The Colorado Rockies: Denver to Grand Junction

The Junction

I’ve been hanging out in Grand Junction, Colorado the last couple days.  I’ve been searching for a metaphor to anchor my writing as I sit effectively at the half way point on a 6800 mile trail, now six months spent living, walking and struggling along a seemingly invisible path as the world continues spinning all about.  This morning I woke from a mostly sleepless night to my feet swollen like pontoons with all those unsettling shades of purple and blue.  I think I’ve found my metaphor!

I’ve been hiking through a fair amount of scraping and rubbing for much of my time here in these certainly quite rocky mountains.  I think it mostly began with failed socks and continued through a cycle of never quite healing, only to be torn again on each consecutive peak or pass, hard on the way up, hard on the way down, my pack jostling a bit too much as the straps and belt failed somewhere in the northern midwest.  I’m not sure, exactly, when all these miles piled up, but here I am…at a junction, in the truest of all senses.  

I lucked out a bit.  As I hiked the Crag Crest on the Grand Mesa, my phone caught its first signal in nearly a week above 11,000 feet while I teetered in the gusting wind along a precarious (and yes rocky!) ridge walk.  A text message from my aunt jumped out of the mostly junk notifications.  She offered the phone number of someone I might reach out to if I needed anything when I arrived in Grand Junction.  A couple days later, after staggering down off the Mesa, dropping from 10,800 to 6,400 feet in a single day along a jagged, torn up, bushwhacking sort of “trail,” I found myself limping into the outskirts of The Junction.  Sitting in the shade on the backside of an informational sign in Whitewater, just adjacent a now defunct “country store” and mostly defunct “motel,” I sent a message to that number.  Some thirty minutes later Arlo showed up with a warm smile and a wave…my salvation!  He brought me back to his place in the center of Grand Junction (he left straight from work to pick me up off the road looking and smelling like, well, yeah…).  He kindly showed me where I might immediately find a warm shower and just as immediately began to cook a meal that, well, was decidedly not powdered potatoes and ramen…such joy I can hardly describe!

We went to the grocery store; I naturally bought one of those literal buckets of ice cream and ate it all in a day and a half…I was trying to pace myself!  I bought enough spaghetti and cheese to form another 14k peak in Arlo’s living room.  I guess I’ve been living under conditions of deficiency and excess for some time.  It seems my instinctive solution is much the same, deficiency and excess, as I am now dreaming of baking dozens of cookies then eating them all during my next sleepless night!  I’m currently watching a storm blow in from a position where I can say “outside the window,” rather than “oh shit” at 13,000 feet.  I’m feeling spoiled as much as I’m looking at my feet and restlessly gazing out that window, itching (quite literally, that healing but aching itch!) to return, to climb and fall, to defy the wind…determined to thrust me off, another falling rock. 

The Junction, along my particular course, signifies a point of many returns.  I sit here now as storms increasingly blow in the changing of seasons.  “Winter is coming,” they tell me… “get out by October, snow as high as a horse, you won’t make it.”  The leaves have surely been turning fast these last weeks, the night air biting just enough to zip up panels and snug up the quilt about my neck, my feet returning cold each morning to sweat soaked boots and socks.  Priorities are shifting fast, where once I could neglect, five new urgent tasks have emerged, dry and warm a mantra, as miles continue to demand their own attention, long food carries through scarcity showing little concern for the swelling of my feet or the frequency of driving rain and booming thunder.  Here at The Junction, the desert calls as mountains holler, but I have yet another promise left to keep, to close a loop and knock on a door outside Cincinnati, to wander up the road I once gazed down only to choose the other, hair hanging longer each month from my wind-whipped face, marking time and reminding of a labor I choose, to continue on against certain odds, to defy the stillness of fate, to return a flowing stream to a sunbaked valley.

I’ll return to Denver next, to close that loop along the southern midwest.  I’ll use some of that time with frequent towns to plan my return to The Junction, where my westbound path to the Pacific awaits, not passively by any means, this land as determined as any to both challenge and inspire, beauty earned by certain struggle…a privilege to be afforded such opportunity!

I have a little bit of time here in Grand Junction, as I decided somewhere in the mountains I would bike back to Denver.  I’m waiting on my fat tire bike to be shipped here, affording some much needed opportunity to rest, heal and eat a couple or more pounds back on before returning to high mileage road days.  I’m equally using this time for much needed gear repair and retooling.  My pack just got upgraded shoulder straps and a waist belt to better handle the load, I stitched up a pair of pants I’m not quite ready to replace while saying goodbye to socks and a shirt no longer up to the task.  I’ll be adding some better rain and winter weather gear as well to keep pace with the changing seasons, and likely an upgraded GPS unit to alleviate the AA battery strain and improve performance as my basic unit has been failing to save my tracks this last week, but I haven’t had a way to transfer data to clear space, update or reset.  I’m out here though, my tracks laid the old fashioned way, in the mud and dirt adjacent those of the moose, fox, bear, cat and so many others with whom I share this trail and this land.  

In the meantime, I’ll leave you with some awesome photos and a few excerpts from a children’s book narrative I’ve been working on as a way to tell this story, a story of beautiful struggle and growth…. 

Peaks and Passes

And so the boy…

Walked, his heart in hand.  A woman with little left to lose filled water bottles from a river long ago polluted by industrial progress, easier, he supposed, than asking for what should be offered freely but would no doubt be denied or come with the price tag of further shame and humiliation.

His stride would shorten, 

his pace falter…

darkness would fall, 

the crowds would cluster, 

in search, 

in hope, 

but little could 

muster, 

security a 

mirage, 

electricity a 

charge, 

such capital 

gain 

yet none to 

offer 

…but fear and hatred befall, 

the fallen.

And so the boy…

Stumbled ‘til foot surely fail, 

in darkness to 

seek 

a shadow, a shelter, 

to pass cold the 

night, 

on hardness could not 

slumber 

‘til wake and walk…

‘til wake and walk.

And so the boy…

Sat on the edge of two worlds, the desert sprawling across the valley, dry but in bloom.  Rising high above, the alpine peaks shrouded the hot sun as icy cold water flowed from underground.  

And so the boy…

Sat, a bit tattered and torn, an ache in his back, his feet scraped and sore.  The boy gazed upon a lake formed of two worlds.  He drank his fill and cooled his sores.

And so the boy…

Sat on the edge of two worlds, a flame crackling as dinner cooked by the fire,

“but if such harmony can be of two worlds so apart, how is it my own wages war to erase the very difference we need to blossom and grow?”

And so the boy…

Climbed, such towering peak above, the infinite, the unknown, such breathless beauty…uncertain fate.  Each step he took the sun, in cadence keep, together they rose!

Layer upon layer did fall, such weight a burden haul.  The ground gave way, a half step slide…he grasped, he clawed, he knew he must.  Each turn, each twist, one steeper yet…once gazed amongst the stars, now spied upon high.

Such fate would come, only rock remain, the path now jagged, sliding, crashing…the victims of time, of hubris, left piled below.  

And so the boy…

Stood, decision to make.  To rise, to fall, each path would surely mistake…no longer a choice, but continue on.

The load now light, all burdens left in wait, each step would climb, a faintness take.  Of breathless air.  Of airless breath.  

In tattered form his hand did grasp…let loose!  The crash below, reminder make, no time before, no time beyond, but now alive…one step more.

And so the boy…

Climbed, his heart could find no reason for, but climb he must and climb he would, to reach such peak, to gaze beyond…

To know

To wish 

To dream

Such beauty! his heart forever quake.  To stand upon, to rise above, 

One’s self…

Nothing more!

Peaks and Passes in Photos