Occupation of Independence

Recently the reader caught me preening over my adult attitude regarding "peak bagging" in Colorado. But there are those who disagree, even in my own household. My little poodle has made it clear that he will not forgo any orographic conquests that would redound to his glory. Recently we hiked up the small mountains on the east side of the Arkansas River valley, near Buena Vista, CO. An early start kept us cool in the shade, while off to the west the morning sun warmed a wall of Fourteeners. You have to admire the pluck of a 12-year-old, miniature poodle, who scampered up the short, steep climb like a puppy. At the top he insisted on struggling with the last couple steps before officially signing in at the cairn. Clearly he had no sympathy with accepting old age with quiet resignation. We could read the poetry of William Blake to find inspiration about what happens when men and mountains meet. But that might mislead us into thinking that perspicuity on a mountain p

If you had to choose the western state that was most physiographically endowed, which would you choose? Many people might choose California, and I might agree, although I seldom set foot in that state. I have spent a large fraction of my full time RV years in Utah and Arizona. Great eye candy, those. But I never cared for the culture in either state. Let's just say that I feel no affinity for the LDS culture of Utah, nor the LA-style cities of Arizona, nor the senior-ish snowbird culture of Yuma. I haven't spent that much time in the eastern half of the Four Corner States, Colorado and New Mexico, until this summer. What an eye opener it has been. Presently the Arkansas Valley of Colorado is delighting me, day after day. It's too bad that this revelation took so long. Perhaps other travelers will admit to geo-bigotries about certain states, which tend to detract from their RV lifestyle. There is a relaxation that you feel in a culture that you are in harmo

Yesterday, rain. Last night, clear skies and heavy frost. Now it's melting, an hour after sunrise. Click photo to enlarge.

It is a rare pleasure for me to hike with somebody else, besides the little dog. Recently two RV friends in the area came over for a short hike, right from my trailer door in the national forest. I don't know why it is so satisfying to go on an outing right from the door, but it is. I decided not to take the little dog along, partly for practical reasons; but more importantly, I wanted to honor the occasion of having human companionship for a change. Since the trail was unmarked we started off with low expectations, intending to improvise as best we could. The dirt road up the steep ridge turned into an ATV trail, which finally turned into a single track. The forest had been kept semi-open by selective logging or firewood cutting back in the days when they actually did such things in Colorado national forests, so we had nice views of the valley most of the way up. After two hours of rigorous uphill grinding, we rested and turned around, as was our initial agreement. Th

It is strange that an experienced RV boondocker would enter a new area and feel trepidation about finding a camping site. After all, how many times have I done this, by now? But I have certain prejudices against Colorado, and expected the national forests to be camper-unfriendly. I went campsite-shopping with the usual DeLorme and Benchmark atlas. As feared, some of the forest access was blocked by McMansions and private roads. At other times, I did find access, but the wireless signal was blocked by the topography. It becomes a game to visualize the topography relative to the cell tower. Wait a minute--I didn't know where the cell tower is. So it was a game to infer the location of the cell tower based on the number of bars my cell phone displayed at different locations, and based on that, to deduce the strength of the signal over the next hill. This is great fun; the cell tower, not yet quite real and visible, becomes a fiducial point which you use to visualize

The Little Poodle and I "paddled" upstream -- on the mountain bike -- along the popular Arkansas River, near "Byoona" Vista, CO. We saw one river rafting company after another. As luck would have it, we made it in time for their mass 'descension' of the Arkansas River. (If balloonists at the Albuquerque festival can have a mass ascension, then rafters in Colorado can have a mass descension.) It seemed like a documentary about the D-Day invasion of World War II. Actually it all happened quickly and smoothly. It has always been a poignant experience to watch people enjoying any water sport. I tried to connect with the water over the years, and nothing really worked. So I surrendered to my fate as a land mammal. The little poodle, not being a Labrador retriever, feels the same way. So we turned away from the river and biked into an area dominated by foothills of spheroidally-weathered granite. The road was actually just a dry wash of decompo

You just can't beat a ride up a spiral, candy-striped mountain. There aren't many of them. In part the fun is purely whimsical, like something from a Dr. Zeuss book.  You get a 360 degree view from a spiral road. Salida, CO, has a small mountain of this type that overlooks the town. It was only a short ride, but it reminded me of a grander ride, spiraling up to the top of Steptoe Butte, in the magnificient Palouse of eastern Washington. Having opted to stay south this year, for fuel and other reasons, I won't have a chance to do my annual ride up Steptoe. I found a few old wrecks to photograph. What a relief! Perhaps I have misjudged Colorado; I was afraid everything would be modern, affluent, and sterile. The second surprise occurred when a woman in a dress got on her woman's-frame bicycle and pedaled off on some errand. They still make such bikes, with a chain guard, fenders, and a little shopping basket. I never would have expected a unisex grin

Driving from New Mexico to Colorado yesterday was fun because the differences were detectable. I had forgotten how large and agricultural the San Luis Valley was. I went into the Big R hardware and ranch supply store in Alamosa. It's funny how your first impressions in a town mean something. They had a sign telling people that the restrooms were in the northeast corner of the store. Information like that is useless to most of the human race. Who besides a few sailors or midwesterners navigate according to the compass? Looking the town over more carefully, I noticed more baseball caps than cowboy hats. Hmm? It was impressive to see a place out west where the agriculture was as serious as in the midwest. First day in Salida, CO: The little poodle and I biked into town this Sunday morning. The first building of significance was the LDS church. I groaned. Well after all, Colorado shares a long border with Utah. Downtown, near the Arkansas River, there was a real su

The other day I was watching a Star Trek episode when they quietly slipped something by: someone found that the computer records were mistaken. He didn't say that it was intentional or malicious; just mistaken. I'm not sure if I ever saw that before in a sci-fi story. I wish I knew of a hard-core sci-fi reader to ask if he has ever run across this. Today, people tend to believe whatever the computer says. Did it ever occur to them that few if any people make their living by correcting errors stored in a computer? Have you ever taken a trip with a map or gadget junkie? He can be staring right at a road, but if his high-tech gadget tells him the road isn't supposed to be there, he won't trust his lying-eyes. He would never question the computer in the sense of 'garbage in, garbage out'; instead, he thinks he will solve the problem by punching his way through the menu system. Before there were computers for people to have blind faith in, there were books. For 50

I can't quite brag that I survived the Fourth of July in the epicenter of New Mexico tourism--Red River--but it was close. I bailed out on the weekend after the Fourth and headed for Colorado. In part I was inspired from that scene in "Jurassic Park," when the idealistic vegetarian girl expressed disgust about dinosaurs eating meat. The paleontologist shrugged it off by saying, "They just do what they do." Indeed, 'free moral agency' is a pernicious doctrine. Why not just think of tourists as one more species of animal life that behaves in a way that is genetically determined? Why not stop judging them as moral beings? Unfortunately I can't seem to extend this equipoise to merchants in a tourist trap. They are as voracious as a new insect hatch in the brief summer of the Canadian Arctic--and for pretty much the same reason.  I sat down in a nice coffee shop, spread out my laptop computer on the table, and then ordered my drink. The pro

Now that the second big holiday of summer has passed, it's time to admit that this summer's plan is not working so well. The plan was to visit as many festivals as possible in high-altitude towns of the Four Corner states. Towns tolerate boondockers a day before and a day after the event, since many of the artists and musicians get by like that. People are fun to be around, during festival times. It was such a brilliant idea. But I'm used to them not working out. I got the idea while enjoying the free Blues Festival in the Little Pueblo in southern New Mexico. I quickly found out how rare free festivals are, and the closer you get to Colorado, the worse it gets. No doubt, the reader thinks that RV boondockers have an obsession about the word 'free.' Actually, the problem with paying to hear music performances is what it does to my expectations. It's more fun to stumble in to a free performance, with low expectations, and be surprised on the upside. A secon