high on the hill we glimpsed a young elk with no antlers but dark almost reddish brown in the twilight, it quickly galloped off into the trees as we strung the bags high off the ground. We returned to camp and lay down to sleep one last time. The night was cold and my sleep was far from perfect but as I drifted in and out dreamland I had a few moments to reflect on the past two days. Although I longed for my warm, soft bed, thought often of the soft embrace of a lover, I found inside my mind there was a calm, that would I have needed to stay in that wilderness it would have been no worry.
Morning came and we quickly put up camp, retrieved our dry bags and made sure as to leave as little evidence anyone had been there as we could and made our way back down the trail. Chipper was the mood that morning as we hiked back down the gorge the sun bathing the peaks ahead of us but not yet reaching our backs. The washout wasn’t as daunting of a span as it had been two days prior and the views on the way back down were somehow even more grandiose. We made it back to the car in what felt like no time at all and my companions made coffee as I sat in the passenger seat absorbing the fresh morning air and conversing with them. Back in cell service I was reconnected to the world, texts were sent, images posted to social media, back in the modern world. We loaded up the car and made our way back down, first into Ouray then on down into the lush valley beyond, stopping at a gas station for a restroom break and so I could change into clean clothes. My blisters had gotten bigger and I did my best to clean and cover them before putting on my more comfortable shoes and socks and settling in for a beautiful drive first up to the far side of the western slope to meet I70 in Grand Junction then back east across Colorado. I’d never been past Copper Mountain on I70 so all of this terrain was new to me. Beautiful cliffs on the backside of the Grand Mesa, a flat topped desert plateau north of town in Grand Junction, the mighty Colorado river rushing west toward the Pacific, stunning Glenwood Canyon with its high flat topped escarpments, through Vail Pass who’s highest reaches had been recently dusted with snow all the way back home.
Glenwood Canyon
I am always reminded of how minuscule we are in the grand scheme of things whenever I go on these minor expeditions. The mines that once dug out untold riches were left broken and scattered by the elements, in only a hundred and fifty years time they had mostly disappeared. How long would it take for the scars of the land to heal if humankind just vanished one day? The fortitude and strength of our forebears and those of us even today is great, I’m not trying to discount that but when compared to the mighty forces this of this brilliant blue and green marble floating through the void they seem almost nonexistent.
Never take for granted that you are a part of this world, that the forests, deserts, grasslands, oceans, mountains and all the in between are a part of us all.
Staring up at it from below as I finished setting up my tent, a wave of excitement and anticipation washed over me, here we were a five man crew, making camp a few miles away from the beast we would tackle the following morning. An evening of music and enjoying each other’s company in these trying times felt refreshing and made things almost seem normal for the first time in months. We may have stayed up a little too late, imbibed a bit more than would’ve been recommended but the night was joyous and the companions were very much welcome.
It had been since September of last year that I had last put boot to trail up a mountain so it didn’t take much to wake me that morning. Five A.M. came earlier than I had hoped especially after knocking back a few cold snacks the night before but nevertheless I rose from my slumber, changed into what I would be hiking in and gathered my gear. Camp coffee no matter how bad is always welcome and even though the cup I made that morning tasted rather wrong, every sip put a smile on my face. The clouds hung low over the valley we were in, a blanket of puffy soft grey gently creeping by overhead obscuring the view of our challenge. We loaded up our car and headed to the trailhead not bright eyed and bushy tailed but more crusty eyed and bedraggled but brimming with exhilaration as we wound our way through the aspen and evergreen forest that shrouded the base of the peak we would soon attempt to conquer.
Steep, rocky, daunting, fifteen minutes into our ascent my calves were screaming at me to end this foolishness, turn around, you’re not in shape for this yet, what are you doing? Nevertheless I ignored my body’s request to quit, there’s a wall on certain hikes and indeed most outdoor pursuits, where your body has to find its equilibrium, find its rhythm. Once you hit that wall everything you do can feel like the opposite of what you want to be doing but eventually you’ll knock that barrier down and you’ll become one with the hike. It will feel less like a physical challenge and more of a simple repetitive task, left foot, right foot, breathe in, breathe out, make idle conversation, left foot, right foot, repeat. There’s a certain Zen inside this physical challenge, something to the effect of finding your center both in the physical and the metaphysical. Gaining some understanding of where you fit inside the moment you find yourself in.
Sun beams shone through the trees as we made our way to the crest of the first of a seemingly never ending stretch of hills, casting their golden rays through the forest and lighting up the ground in large swaths. As we reach the crest the trail flattened out a bit and started to wind through a beautiful forest of firs, spruce and pine. Large chunks of deadfall butted up against the trail in spots and in others lay across it entirely. At first hopping over their sizeable trunks was enjoyable but by the fourth one I found myself agitated by the extra expenditure of energy.
We reached switchbacks and started to climb again zig zagging our way higher and higher, still in the trees but every so often catching a bald spot and from it gazing back out across the beautiful valley to our east and south. As the sun had risen higher in the sky the blanket of clouds that had obscured our view down below had started to dissipate but as we gazed back down upon the valley there were still clumps of white pillows floating low over the glen from which we had started our ascent. We took a moment to snack as we stared out in wonderment at the magnificent canyon and I found myself in awe at how quickly we had risen up from where we started.
Climbing and climbing, legs screaming, heavy breathing we finally reached the tree line and our first encounter of snow, sizeable patches of white laying across the trail in spots, the first few stretched longer than the last but none more than a hundred or so feet. A beautiful little song rang out from the top of one of the last trees we would pass, a little bird singing his spring song to try and attract a mate, or maybe singing out a warning to others telling of these strange bipedal creatures shambling their way up the trail. Whatever the case may have been the little bird’s song was comforting in the morning sun as we continued onward creeping toward twelve thousand feet in elevation.
Out of the trees and into the alpine tundra, the trail began featuring more and more rock as it ribboned across the face of the northern side of a gully, cut into the hillside it was almost more of a mountain goat run than a trail. We crested a slight uptick in the trail and got our first glimpse of the Angel of Shavano, a snow formation at the back of the gully that from down below looks like a figure with wings hanging high above the valley. The ridge line above the angel was visible now as was the summit high above us and the exposure of the tundra now brought wind into the equation. A gentle breeze gusting from time to time but with the sun on our backs there still was not yet a need to don our extra layers.
A moment of pause offered me the chance to glance backward down toward the valley and it was a view I won’t soon forget, the gully patchy with snow ran all the way down to a dark green carpet of trees and out into a flat plain. In the distance you could glimpse the Sangre De Cristo mountains as wisps of clouds blew overhead. Haze and low clouds filled a valley to their east, at that distance everything was a different shade of blue. Onward I trudged, changed now from five men walking in step to a more strung out crew, three in the distance ahead of me and one a bit further behind me, my eyes were focused on the task at hand as my mind swirled with the images of grandeur the views had created.
A food break was necessary so we all stopped together directly above the angel at a turn in the switchbacks that had just begun and would lead us up to the ridge above. A large flat rock, sunk into the dirt at the perfect angle, seemed not so much a chair as a throne. Perched just under thirteen thousand feet in the air I sat upon this throne with my companions as we enjoyed a few snacks of meat, of granola and the occasional bit of chocolate, the sun shining brightly down upon us hardly any wind disturbed us, what I found and hope my companions found in that moment was peace. Mountain Zen flooded over me in surges sending goosebumps up and down my skin and a tingling sensation from my brain down through my spine and out to my extremities. I’ve had some beautiful views high on mountain sides but sitting there on that earthen throne I felt as a king, a master of all I surveyed. It brought to mind a story shared to me by a very good friend about his experience on the California coast in a little gully that featured a seat of stone reminiscent of a desk from which he gazed outward at the crashing surf in awe of the sheer power and beauty of nature.
We continued up the face of the ridge above the gully but soon realized the switchbacks we thought we were on weren’t the actual trail but a goat path. Our true switchbacks had ended down the way a bit and the actual trail wandered south before curling back north toward the summit on the southern end of the ridge. At this point however we decided to just push on as we were closer to where the trail crossed the ridge in front of us than we were to the proper trail to our south. As we approached the top of the ridge the wind finally became what I had expected, gusts upwards of thirty miles an hour began blasting us and a t-shirt was no longer sufficient, so hunkered down behind some sizeable boulders sheltering ourselves from the wind those of us (me) who had yet to throw windproof layers back on took a quick break to do so before continuing onward toward the proper trail.
From the top of the ridge the views began to become even more magnificent, off to the south you could glimpse the curving backbone of the Sangre De Cristo mountains in all their magnificence, looking over the western edge of the ridge to the far southwest you could just glimpse the snow capped peaks of the San Juans. Excitement overtook me and my pace quickened at least until we reached the scree field and the route became less apparent. Scrambling over massive boulders on the way up made for exhilarating yet tedious work as the trail came and went. At one point the furry companion which one of our party had brought along and who had been leading us the entire way came upon a section his dog brain couldn’t quite work out and stopped. I tried showing him the way but he wouldn’t follow so I continued upward to join the others while his father tried to guide him up.
We waited for a time hoping the furry friend would fathom his way up but when the last of the companions caught up with us and the dog and his father weren’t with him we decided perhaps the dog had finished his ascent and we would summit first before returning to stay with the good boy while his dad ascended. The trail was virtually nonexistent at this point and it became a game of finding a decent goat path and then scrambling up rocks every so often, a hundred feet from the summit and my water was low my legs were worn out and my head was swimming in the oxygen deprived air but my resolve held firm and I steadily made my way to the summit.
Triumph occurred just before eleven A.M. at an elevation of roughly fourteen thousand two hundred and thirty one feet, I scrambled my way toward the middle of the summit to a spot devoid of people and sat down on a rock to once again survey my domain. Our domain, as the old song likes to remind us, this land is our land. From the top you could see what felt like every major mountain range in Colorado, the Sangre De Cristo ever apparent, the major peaks of the front range in Pike’s and Evans, the Mosquito Range with its sub range the Ten Mile also in view, the Elk Range to our west, the San Juans in all their glory to the far southwest and a fair chunk of the Sawatch which we were in extended to our north and south. Clear skies and no wind, our fortunes couldn’t be better so we grabbed our celebratory summit beers and I unwrapped the summit burrito I was saving and sat there soaking in the sunshine and the view.
We started making our way back to the trail so as to allow our companion with the dog to summit but no sooner than we had stood up to move that way his head popped over the crest and he appeared with his furry black friend in tow, the dog had figured out the puzzle that paralyzed his brain and they both finished their ascent. We gathered together and enjoyed our beers and our accomplishment with the others who decided today was a good day to summit. An older couple who had started the day with us reached the summit at almost the same time that we had and we sat down and conversed with them talking about other hikes and how unbelievable the views were. They obliged us in taking a photo of our triumphant group before we said our goodbyes and made our way back down.
Triumph at Fourteen-thousand feet
The way back wasn’t as arduous and the miles flew by, the afternoon sun beating down warmed the air as we made our steady descent. My legs were no longer screaming and my body was at peace, a calm washed over me as the sun warmed my face and arms. Little by little, bit by bit the summit got further and further away and the trees came back into view.
Hiking for me isn’t just about walking to a destination, it just isn’t about moving through a space, no for me hiking is about experiencing the natural world in a way our ancestors did, coming into contact with nature and journeying through it with a purpose of finding your center. I don’t hike to just add a notch to my belt or so I can say I’ve done it, I hike because the experience it provides, be it through the views, sounds, smells or general energy, fills me with an inner peace that I have rarely felt elsewhere.
Nature is beauty, but the stark contrast between the harsh world above and the calmer one down below is what creates that beauty. That the alpine tundra, which on the surface, appears to be a wasteland devoid of life is actually full of it is a testament to this fact and indeed to the fact that beauty is all around us we just have to open our eyes, ears and our hearts to see it.
I woke up pensive, trapped in a reflective string of memories of the years that had lead up to this point. I knew this day was coming and I told myself it would be another day just like every other one but there I was, locked into a train of thought careening through the past 30 years at breakneck speed. My youth was wonderful, loving family and an incredibly close group of friends. My teen years were full of love, lust, heartbreak, growth and a seemingly never ending quest to find myself. My twenties brought stability, real love, true self discovery and a nice balance of work and life outside of work, that they ended on a sour note and heartache like I’d never known don’t take away from them as a whole. So there I stood, staring at myself in the mirror as I brushed my teeth, looking back at all that had transpired, could I have done anything differently, was it all worth it? Should I have prepared more? Or was it better to let it all happen in due time and learn as I went?
I feel like when I was eighteen, I had no fucking clue what I was going to do with my life, absolutely no idea of where to go, what to study, how to live, nothing. I left high school with an ambitious mind but completely absent a plan or even a rough outline. All my life to that point had been toward an end goal of graduating high school, the parts of it in between had all been random seasonings thrown in the pot. When I was twelve I knew what I wanted to be but after six more years of schooling and the giant wave of hormones that came hurtling through my physiology the focus that had been there was dissolved and by the time that final bell rang I had no idea what I was doing.
Of course if you asked me at the time not only did I have an idea but it was going perfectly and not a damn person was going to tell me differently. That’s youth.
I made mistakes, didn’t finish college, floated through space for awhile with no real direction but when I finally figured out what the hell I was doing I took off, maybe not always going Mach 1 but always with a steady hand at the wheel and a clear and focused mind sailing towards my target. I’ve been blessed with a wonderful family and friends who might as well be, I’ve traveled when I wanted to and seen places I’ve wanted to see. My life through all the ups and downs, and there were some really low downs at times, has been exactly what I’ve wanted whether it was part of the plan or not. I turned 30 today my twenties are gone now and even though it’s not really even close to old age, hell middle age is still a decade away, I felt like that last part of me that was the little kid with the glasses, the bright red hair and the can do attitude finally said goodbye, not that he’s gone forever or even really gone at all but he knows and I know that youth, like life, is fleeting.
Life is fleeting, like a strand of a spider’s silk dancing in the wind over a sunlit field on a summer’s day, here one minute gone the next. As we grow older I feel like we fall into complacency traps, we forget how easily it was to say screw it and go out and take that trip to Japan, or buy that car you’ve always dreamed of, ask out the girl or guy of your dreams. Don’t let life slip by without notice, go out there and live, be not afraid of what might happen. Roll with whatever hand you’re dealt.
Unbridled fear, sheer terror, a level of scared I didn’t know existed enshrouded my brain and wouldn’t let go as I clung to the boulder perched on what felt like a three foot wide ledge above a thousand foot drop to imminent doom, getting pushed back by an almost constant eighty to ninety mile per hour wind. I have never felt that feeling, that lizard brain, pure instincts you’re going to die feeling before but in the midst of it, after I came to terms with what might happen, I clenched my jaws and screamed at myself to just go, although not in so polite a phrasing and pushed through it. Already four hours in to what would end up being an eleven hour day, there was no going back now.
A full moon greeted us as we woke from our short slumber, the bright light shining in through the moonroof of the car we’d slept in. It was two thirty in the morning and we wanted to be on the trail by three. Long’s Peak is a serious hike, it takes six miles of hiking just to reach the boulder field beneath the east face of the peak after which it’s another mile and a half to the summit but it becomes a class three scramble around the back side of the mountain. Not terribly difficult or dangerous but certainly no walk in the park and nothing like any mountain I’ve summited before, I was in for an interesting day.
We hiked by moonlight neath the trees, keeping up a quick pace. The light from the moon was bright enough we didn’t really need our headlamps so we decided to leave them off and put away. As peaceful as a forest can be it is more so when the sun is down and the moon illuminates the path. Bright white beams shone through the trees where they were thinnest and the scene was surreal, a palette of ink blacks, dark navy blues and bright whites made it feel as if we were in an old black and white movie, Humphrey Bogart was surely right around the corner waiting to deliver some iconic line. About halfway through the trees we began to hear the rushing of a creek, it wasn’t some trickling thing either, it sounded like a raging torrent blasting tempestuously down the mountain and being unable to actually see it made for an even more eerie setting, us out walking, after midnight, neath the moonlight.
As we climbed out of the trees the landscape felt more and more strange, the great shadows ahead of the peaks surrounding us and a high meadow in between, behind us you could see all of the lights of the I25 corridor like a carpet made of a Lite-Brite some overzealous child had meticulously overloaded, it stretched as far as the eye could see and made for an extremely odd setting considering we were attempting to summit a brutal beast of earth and stone. This was the first time I’d been close enough to civilization whilst summiting that I’d had that obvious of a reminder. We continued up the path finally completely out of the trees and bushes and into the rocky tundra which under the full moon became reminiscent of the lunar surface, the stones all appeared white and the alpine mosses and grasses were indistinguishable.
About four hours into the journey we reached the boulder field, traversing many forks of a stream along the way something which I am still confused as to how I didn’t fall into, by this point the moon was behind the summit and it was incredibly tough to discern what was what beneath our feet, it was still bright enough to continue sans headlamp however so we kept moving onward, stumbling our way across the boulders. The sun began to rise and with it the colors of the stones changed from different shades of black to reds and browns it was like traversing the surface of Mars, an alien landscape featuring strange rock formations and winds of a strength and fierceness I’d never experienced anytime we came into line with the Keyhole. As we got closer we noticed a small stone shelter to the left of it so we stopped in for a bit of reprieve and then decided to sit outside and watch the sun rise on the distant horizon.
Seeing such a truly awe inspiring sunrise gave us a boost of adrenaline so we hopped up, strapped on our rock climbing helmets and pushed our way up toward the Keyhole a unique rock formation that creates a wind tunnel and features near constant winds blustering through it at between seventy and eighty miles per hour. I had misplaced my gloves which would prove folly during the traverse of the Keyhole as the winds started to freeze my extremities, luckily getting through and around the Keyhole took only a minimal amount of time and when we got settled, perched on a decent ledge on the other side, the wind was almost completely gone and the view we found was something I will never forget.
A valley down below us and a long drop down to it, Rocky Mountain National Park to our north and straight west almost perfectly between two peaks was the moon, not quite hidden by the sun’s rays, sitting in a band of orange light beneath a lavender sky and above a darker blue where the sun hadn’t hit yet. Gusts of wind occasionally chilled our bones but our souls were warmed by such a beautiful sight, a once in a lifetime kind of view, the perfect sky, the perfect moon, the perfect dawn and the perfect setting below. If I had died in that moment it would have been more peaceful a passing than anyone could hope for, perched on the side of a mountain gazing out in wonderment at all this bright blue marble we call home has to offer.
Onward we climbed, first down and then we began the long slog up the section known as the Trough a defined gully that features a six hundred foot vertical climb that, while not mentally draining, was tough physically having never scrambled anything close to that difficulty. A slog it was but we trudged onward and upward and soon enough we reached the ridge, at which point we would turn left and enter the most terrifying place I’ve ever been. The Narrows.
I didn’t take pictures in The Narrows, I wasn’t of a sound enough mind to do so and looking back I’d rather not relive that part anyhow. I am afraid of heights, typically in mountain summiting situations I’ve been on stable enough trails or far enough away from real ledges I’ve been able to ignore that fear but perched on a narrow path, barely as wide as my shoulders, above a thousand foot drop with a constant view of doom I couldn’t ignore it. My brain ceased to work and my body became paralyzed as I gazed, shaking, down the mountain, I kept smacking myself and gritting my teeth, clenching my jaw and shouting at myself to move and it would work for a time but with every gust of wind I would start the process over again and again and again until, almost at the end, I saw my compatriot headed back my way. The path ahead was too dangerous he said, he wasn’t going to attempt it, the wind whipping through the notch ahead was worse than the Keyhole and after that the path was indiscernible. I laid my head against the rock I clung to, defeated by the elements I didn’t want to have to turn around but I had to believe him. Just at that moment another climber came through the notch and made us aware that the wind is only terrible in that spot, that once around it the homestretch as it is known was no where near as exposed or windy. I looked up at my friend and he told me to go ahead if I felt I could but that the mountain had bested him this day, he was headed back down, a mere three hundred or so feet from the summit. I don’t blame him, he’s a smarter man than I for what came next was the worst experience of my life.
Clinging to the side of that rock, getting blasted by wind, it was in that moment I broke my brain. Fear enveloped me, it wrapped its tentacles around my body and started to crush the life out of me. I’d never leave that spot, in all my years, of all the idiotic things I’ve ever done I had never felt a true fear, that I could truly die, that lizard brain instinct that the end is nigh and it won’t be forgiving. In that fuzz, that panicked scramble my mind was in, I shouted some very angry words at myself, words I won’t repeat, namely because I don’t know that they were actually words so much as they were incoherent grunts and growls through a clenched jaw. I pulled myself around the rock and almost leapt up the trail ahead of me out of the wind and onto a more solid piece of mountain. I continued up the trail a ways until I found a spot to sit down, my morale was dipping lower and lower as I realized not only would I have to find the trail up but I would also have to go through all of that again to get down the bloody thing. Soon another climber found his way up to me, asked me how I was doing and then proceeded up the trail, I decided in that moment to pull myself up and follow him to the top.
It took what felt like an hour but was probably closer to fifteen minutes but we finally pulled ourselves up over the last boulder and found ourselves standing high above the land staring out over the last bit of the route we had just finished. I wandered over to a rock away from the people, sat down and wept, I don’t know why, whether it was the accomplishment or the fear, or if I was just overcome and overloaded with more emotional and mental stress than I’d ever experienced but for a good thirty or forty-five seconds I was blubbering like a school boy. I calmed down rather quickly and began wandering about the football field of a summit, a big flat top covered in boulders, this thing was massive.
I pulled out my burrito, again from Illegal Pete’s, and tried to eat it but after two bites I thought I might throw up so I wrapped it back up and stuffed it into my bag. A couple asked if I could take their picture and I obliged and then I asked another climber if he would take mine and he obliged. Proof that I’d conquered the beast, I’m honestly surprised I could smile at that point because my brain was fried and I could barely put together sentences.
The climb back down was horrendous, even more terrifying because I knew what was in store but everyone going the opposite way was incredibly encouraging. They all knew what they were accomplishing and what I had accomplished. I made my way back through The Narrows, moving just above a snails pace trying again to keep it together and finally I reached the top of the Trough. My fear was slowly subsiding but my physical fatigue was increasing and getting back down the Trough had me a stumbling mess.
When I finally reached the bottom of it I found a group of fellow climbers to keep pace with and before I knew it we had reached the Keyhole again, the wind didn’t seem so bad this time and as I turned the corner and felt the full warmth of the sun on my face I saw my friend, waiting for me just below the shelter chatting with other climbers, some who had also turned around and some who had summited. I was so incredibly happy to see him I nearly leapt into his arms but we were on boulders still up hill quite a ways from the gulley floor and he was sitting. We enjoyed a few snacks and then got up and began the long journey back down, across the boulder field past the meadows and back down into the trees.
Ten hours of hiking, eleven hours total since we left the car that morning we reached the asphalt of the parking lot, changed into shorts and sandals with the car doors blocking us from view and then headed back down the mountain to home. I spoke after my summit of Bierstadt about Mother Nature’s occasional remorseless brutality, but that was without ever having truly experienced it. I understood my own words that day, I got a close up look at forces far greater than me. I doubt I’ll ever forget that feeling, one of being so insignificant like a flea on a dog’s cheek but I wouldn’t change it.
I would do it all over again if given the chance. There’s no better place to be than in the midst of the mighty forces of Mother Nature.
I woke up pensive, trapped in a reflective string of memories of the years that had lead up to this point. I knew this day was coming and I told myself it would be another day just like every other one but there I was, locked into a train of thought careening through the past 30 years at breakneck speed. My youth was wonderful, loving family and an incredibly close group of friends. My teen years were full of love, lust, heartbreak, growth and a seemingly never ending quest to find myself. My twenties brought stability, real love, true self discovery and a nice balance of work and life outside of work, that they ended on a sour note and heartache like I’d never known don’t take away from them as a whole. So there I stood, staring at myself in the mirror as I brushed my teeth, looking back at all that had transpired, could I have done anything differently, was it all worth it? Should I have prepared more? Or was it better to let it all happen in due time and learn as I went?
The Wandering Toto 