Wanderlust Wonderings

(A small detour from normal entries as we explore wider horizons).

Landing in Denver, it was obvious this vacation was going to be huge. So huge. Better than you can imagine huge. The best vacation ever. Just huge. Actually, it was clearly going to rock, totally rock. Boulder Colorado, Rocky Mountains, Peak to Peak (rocks), Colorado Monument (more rock), The Arches National park; even more rock. Totally rocking in the first few days.

Rolling into Boulder, a university town bustling with parents and students moving all manner of gear, with all manner of vehicles and extensions; causing road closures and cash register queues after the long summer break, in readiness for the new academic season. It’s not hard to see why this contemporary, environment focused, bike peddling outdoors manic town is a unique American beacon in an otherwise oft times disposable society. With taxes on soft drink, a price for plastic bags and compost bins outside supermarkets, its whole foods and contemporary focus, forms the foundation for a solid platform of eco-sophistication and leadership. Friendly folks excitedly offer assistance, write lists of things to do and places to eat on restaurant receipts, whilst simultaneously apologizing for their president in their introductory salutations. This place rocks.

Famous for its 300 days a year sunshine, steep escarpments and ‘14ers’ (4267.2mtr) peaks. The Rocky Mountain Trail Ridge Road, 3,713 meters high, the so called ‘highway to the sky’, embodies an amusement park rollercoaster with its steep inclines/declines and sharp bends over its 77km windswept, alpine tundra concealed, UV saturated, ice age glacial mountains. Crossing the Continental divide where water parts left or right to either the Atlantic or Pacific Ocean, (with an absence of Egyptian chariots), a metaphor crystallises reflective of the political, social and environmental schisms clearly apparent across this country.

Continuing the ‘peak crawl’, eyes grow weary from high altitudes and the eternal search for Rocky and Bullwinkle. A chipmunk scavenging, or blue jay searching out pine seeds hardly fits the brochure’s description of “dense wildlife”. Yes, Basil Fawlty, our expectations most certainly are, “Herds of wildebeest sweeping majestically”. Seriously, this is the Rockies! Nightfall draws out nomadic desperation, a deep running ancestral connection to the Arapaho and Ute tribe’s early  hunting and gathering on Beaver Plains. Wildlife searching; spotlighting…. stalking. There in the high beams, (David Attenborough style), 70-100  Elk/Wapiti .

Oh,
“But the Colorado rocky mountain high
I’ve seen it rainin’ fire in the sky
The shadow from the starlight is softer than a lullabye
Rocky mountain high (Colorado)” John Denver