The plan is to work our way north…
…after we break camp in the San Isabel National Forest. We parked next to the very noisy creek and the elaborate cement weir whose purpose escaped me on this wild creek. Then a worker came by and opened the gate in the wall watching the pool of water flow out into the lower creek. I asked him what was the point of the barricade in this lonely place.
Apparently when they close the dam the water spills into the grill and is sent to irrigate a different destination. With the gate closed the water backs up behind the cement dam and then flows over the top and is drained off to irrigate a different area downstream.
He laughed when I said he drained my swimming pool. I did have an idea to go for a paddle when we first arrived but even though the water wasn’t totally freezing it was pretty muddy so I skipped the swim. Then it was too late.
So after a few days listening to the creek rushing by…it seems time to move on.
We take a morning and an evening walk Rusty and I and it’s been a pleasure watching him gallivant through the woods just like he used to in the mangroves in the Keys.
It’s a beautiful spot and at nearly 10,000 feet I have to stop on the steep bits to catch my breath. I take a couple of Tylenol to clear my high altitude headache in the morning and yet as we walk I find myself hunting for air. I’m not physically tired and I can walk easily but the air is surprisingly thin and I notice that on the uphills. Rusty doesn’t notice.
The peaks all carry specks of white even in late August, snowfields that soon will be covered with even more snow. At night temperatures drop to around 40 degrees but we are comfortable inside our well insulated GANNET2 without any heat.
The woods are dry and silent, I hear no birds and see no squirrels and no bears either. Just as well that, but I rely on Rusty to find our way safely and to return whence we came.
He’s pretty good at it too, so we circled through the pines for as long as he felt like it and then at one point he looked back at me and set off directly for our starting point.
I knew roughly where we were going as I had noted the angle of the sun but soon enough I could hear the rushing of the creek and he sat down and waited for me to catch up before we crossed the road together.
We got home across the dirt road where Rusty curled up in a shrub and I got to grips with the hammock and my book.
Cars rush by to the interior where there are proper paid campgrounds where campers sit cheek by jowl instead of free camping dispersed like us with no facilities and there are also trailheads as destinations where hikers clump off to check out the views above the tree line.
Rusty took up his position monitoring the approaches to our camp and I had tea to recuperate from our wander.
I’m reading an autobiography by Ed Webster an American climber who wanted to summit Mount Everest in the 1980s called Snow In The Kingdom.
It is a little overwrought but it is vivid and gripping describing a world of extreme climbing I will never experience which means I should forgive Webster his rather lurid prose describing exceptional places and riveting human effort. So as I stagger up the gentle pine covered incline seeking oxygen for my lungs I think of the four climbers trying to get to 29,000 feet up a rock face with no oxygen tanks.
I have never wanted to climb mountains or peer into a passing abyss but when I was waiting for 911 calls I liked to explore lives I had no desire to live and visit places on Google Maps I might or might not get to visit in retirement. Peru? I hope so. Everest Base Camp? Very unlikely.
My own base camp with electricity and cooking stove and toilet and water tank but no hot running water and only an outside shower. If it isn’t onboard I don’t have to fix it.
I shall miss the serenity and ease of camping on public lands as these places don’t exist abroad as public recreation wilderness but I don’t take any of these days on public lands for granted. Good fortune camps with us, for now. I trust as we wild camp South America we shall find equivalent peace and serenity occasionally.
What wonderful places we have to enjoy right here.
