Occupation of Independence

Most hikers are probably fond of that moment in a hike when you're starting to wonder if you're ever going to get to the top. But of course the experience would be boring without the voluntary suffering of it all. Then you see some blue sky peaking through, so you must be getting ready to crest. Recently Coffee Girl and I finally made it over the top of Book Cliffs, which my little poodle valiantly surmounted four years ago. I can't be sure that he used this trail, but it's the only one. It was 1600 feet of altitude gain. It's counter-intuitive how the high-altitude side of a cliff ramps up the edge, and then falls precipitously. The Mogollon Rim (in Arizona) does this as well. The top of Book Cliffs was fun to explore; it was crossed by more ravines than I thought; it wasn't just a flat mesa-top.

The San Juan Mountains still have plenty of tourists here for the fall color season. I wonder if this is what they had in mind. Wasn't it Arthur Koestler's Act of Creation that discussed the usefulness of inversion in creativity? Maybe he was on to something. For instance, every windshield tourist is running around the mountains trying to take "breathtakingly beautiful" postcards of autumn colors. Since digital cameras are so good, most of these postcards look pretty much the same, and the world's supply of pixels is depleted for nothing. A yellow leaf is just a yellow leaf. What if, instead of joining the leaf-peeping hordes, we asked, "What is the ugliest thing we could photograph at this time of year?" Or is that negative thinking? Well at least it is thinking, and a difficult type of thinking it truly is. For instance I thought wet, disgusting snow coming down in early October might be a suitably perverse subject. But being anti-beautiful i

Artists, artists everywhere! From the northern Rio Grande Valley, Sante Fe, Taos, Abiquiu and Ghost Ranch, and into Colorado, the whole region is infested with artists. I'm even squatting on the driveway providing driveway security services at the home of a couple Colorado artists. You'd think that art was a major part of the economy. Since when did Americans become so arts-oriented? If a traveler takes travel seriously -- that is, if travel is more than trivial sightseeing and generating digital postcards -- he needs to ask: what is this place good for? What is special about it? Then he needs to do some thinking about a topic that the location brings up. I reread Tolstoy's What is Art? (*) Before showing some juicy quotes from that book, let's first try to imagine an elderly Tolstoy -- with his beard and earnestness, now an ex-novelist, working to reform Christianity, and totally outside the intellectual mainstream of Europe -- walking through an art festival in

In ten days I've gone from southwestern New Mexico to southwestern Colorado. The daily weather pattern is the same, since it's the monsoon season. Not so much has changed regarding altitude. A bit more has changed with latitude and temperature. One of the most noticeable changes is the presence of more running water. It is the highlight of any hike to see my dog stop at a creek crossing and lap up clear stream water against the rocks. But the biggest change has been in the color green. New Mexico had been greening up by its standards. But here in Ouray forests, greenness overwhelms me. There's just too much of it! Whenever my eyes latch onto something not green, such as in the photo, I stop and gawk at it.

Silverton CO. One of the hangups an RV Boondocker has to get over is the exaggerated fear of breaking some petty rule or ordinance that is seldom enforced. You aren't going to get a ticket or hauled off to the hoosegow. (Well maybe in California, Manhattan, or Massachusetts.) The average Amerikan is so docile or fearful that they won't push the envelope a little. But I'm rusty, having just gotten back on the road after three years in an RV park. So it took a little effort, but I did find a dead end road by a washed out bridge that seemed like it would be OK. (Dead end roads are favorites of mine.) I was camped a few steps from a stream that was quite, uh, anim ated. Oh, by the way, the Verizon signal had four bars out of four. This was the kind of experience I had been yearning for: beautiful white noise to wake up to instead of roaring traffic, boom-cars, or the neighbor's subwoofers.

Farmington, NM. Apparently my driveway security services really are in demand, so I'm on the way to Ouray, CO to hold down the driveway for old buddy Mark at Box Canyon Blog . It was enjoyable getting back onto the Colorado Plateau, with its characteristic mesa, butte, and cliff look. It was quite noticeable north of Quemado NM. Noon, Silverton CO . It's fun to hear the train whistle again. It's been several years. I wonder if I should have a rematch with the Bunkhouse ? 5 pm, it's nice to see the mountains again. But I appreciate the flowers and running water even more. I found a deadend gravel road to walk the dogs on. We had to cross a small stream. The water wasn't that cold; this is probably the only time of year when you can say that at 9500 feet. I had to carry my little poodle across -- with his vision and scarediness he might have been washed away!

Upper Rio Grande valley, Colorado, a couple summers ago. Last episode we left our heroes staring right into a dense, miserable forest. There was no way to finish the hike to the mountain top with that hideous forest in the way, so I was resigned to retreat. But what was that barely noticeable lightness hiding behind the forest's black curtain? I must have been intrigued--what else would make me wade in through that junk? It was a small meadow, an island of light and air, surrounded by dreary, dark forest. I really didn't know that such islands existed. Sailors must feel like this when they discover a small, secret cove that isn't on the charts; it instantly becomes their own little paradise; the rest of the world becomes uninteresting to them. Rather than break out onto the grassy slope on the way home, I decided to walk along this shoreline of forest and grass, and plunge into the arboreal netherworld whenever there might be another of these little garden-mea

Upper Rio Grande valley of Colorado, a couple summers ago. It was so easy to decide what to do first at this new RV boondocking campsite. A large peak loomed over camp. Though not a "peak bagger" I just had to start towards it, because of the grand and grassy slope in front of the trailer. It wasn't a planar ramp. It was a steep ascension of rumpled folds, like a woman's green dress in a more gracious and elegant age. There are so many places like this in the national forests out West. But you can't see them because they are covered with the Stygian gloom of an overgrown silviculture. Why is this hillside free of the usual clutter -- did it burn some years ago? I had to walk up it, that first morning. While the dogs enjoyed their romp over the grass, I stared in admiration of the landscape: I was looking at the upper end of the Rio Grande, leading into the center of Colorado's San Juan Mountains, near Lake City. The hillside was so steep that,

Summer boondocking in the upper Rio Grande, a couple summers ago. If I had to pick my favorite moment of an outdoor-day, it might well the first one, when "night's candles are burnt out, and jocund day stands tiptoe on the misty mountaintops." [*] That's how the day starts for us when I park with the RV's door and bedroom window facing east. Soon the high-country's sun hits the bedroom window with a soft pounce. Coffee Girl starts her day by walking from the foot of the bed to my head. She softly drops her head on my neck and holds it there. My official morning hug, I guess. Both dogs are impatient to get going. They prefer to hit the trail at sunrise. There aren't many wildflowers on today's hike, but they're nice. Hunters are probably the only people who have ever come up the volcanic ridge that we were walking on. Most hikers follow the brown signs and stakes. I loved the contrasts of grass and trees, ridge and cliff. Most of

Clearly, the San Juans are Colorado's best eye candy, in the usual postcard sense. The San Juans are newer than the other ranges and are volcanic, rather than folded or fault block ranges. Here was our first route in the San Juans: Stratified sedimentary layers I'm used to--but a green layer? How could a wind-blown seed find purchase on a slope like this? A motorist stopped when he saw my little dog in the BOB trailer behind the mountain bike. He was a serious amateur photographer and was studied up on nature. He thought the seeds would have been dropped by birds into the cracks or holes that even a steep slope must have. Probably so, but how did these plants or bushes propagate up there? We finished our ride and returned to find a Silverton couple saddling up two llamas, for an overnight trek up to an alpine lake.    They are members of the camel family, but don't have humps. Their hooves are more like a hard pad, with two-toes and funny toe nails.

When traveling I try to experience a book, rather than merely read it. With some luck a traveler's location can add something chemical and explosive to the book. This happened to me recently in Leadville, CO. I was camped by a national forest road that was on the race course of two separate races that featured the most amazing athletes. My mind drifted off to Greek Olympic athletes. I picked up a book on Greek mythology, and was amazed to find myself actually interested in that silly nonsense, for the first time. Other things contributed to this chemical reaction, such as monsoon clouds accumulating before their mid-afternoon schedule, and lightning strikes so close to my trailer that they sounded like a shotgun blast outside the trailer door. So I was willing to play along with reading about Zeus the Cloud-Gatherer and Thunderbolt-Thrower. If this seems too whimsical for the reader, remember that your mind and body are the same as the homo sapiens of a few thou

West of Leadville CO a couple summers ago. We started on the dirt road that leaves the Turquoise Lake paved road. What better way to start a day than to find yourself on a smooth, well-maintained road that ascends mildly but relentlessly to a high mountain pass! A mountain biker notices road texture more than scenery, no matter how "breathtakingly beautiful" the postcard scenery might be. This road seemed determined to give us a perfectly balanced ride. In particular I loved the variety of viewscapes . As the ride developed I felt an overarching sense of gratitude. Perhaps because the object of my gratitude was so nebulous, the gratitude seemed more transcendent than the alpine vistas themselves. Only a few gasoline athletes passed us. Do they resent us?  In their minds they are adventuring with mighty jeeps, big 'tars,' winches, fancy GPS gadgets, and all. Sometimes they even caravan--there's safety in numbers, you know. Then they pass a litt

To the casual observer, a full time RVer might seem to be wandering at random, at least on a daily basis. But on a seasonal basis that is certainly not true. As the summer progresses he moves upriver to higher altitudes. Doing so, all roads lead to Leadville, CO. This is the end of the road, altitude-wise. The city is at 10,150 feet. I had never been to Leadville before. A woman in the torrid lowlands downriver (at 7000 feet) told me it was ugly. But I sized her up as a fussy-female type, and consider her comment a positive recommendation. Indeed, approaching the city limits of Leadville there were mine tailings and dilapidated shacks with the windows boarded up with plywood. I was hooked. The first surprise was to see a large Mexican-American population. Apparently they work in construction in the ski resort, condo, and McMansion towns. They live in Leadville because they can. Are we really only a couple generations from the hardy men who mined around Leadville? The modern

Isn't it odd how the word, tourist, is almost universally applied as a pejorative, a slur? This is true even though most people look forward to vacations and holidays, during which they typically are tourists. In America it is even said that many people vacation as long as fourteen days, almost every year. The T word is used most negatively by those whose livelihoods depend most on tourism. The local yokels of a popular tourist area leave their own area, full of scenic wonders which they have become bored with, and vacation in other tourist areas that might be inferior to their home turf. Here in the upper Arkansas River valley I am, for the first time in my life, seeing tourism as a positive thing. Perhaps the key distinction is mass tourism versus outdoorsy, specialized  tourism. Consider for a  moment the mass tourist -- that motor-bound chowhound who tries to enjoy the wonders of nature by staring through his vehicle's window glass. Say what they will,

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

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

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