Travel Threads: American West

My memories are chiefly of the high alpine beauty of Colorado, especially the San Juan Mountains, Weminuche Wilderness and Maroon Bells, where we took several horse trips each lasting over a week, riding from campsite to campsite over the high passes. That landscape is dear to me: glacial cirques and snowbanks on the upper slopes, giant avalanche trails and rocky moraines, little blue mountain lakes, wildflower-studded grassy meadows, clumps of fir trees and juniper stunted by the wind, cold mountain streams chattering around the horses, legs, and sparkling aspen and birch groves farther down.

The state is named for its natural tapestries. There are the lush wildflowers of fleeting summer, growing in snowmelt. There are the blazing colors of fall, when aspens and hardwoods light up the lower slopes. And there are the mountains themselves in subdued -- and sometimes not so subdued -- shades of red, green, yellow, and gray stone, with tailings from old mines leaving strangely-colored streaks of rubble.

I can't begin to describe the clarity of the air and light up there.

My favorite memory is one sunrise high in the San Juans, when we were camped above a dark pine forest because the usual campsite was snowed in, although it was late July. The outfitter had supplied us with old army pup tents, clinging at an angle to a rocky bare slope covered in wind-bitten alpine flowers and tundra-like grasses. The sun was breaking over the saddle of the bare peaks above us. Suddenly there was a music of bells, bells, bells. The horses-- left to free-graze overnight, given cowbells to help the wranglers find the herd each morning -- came pouring down over the saddle like a living waterfall, their hooves thudding beneath the music, flowing among the tents and parting around me as they champed and steamed and collected in the open space at the edge of the campsite. We were well over 10,000 feet up, and there was little sign of the last 1000 years of civilization.

I suppose nowadays people carry cellphones and Blackberries on those trips, but I hope there's still a few places like that in the U.S. where you really can get away from it all.

Well over a mile high, the town of Ouray on the far side of Imogene Pass from Telluride is a wonderful place to strike out for jeep rides over the passes and day hikes to the mountains and ghost towns of old mining communities. Ouray has hot springs at the edge of town and a dizzying switchback highway coming down into it that makes San Franscico streets look flat and tame.

Mountain jeep roads are like nothing you've ever seen: the surfaces are just the natural rocks or gravel coming off the slopes; the grade can be close to 45 degrees, even steeper for short distances; and there may be a mile drop-off. The road coming down to Telluride (you call that a road?) has such hairpin turns that it's actually easier to back down every other switchback rather than trying to make the turn teetering on none-too-steady-looking scree.

Imogene Pass above Telluride is well over 13,000 feet high. Near the top is the ghost mining town of Tomboy, It's bleak, high above the timberline, with snowbanks lingering all summer long, bitterly cold at night. There's a fascinating memoir, Tomboy Bride, about life there at the turn of the 20th century by one of its residents, Harriet Backus.

Mesa Verde, with its magical towered dwellings nestled high up in cliffs, left a deep impression on me. The desert was barren and sparse to my east coast eyes, the plants strange, and everything from the mud brick to the rattling wooden ladders polished by use seemed to call more attention to each individual part of the landscape. I remember simple details like a few sticks delicately wedged high up in the cliff wall to let inhabitants know if the rock face had shifted; the cold kivas, ceremonial round chambers in the earth that served as chapels, with the small dark hole in the floor leading down to the last world; the toe-hole paths leading up the cliff-faces that had to be followed in a certain order, like a combination lock.

Archaeologists wondered for decades what happened to these people, but as it turns out, they are almost certainly the ancestors of the modern Pueblo Indians, driven south by natural climate changes and (perhaps) warfare.

Wyoming's Rockies are much like Colorado's, except that the eastern part of the state has more scrubland and open country, the western edge of the Great Plains. I've been to Jackson Hole, the Grand Tetons, and Yellowstone in the northwest corner of the state -- this was well before the great fires, which actually helped clear a lot of old growth.

Yellowstone deserves its fame. Not only does it protect more species of wildlife than just about any place in the continental US -- from bison to deer to rare wildflowers -- it also is a giant, ancient volcanic region with bubbling lakes of sulfuric acid, geysers, and spectacularly weird landforms caused by all the geological activity in the area.

My parents moved to Utah from Pennsylvania in 1995, after I'd left home. Ironically I haven't been skiing (apart from cross-country) since their move, but we did go skiing a few times before their move when my father was in Utah on business trips. No, we're not Mormon, and the funny thing is, you never get the Mormons on your doorstep in Utah, since the kids go out on mission away from home. It's a friendly state with a few odd quirks and a lot of gorgeous scenery. Unfortunately the mountains facing the Great Salt Lake are getting developed far too quickly.

Visitors know about Utah ski resorts, but I think there's even more golf courses. People get condos in St. George ("Dixie") in the southern part of the state so they can golf year round.



My Olympics patch is actually for the Lake Placid Olympics in 1980. My parents fled to St. George during the Salt Lake City Olympics, since the bottom of their neighborhood was blocked off by a security checkpoint.

The Flickr gallery below is my own; until now I've been lazy and just pointing you towards other people's photos.

New Mexico and Arizona also have their wonders, but somehow I've never gotten patches from most of the places I've visited there.

White Sands, New Mexico on the opposite side of the Organ Mountains from Las Cruces is one of my favorite places. No, not the testing site, although I recall my aunt telling me about the time a thing like a batarang buzzed her in the early eighties (the Stealth Bomber, she realized, once it was declassified). She lived in Las Cruces for a while and took us to see White Sands, an eerie lunar landscape of crystalline white dunes that were even brighter than the snow falling on them.

Don't go to Las Cruces for the Fourth of July, though. As far as I could tell, since the fire hazard there is 100%, NO fireworks were illegal. Hopefully by now the laws have changed. It looked like the Blitz on LSD. We camped in the mountains above the town and prayed the house would be there when we got back.

One time we took a day trip to Carlsbad Caverns. I've been to many caves (mostly guided), and Carlsbad truly lives up to its name as a spectacular and special place. Cavern after cavern of huge spires, curtains, columns and pools leave one feeling small, but unlike some big caves, Carlsbad has stunningly delicate formations of great beauty (don't touch -- your skin's oil will stop their growth). Explorers are still finding more and more passages.

If you're there at sunset, don't forget to stop by the entrance and watch the bats come out. It's like a bat tornado, only slower. I love bats. They're graceful and they eat mosquitoes -- why are people afraid of them? They don't get tangled in people's hair; I've found out by standing in front of their exits that they'll do a Millenium Falcon 90 degree flip to dodge!