Hot and Cold

If you are going to spend some time in the Denver suburbs, try to sandwich it between two sets of stunning alpine lakes.

The Blue Lakes en route to Mt. Sneffels hold their own with Telluride's Alta Lakes from last writing.

And try to go with someone who knows the ins and outs of city traffic, the best Indian food, and friends and family brimming over with hospitality.  Because work-mandated physical exams and the submission of Kafkaesque* bureaucratic paperwork acutely intensifies the soullessness of the 'burbs.

*I haven't yet dropped this one at a cocktail party, Mrs. Shelley-Barnes, but I have deployed it occasionally in writing.

on top of old Baldy

On another note, I have been impressed -- not for the first time -- how delicate is the degree to which shade and wind protect or menace one.  In the blazing sun, my sweaty self rallies under the canopy of trees and gratefully forges on into the wind.  But of course the same moderate breeze and cloud-cover is carelessly lethal and effortlessly consumes human warmth, challenging our internal flame.  Maybe that's why campfires are so satisfying: sitting on the edge of that threatening cold, staring at the ethereal substance of our survival and comfort.  And to look up at the stars, a billion enormous yet tiny pinprick replications of our campfire, burning much too far away to actually warm us, but gratifying as distant indication of such fire.

Goldmine

5/30
If you go the long way, it turns out round trip from Denver to northern Michigan is 4,267 miles.  I am a lucky enough woman to get picked up in a pick-up and driven to visit a handful of far-flung friends -- safely socially distant, of course -- with comfy sleeping quarters to boot.  From mom and dad's in Traverse City, to my brother's family in Kalamazoo, across the endless grass-sea of Iowa and Nebraska, up to Spearfish, SD (hi Dan and Marcie!), over to Missoula (hi Bret!) and lovely Hamilton, MT (hi Greg an Dale!), desert-y Ogden, UT (hi Jake!), and a stop at Avon, CO (hi Eddie!), before coming to rest in western Colorado.

Cheers to this great guy sharing cheese with me in lovely places, like Ironton.

And for lending a sense of scale to my landscape photos.  (Alta Lakes)

Two weeks passed enjoyably, with tailgate coffee and roadside avocados and good company.  Life ain't too shabby in the back of a truck, especially with a solid tarp over the hard-shell topper for rainy nights.  But life is downright fucking luxurious in a 23-ft camper trailer.  There is a toilet that flushes, and not one but TWO gas stoves (indoor and outdoor) upon which to simmer one's Italian sausage tomato sauce.  Kelly has worked out the plumbing and could already back the trailer like a pro; we study the map and are overwhelmed by national forest and canyons to hike.


6/6
A week in and around Ouray has pretty much reconciled me to missing Alaska this summer.  Because not only is there unlimited amazing hiking, there's a gorge, with a canyon, and 14,000-ft peaks dotted with abandoned mines and defunct narrow-gauge railways, and snow and pines and wildflowers -- !  And I still bake...a little.  Blondies and biscuits and granola so far, and pie to come (the 'lil trailer oven is surprisingly good at holding heat).  But really the best part is being with Kelly.

Like the (presumably) wealthy retirees that surround us at the RV park, we prepare coffee and breakfast on miniature appliances and sit on the couch we folded the bed back up and over.  There, though, the similarities end, as we gear up to wander the steep rocky passes of the Uncompahgre, scramble up piles of tailings to disintegrating former mining infrastructure, and marvel at the impossibly hardscrabble mountainsides, and the equally hardscrabble people that sought their fortunes there.  No blondies or flush-toilets for them, though one surprisingly sturdy sort of relic withstands the elements upon the rock face: outhouses.

The end of the line in Silverton.

cactus blooms above Ouray

Are we in Norway?