You Can’t Blame it on The Altitude (Silverton Style)
May 15, 2015
Disguised Painful Serendipity (Short Story)
June 12, 2015
Things are happening fast and furious in the publication of this book. The following essay was originally posted in summer of 2012 and is the only essay that got positive votes from all of the pre-production readers for the book.
Word Count: 880
Land of the Free,
Home of the Brainless
Most people think of the 4th of July in Silverton as an opportunity to begin doing in all sorts of summer things. Chances to run into, and visit with an old friend you haven’t seen since high school days. Perhaps go on that hike you’ve been threatening to do, or wander around town and take in the carnival atmosphere that always comes with the holiday.
My youth in Silverton often meant the start of a different sort of summertime activity that actually doesn’t have a whole lot to do with the holiday. Searching out and partaking of an action that in retrospect probably should’ve been done in a more tropical, or sub-tropical type environments. Swimming, or at least attempting to indulge in the sport.
Now you might be asking yourself, how is it possible for someone to go swimming around here without jumping into a car and driving twenty four miles over the mountain to use the hot springs pool in Ouray? From a reasonable and theoretically at this point in my life more mature perspective, I ask myself that same question these days.
From a thirteen year-old’s viewpoint, my friends and I found all sorts of ways to override the Ouray travel option. Who’s the wise old sage that said youth is wasted on the young? More appropriately what philosopher coined the term, “Ah, to be young and dumb once again.” Oh yes, I’m the one who just wrote that.
The initial way we often indulged in the swimming thing was to round up some inner tubes at the local service station and take our chances riding down the mighty Animas River. This was a two-fold experience in that my friends and I in addition to dipping into water temperatures that were often two or three degrees above freezing, also found ourselves floating down a river that kayakers nowadays would consider class III or IV. Somewhat challenging, but nothing too hard to maneuver. In an inner tube as a teenager, giving you that comforting feeling of impending apocalypse.
In addition to the temperatures that would give arctic snow melt a run for its money in the frigid department and the rushing torrent aspect; the flow in certain cases wasn’t too big. When we’d try and maneuver the river in those situations, you’d see us float over what my friend and I often referred to as “Butt-busters”. You’re lackadaisically lounging your way down the river, ala Huck Finn style, when all of a sudden the stream widens, gets shallower, and we found ourselves trying to negotiate our way over all sorts of obstacles. If you were sunk too low in your inner tube, then your derriere banged against all types of rocks, logs, and other objects. Strategically placed by the Gods of swimming in order to deter wayward floaters like us.
After awhile we needed (or wanted) to move onto other expansive swimming horizons. Lots of ponds and other standing bodies of water that you can jump into and dog paddle your way around in an attempt to look like you’re having fun.
Many was the time we’d be valiantly swimming our way from one end of the lake to the other and one of us would casually mention that the person next to them had a purplish-white tinge to their skin color. Why is that? Maybe that ice on the far edge of the lake had something to do with it?
Then my cousin who was doing summer geology fieldwork told us about the swimming hole at Lime Creek. This amazing plunge pool where Pole Creek empties into Lime that has a seemingly bottomless depth to it. Cliffs surrounding the waterfall of varying heights you can jump off of, and crystal clear water. That first odyssey to the Lime Creek swimming hole is one of my fondest teenage memories. You start out jumping into the pool from a ten-foot height, and then as you get braver and more accustomed to the bird-sized horse-fly bites and bone chilling temperatures you climb higher and higher up the ledges. Pretty soon you’re jumping off the forty-foot perch and your buddy even attempts to do his best Acapulco cliff-diver impersonation from the fifty-foot ledge. He almost stuck his chest out as far as they do too.
Two years ago I was able to visit the swimming holes at Cascade Creek and these are almost as amazing. You follow the stream from one plunge pool to the next, and the last one literally involves sitting down on your ### and doing the water slide thing into that last hole. Simply incredible, and a big reason why life in the summertime is exactly like George Gershwin said it was in that Broadway song.
Since that time I’ve had numerous opportunities to practice my aquatic maneuvers in tropical environs, and they truly are amazing places. The plunge pools in Vermont are incredible and that’s a big reason why New England is the unofficial North American capital of swimming holes in my eyes.
Nothing beats leaping into water frolicking spots here in the San Juans. Once you’ve spent a sufficient amount of time in the water in order to deaden the chill of course.
