When I was little, my father, brother and I used to trek off to the Rockies for long, extended vacations during the summer. We spent most of our time camping, hiking, eating questionable stuff out of tin cans, listening to questionable comedians on cassette tapes, chasing chipmunks and generally being awed by the monstrous beauty of a range of mountains that had erupted from the earth.
As Florida boys — where elevation was measured by how high your front porch was — it was a dizzying sight to behold. Behemoths topping out at 13,000 feet, or more.
In Durango, we two little kids and our bearded father would board the narrow-gauge Durango & Silverton Railroad with nothing but hiking packs and a couple of hiking sticks. We would sit amongst the sightseers as smoke-stack ashes rained down on us and the train crept deeper and deeper into the mountains. At some point it would come to an abrupt stop in the middle of a lonely gorge.
Off we would hop, grabbing our packs and sticks from the freight car as puzzled tourists hung out the windows watching us, saying things to each other like, “Look Martha, that strange man is leading his two children off to be eaten by bears. We’re going to read about this in the newspaper!”
Then we would disappear up the pass as the sounds of the huffing train echoed through mountains and slowly chugged away. We would camp near a beaver den and spend the next few days exploring the more navigable peaks with names like Vestal and Arrowhead, up almost three miles into the sky.
It made you appreciate the desolation out there. The power and the remoteness. That this was a different world, and completely cutoff from the one I knew.
This all came rushing back to me recently when my family started talking about summer vacations. Where should we go?
“Back to the Smoky Mountains,” my 10-year-old daughter suggested. She is about the age I was on those trips.
“No!” I told her. “Those aren’t mountains. This summer we should go see some ‘real’ mountains!”
And my mind was set. Experience the real outdoors. Maybe not as rugged as I got as a kid — I like my modern conveniences, too!
But get back out there and show her that there are still wild lands left in this country. Places where giant craggy peaks tower over you and teach you lessons about your place in the universe. That we’re not as big as we think we are, and not so small either.
So I’m in Colorado planning mode, searching out places to go, hikes to trek, questionable things to eat out of tins. Trying to reconnect with an important, even transformational period in my life. And trying to create a new experience for a new little kid who needs to be awed by monstrous beauty. (Maybe we’ll just skip the R-rated comedians this go around.)