Appeasing Your Inner Adrenalin Junkie
March 8, 2013
Glutton for Environmental Punishment
April 5, 2013
I wrote this essay a week ago when it got cloudy one day while I was jumping from mud puddle to mud puddle and wishing I was sauntering along a tropical beach instead. Here it is a week and a half later and it’s lightly snowing outside. Ah, spring time in the San Juan Mountains. The one time of the year I really wish I was somewhere else other than in this place.
Word Count: 888
Getting Thyself the Hell
Out of Dodge
I really like living in this valley. Enjoy telling anyone and everyone who’ll listen to my rants that I enjoy the long winters because I’m such a big skier. I also thank the weather gods each and every day that out here in the west we get these big snowstorms, but it isn’t like atmospheric patterns in other parts of the country. As you travel further to the east: a huge low-pressure system moves in, and is immediately followed by a month of grey, cloudy, dreary weather. Not exactly the most conducive environment for maintaining a stable mental state. I’m sure some postal employees in various parts of the Midwest and East are very nervous at selected times throughout the winter.
The further west you go we also get the big storms, but 90% of the time it’s different. The clouds lift, winds die down, and soon you’ve got cobalt blue skies appearing on the horizon right after the storm has moved out. Seems as if you want to go out in it just so you can enjoy the sunshine about ready to blast down on everything.
Like I said earlier though, our winters (particularly at this altitude) can tend to be a bit long. No matter how much you enjoy playing in it you find yourself needing a change. Variety is the spice of life so after awhile you get this hankering to, “Get the Hell out of Dodge,” as cowpokes used to say back in the old west. There, I said it. You didn’t think I could do it. Neither did I come to think of it.
Sometimes the latter part of March and the entire month of April can be the cruelest time of the year to be living here. You hop in the car, and point it in the direction of lower altitudes. Suddenly you discover that things are coming back to life, The grass is turning green, trees are budding out, and spring flowers starting to gingerly pop their heads out of the ground. Then you get back behind the wheel of your internal combustion transport vehicle only to climb over the pass and find that winter still maintains a vice-like grip on this place.
In the past, I’d develop ways to get around this. Back in my heavy-duty running days I used to travel to the Grand Canyon. Here a group of us masochists would run down one trail on the south rim, only to hit the bottom of the canyon and run back up to the top (all in the same day). You can do those sorts of things when you’re in your youth. Its sort of like mountain running, only you do it in reverse.
Since the downhill portion of the run comes first, it almost seems too easy as you start out. You put yourself in a strange frame of mind knowing that the easy part is first and the uphill portion of your jog with its lung sucking joys comes during the latter part of your jaunt.
Down along the banks of the river, the place almost seems sub-tropical. All of the trees and bushes have leafed out, everyone is sauntering around in shorts and a T-shirt, and it’s downright hot when you aren’t hunkered down in the shade. This feels pretty good, and soon you almost wish you could hang out for two or three hours at the bottom. Partially because the environment seems to have found a way to rejuvenated your wintry spirits. Plus there’s nothing quite like moving around in a single thickness of clothing. This as opposed to moving around for the last four months with three layers on top of that.
Side trips to various other desert spots have also taken place. While hanging out in these environments isn’t quite the same as the Grand Canyon adventures, they’re still a revelation. Feels good to be riding a bicycle or hiking around with the spring sun beating down on you. I guess since you haven’t experienced it so much over the intervening half a year, it somehow feels like a new physical phenomenon.
The four corners region is loaded with really cool places to discover. Although I have experienced more of them in the last few years, there are quite a few I’ve yet to check out. Does this tell you its part of my nature that I’m obsessed with exploring new, undiscovered places? Of course it does. Part of my heritage I guess?
The nice thing about these desert locales at this time of the year? It hasn’t gotten so hot yet that you find yourself wandering through them with your main objective of wanting to find new places to slob-out in the shade.
Deserts at this time of the year in the Northern hemisphere are still warm though, and ultimately going to these places is your all-encompassing objective. Summer is on its way, and now seems like the right time to be brushing off the shackles of winter and moving into the warm season.
Winter is great and for that matter so is a place where it’s perpetual summer. For some folks though, living in a place where the seasons never change just doesn’t seem right. Guess I’m one of those people.
