Colorado

Colorado never gets easier, you only get faster.

The South San Juan mountains give you just enough of  anything, yet everything at the same time.  There are just enough north facing slopes to hold steep, corniced passes into late summer.  Just enough live pines existing within the beetle-killed forests like stars in a dark sky.  Just enough air to sip at 12500ft, and just enough exposure to stop your breath. But the mountains have all of the water that New Mexico never had, all of the postcard views, and all of the trials that make hiking the continental divide trail the greatest adventure of a lifetime.

North of the San Juans, the Weminuche wilderness has hills that extend beyond the horizon.  The hills are alive with innumerable grassroots that nourish the elk and the bears.  Those thready roots lift America’s spine over 13000 feet, because nothing so small has never not made and impact.

At dawn, elk scatter off the trail and stand sentinel on ridges to watch me pass, and ptarmigan sound off and glide from peak to peak while the wind is quiet. As the sun lifts higher snow melts into trickles that fall down draws to meet trickles and create a new power that can change mountains of rock and clay. Nothing so small has never not made and impact.

In the San Isabel and Gunnison National Forests, live evergreens stick out like youthful hairs on a graying head. They shield the wind for their dead, beetle-killed family and keep them standing. They hold their arms up over the forest floor for shade and send down their roots to guard the soils.  Just as the brutal high country exists, the lower forests do too, and they are selfless places.

Back into the high country of Clear Creek County, the ridges spine and twist and rise above 13000 feet. They thin the air again but grow colorful wild flowers that busy the bees and excite the landscape.

The terrain suddenly changes flora and the evergreens grow thick with different species. Underneath the canopy, columbines and dandelions and paint brushes rejoice in the Mount Zirkel wilderness.  Rocks that were solid start crumbling and snow melt turns them into pea gravel. The evergreens thin out and short junipers return. Snow fields wait out the summer on even the southwest facing slopes as the high alpine changes to the high desert of Wyoming.