Into the backcountry

In Eastern Colorado the crops abandoned their linear blocks and instead followed the sweeping arc of the irrigation boom. The morning was cloudy as I headed west on Rte. 36 to Denver. As the clouds broke apart and cropland turned more and more to native scrub, patches of sunlight played across the landscape. Lark sparrows and mourning doves erupted from the pavement at my approach. I knew, and was slightly dismayed that the beauty of the landscape through which I traveled would be diminished by the Rocky Mountains. But for the moment, I reveled in it.

I reached the backcountry permit office as the first rumbles of thunder began. I reserved two nights, packed my backpack and headed uphill in a light drizzle. My pack was full; there’s no division of essential items—tent, food, stove, fuel—when going solo. I carried it all, and though I had spent the night at four thousand feet the night before, I was not remotely acclimated to the altitude.

So I took it easy, pausing for breath often, drinking lots of water and even pausing to take my pack off on a trail I could have sprinted up at lower altitude.

A wooden sign marked the turn off to my campsite and I crossed the Roaring River on a wooden footbridge. The rain had stopped, the thunder abated and there, beside the trail that lead up to the tent pad, a Three-toed Woodpecker fed his young at a nest cavity in an aspen. Everything, it seemed, was just fine.