A Sunday Drive, looking down the road which leads to Stony Pass
I grew up in Suburbia. The Sunday Drive was a standard part of life, if not for us, a family with four active kids and parents both working in offices, at home and in the community, then for the many we’d see out on the road, driving oh-so-slow down the roads and lanes on a Sunday afternoon, several in the same big car, folks in the front and back seats of various generations, all looking lazily through the windows at the scenery passing before them, perchance as easy and refreshing as watching an old fashioned movie on TV, one of those filmed in black and white and full of good humor.
Yesterday I was guilty of the same, in a way. Though I refuse to admit I am becoming my parents. Not that it would be a bad thing; it’s just one of those things I am steadfast to never admit…
The better part of the day was spent taking a backpacker up to the Continental Divide Trail as it crosses up on Stony Pass, at the very beginning of the Rio Grande. See? I can still call it “work.” The arrangements were made well in advance by the solo adventurer we were glad to help out So the three of us decided to not only to lend a hand to this back country hiker, but to make the most of the day. Shouldn’t we always do that?!?
Forrest on his motor bike and Bob and I and the backpacker in the old truck… up the road we bounced and jogged and jiggled from the Ranch to the Continental Divide at Stony Pass, a notoriously rough and poorly maintained alpine loop jeep road, 17 miles that took nearly two hours, one way…
Oh, I think of how it was back in the day, with horse and wagon or ox and cart, and I refrain from any complain about comfort…
But, alas, to the high country far faster than a horse will allow, this road enables us to travel, to then be high above it all, looking back at our world, at the very beginnings of the Mighty Rio, and far off and away into the world on the other side of the Divide, a world I so rarely venture to, as I’m not known for going much further than a horse can get me in a couple of days.
from where it all begins, the first waters of the Rio Grande.
The high country was ablaze in color. Not the color that deems poetic for the many groups who endure that bumpy drive to come up in the peak of summer with picnic and camera in hand to view the mountain awash in her brilliant wild flower display, on show for all like the bright lights of downtown in a big city. The color now was as subtle and magnificent, and almost as mysterious, as the sparkling lights in the night sky. The early autumn change of tundra. Simple magnificence. A minimal display in comparison, but deeper as the eye stares longer and farther. Cold and harsh and real. Full of question and change and possibly even concern, as the mountain accepts the now freezing night temperatures and lower sun and shorter days and prepares for what she knows will come.
Sunday Drivers?