Campers Who Are Smart

A couple times during the night I heard a funny sound on the metal roof of my camper trailer. It must be a very light rain or mist, I thought.

Not so. In the morning the campground woke up to an inch or two of snow. It was not crowded here last night, but we had a half dozen campers.

 Some people's reaction to this photo might be, "Can't they find something better to do?"

It was dead calm for the first time in days. And it was calm in another sense of the word: snow in the trees seems to make it seem quieter, a lovely feeling that is almost the ultimate luxury in a noisy, overcrowded world.

One young man was camping by himself. He had his kit arranged neatly on his picnic table. Steam was rising out of his coffee pot. I asked why his tent fly had no snow on it; he said the support-poles were collapsing a little, so when he got up for breakfast, he just shook the snow off.

What an attitude this guy had! He took what other people would consider a setback, and made it a comfortable, enjoyable experience. In Colorado an outdoorsman is smart to enjoy locations and conditions that repel other people, because overcrowding is the fundamental fact of the outdoor experience.