Reflections on Utah and Colorado

Sitting in dreary Binghamton these days, I find my mind revisiting sunny Utah and Colorado. Maybe it’s time to reflect on them. What I saw in both states can be described as stunning, big (maybe even imposing) and alluring. Colorado seemed vaguely familiar to me, maybe because there were more trees and it was wetter than Utah. Utah is best described as other worldly.

So let’s go back to Utah first. The landscape is stark in many ways, but with all its bizarre rock formations and rugged terrain it is very picturesque too. Being almost bug-free is a big plus. It of course has mountains like Colorado, we got into them often. The higher you get, the greener they are, with large trees growing above 10,000 feet. Bryce Canyon was near parts of the Dixie National Forest, and Fishlake National Forest wasn’t too far away. Both forests, as well as Bryce Canyon, offered an abundance of spruce and fir higher up and Ponderosa Pine in the lower reaches. But it was still noticeable how dry they were. It was rare to see mud, unlike back east. It was rare to see many people in the forests, so we liked the seclusion they offered. You can camp pretty much anywhere in the forests too, and we had our pick of great camp sites, though primitive they gave us certain luxuries like peace and quiet and plenty of firewood.

The Grand Staircase Escalante National Monument is a remarkably vast no-mans land of treacherous terrain which contains numerous slot canyons, imposing mesas and steep cliffs. Navigating it by vehicle or foot can be tricky. When we first went to Utah in 2005 we didn’t even get into the G.S.E. because we weren’t supposed to travel on dirt/gravel roads in our rental car. Those are the only kinds of roads that will get you into the area, for the most part, and they often get washed out by sudden rainstorms that are frequent during the summer. But the area remains very parched as the rain water runs off very quickly over the hard crusty ground. It was the last major land area to be mapped in the continental U.S. because it was a very harsh environment and for a long time held very little appeal to settlers or ranchers. One has to be prepared with plenty of water and supplies, extra tires and gas, to venture into the G.S.E. We got to a few places in it, but never very far because the roads were rough and many times impassable. The monument is maintained by the BLM and they require a permit to camp there, unlike the national forests. Since there are higher risks when going in there, the BLM wants to keep better tabs on people.

One interesting place which we would like to visit some day is the Hole in the Rock. A 50+ mile road through the G.S.E. will take you there or a quicker approach is from Lake Powell. The Hole in the Rock is now remembered for a remarkable feat of early Mormon pioneers. It is basically a crease on a very steep side of Glen Canyon, which when the pioneers went down it in 1879 led to the Colorado River which they needed to cross. The walls around what is now Glen Canyon are about 1200 feet high, and the pioneers initially intended to establish a wagon route there. They did succeed in getting 83 wagons, 250 people and over 1000 head of livestock through the route which was a remarkable achievement. Today it is a hiker’s mecca, with some sections close to 45 degrees, it is a very tough hike.

Utah also has a remarkable culture, highly influenced by the Mormon church. Writers Jon Krakauer and Wallace Stegner, whom I’ve read, don’t paint the most favorable view of the Mormons, but we found Utahns in general pretty easy to be around. We were never proselytized by anyone and we were shown friendliness on a regular basis. It is a pretty safe place and if we ever needed help we could probably get it easily. There was no way to always know if a fellow traveler or hiker was a Mormon or not, but we figured we met up with them many times. Sometimes it seemed obvious that others were Mormons, especially young families with 4 or more young kids in tow, all fresh faced and happy. The fundamentalist Mormons stood out more, the women wore “prairie dresses” and bonnets, similar to the Amish or Mennonite women. They were often escorted by one man, and since they still practice polygamy we figured this must have been the husband of all these women. They didn’t look as fresh faced or happy though. I think most of them would prefer a different lifestyle but probably didn’t have the choice. The Mormons as a whole made a remarkable existence in Utah, turning a harsh land into a habitable place. They quickly established towns and farms throughout the region, through irrigation making lush areas of green surrounded by desert. They took care of each other and prospered. The Mormons of today come from tough ancestors and have a life and culture unlike anywhere else. One doesn’t have to agree with their beliefs to see how they manage to hold together as a group and benefit from it.

A return trip to Utah would definitely be worth it to me. It would be more familiar this time around and give me a chance to get to some of the areas I missed. We considered going back there this year after we were done in Rocky, but Wyoming and Montana called.

Central Colorado was very different than southern Utah. Being in the Rocky Mountains, it had a different feel. It seemed similar to being in the Adirondacks in some ways, but the terrain and weather were even more pronounced and severe. T-storms are common in the summer afternoon and some evenings, and we had our fair share of them. Bugs were noticeable, especially mosquitoes, we had a few bad moments with them but very seldom resorted to repellant. The summer season is shorter there than in Utah, it was turning noticeably colder towards the end of August, especially at night. So back to the ‘feel’ of the place, I got both a sense of it being civilized and uncivilized, depending on where you were to some extent. Like Utah, you could get far away from towns or roads, there was lots of wilderness if you wanted it. The Arapahoe and Roosevelt National Forests were both just outside the boundaries of Rocky. Much of them as well as 95% of Rocky were designated wilderness. It was rugged too, especially the aptly-named Neversummer Mountains, which were largely untrammeled by man. Ask our friend Jason about the desolateness there after he spent some intense time there in total solitude.

Some of my feelings for the Rockies comes from reading Enos Mills or Isabella Bird. They were both there in the 1800’s before the Rockies got settled to much of a degree. They paint a picture in their writings of a rough and challenging place, not a place for sissies. I could get a sense of that by being in the Rockies, I saw the same things they saw and felt the same lure to explore. They were always prepared to spend the night out in the elements and often did. I made sure that I always got back before dark to where I had a safe dry bed, one big difference I had from them. Isabella Bird was mainly just passing through on horseback in a lot of the Colorado Rockies. It was remarkable for a woman of that day to travel alone in rough country like that. Enos Mills lived most of his life in Estes Park, which was not the overrun mountain town it is today. He became very familiar with what is now Rocky Mountain N.P. as that was his back yard. I tried to achieve some familiarity with it too, and did to a fair degree on the western side of the park. I began to recognize the different mountains by name and even though I respected the immensity of the western side of the park, I began to get a sense of the size of the place. Enos Mills had a size-sense, and some of the rangers who have spent more than twenty years there have it. That’s when it becomes second nature to be in a place, you never feel totally lost or uncertain how far you have to go to your destination. It’s a cool feeling, and gives a certain level of security.

The Rocky area has more of a typical western cowboy flavor than Utah I think. Utah is a bit of an anomaly with its Mormon influence, but the rest of the west has a more independent make-it-for-yourself flavor. Not that people don’t pull together when they need to there, but you know you’re in the real west when you’re in some of the little backwater towns or the middle of nowhere. Then there are the upscale towns like Breckenridge, Aspen, Telluride and Steamboat Springs which are a different west that caters to the tourists and BMW set. They are just little islands of opulence in a vast area of imposing terrain and sparse population where it has to be tough to make a living. Where there’s not forests, there’s lots of ranching and many of the residents do seasonal work to get by. They came from tough stock too I’m sure. I would meet people in the park occasionally who had a long family history in Colorado. They related in many ways to the story we told at the Holzwarth Historic Site about ranching in the old days. Wasn’t easy.

Colorado has more winter than southern Utah, although they had a pretty severe winter at Bryce last year and have already hit minus temps this year. Both states offer a lot of skiing, that would be great to be out there for that. We may just have to find our way there during the ski season, which extends well into May in many areas. The snow in the higher mountains doesn’t melt until mid-July. We were in some snow on our trips in both Utah and Colorado, but there was never enough for skiing. Back when we were entertaining the idea of living in our trailer full-time, my hope was to park it somewhere warm and sunny during the winter but with access to some higher ground where we could get into the snow. If we get good snow in New York soon, I will be satisfied with that too.

So here it is almost winter in Binghamton. We have made several applications for assignments in parks and wilderness areas for next year and are now waiting to hear back on some of them we hope. Winter has certainly hit many of the mountains already. I was in the White Mountains of New Hampshire in early November, where there was plenty of snow. But unseasonably mild weather allowed us to get high in the mountains, I was able to summit six of them including Mt. Washington on a sunny, warm, calm day. It was surreal, better conditions than most days in the summer. Today is heavy rain with flood warnings, not the kind of weather anyone but ducks want. I look out the window and imagine I see the white tops of mountains. They could be eastern mountains or western mountains, I don’t care. But the west is calling and I may not be able to wait until next June to get there this time.

P.S. I have started another blog with a completely different tone.
http://notafraidofliving.blogspot.com/
I'm not sure where I'm going with this blog yet, to be honest. I may cheat and just throw out sound bites, or I may turn it into a world class literary masterpiece. hah. At least i will try to use humor to make a few points, but it may be up to the reader to truly appreciate the meaning.