Hello again, ladies and gents –

I write you now from Michigan, a wonderful state where I’m spending a week with my family for the Nana’s 80th. The past several days have been filled with a most obscene amount of anatomical and scatological humor as well as a great deal of outdoor pursuits. Needless to say, I’ve been very much at ease. But that’s not why you’re reading these e-mails, I suppose. You read them for the Western goodies. And Western goodies you shall have.

After my time in Boulder, I picked up my brother Jonny in Denver, and we wound westward through deep green mountain passes to reach the adorable town of Glenwood Springs. We spent the night in a hippied-out hostel where hikers mingled with dead-heads mingled with people like the weird old clown named Checkers who made balloon animals and wore a permanent make-up free frown. Then after Glenwood Springs, we charged south to reach the San Juan Skyway, a wiggly, wonderful loop of mountain roads passing through the San Juan range. After marveling at the scenery, we reached the town of Telluride just in time for the Nothing Festival. Because Telluride is a haven of creative, wealthy types, it has festivals each weekend… and because this festival was called the Nothing Festival, there was really nothing special happening. Well, nothing special except for the free movies and naked bike ride.

Now, Telluride is truly something to behold – a veritable picture postcard of a town. There’s only one road to reach the town, and it dead ends in the shadow of the mountains that keep watch over the rainbow-painted houses. Waterfalls tumble down the sides of cliffs, and clouds pass lazily overhead, muting the colors of the mountain with puffy swaths of shade. Because the air is so thin at that altitude, I found myself slightly oxygen-deprived and in a happy state of delirium much of the time (just as in the Rockies outside Boulder), and although it can get chilly up there, I wound up with an enviable tan.

Jonny and I stayed with a trio of random individuals who live in a lilac house. While millionaires abound in Telluride, Tom, Mary, and Jon were certainly a bit alternative for their surroundings. Jon was the friend who opened his home to us, understanding very well the power of hospitality. “[After all],” he shared, “[he would have been homeless himself in the past had he not been housed by Cirque de Soleil performers in Vegas and a teepee-dwelling fellow in the mountains of Colorado].” Mary was a funny girl who happened to be from Columbus, OH, and Tom was a pothead who giggled with vigor, often trailed off mid-sentence, believed locusts to be alien grasshoppers, and accidentally lit his hand on fire while trying to impress us. He also took Jonny and me hiking up to see the incredible Bridal Veil falls which rush forth above the town, and he decided that instead of using a belt to hold up his much-too-large hemp shorts, he’d stick a piece of firewood in the side and call it a “challenge.”

From Telluride, Jonny and I continued on the Durango, Colorado, where a couple of really nice local guys took us out to dinner and to the going-away celebration of their favorite bartender Russell. The following day, Jonny and I hopped aboard the nerdy Durango-Silverton Scenic Railway, joining hordes of senior citizens and families with small children, and we delighted at the landscape as we chug-chug-chugged along to Silverton. While Silverton is insanely touristy, any creative individual can find a myriad of amusing/awkward things to do; I’d recommend the trip to anyone with a love of nature or history, and a vivid imagination.

Our final stop in Colorado was Mesa Verde National Park, an astounding change of scenery from the lush, forested hillsides we’d seen further north. At Mesa Verde, we wandered desert paths and Native American cliff dwellings, deserted by the Anasazi people in the 1300s or so. We took a long walk to view petroglyphs, which somehow we managed to miss along the way… but, because of the hike, we were lucky enough to witness a spectacular lightning storm just across the canyon and atop the next mesa. We then spent our first night camping, in a rather over-crowded campsite and hurrying to cook our veggies over an open fire as the storm began to unleash its floods upon us. Luckily enough, we made it into the tent in time to withstand the nightlong storm, and I passed the rest of the evening reading about how to survive in the wild, compliments of Bear Grylls of the TV program “Man vs. Wild.” (Thanks for the book, Abbie!)

I’m sure that’s more than enough information for one e-mail. Off to enjoy some time with the family.

As sunlight lights these emerald paths, I leave you.

Rachel


P.S. To track my journey:
http://maps.google.com/maps/ms?ie=UTF8&hl=en&msa=0&msid=108615724721649217631.00045208d5352931b9e50&ll=37.020098,-107.753906&spn=17.164462,28.78418&z=5