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Between Backpacking Trips

© James E. Ratzloff

I don't write this column from a wilderness camp, but I expect that would be a good thing, although I not sure I could really slow down enough to do so.

My mountain days are usually plenty full with exploring and taking photographs or fishing. Beyond that I am surely content to just sit and watch the weather, or maybe a reflection in a lake, or the light on the peaks altered from clouds moving in front of the sun. The rest is spent cooking breakfast or dinner or sleeping that restful sleep that comes from an active mountain day.

I am like most of us common folk who work for a living when I am not able to slip away to do what I really love, and I find the time to scribble these ramblings in a notebook while I am on the bus and/or light rail home from my job. (the morning commute is reserved for getting a little extra sleep).

And you may notice a certain amount of longing in what I write when all I can see is the city passing by out the window. The mountains are a distant view beneath the setting sun, and the memory of the days of freedom and beauty in a wilderness camp are even more distant. I can't help but measure the fullness of these city days against those up there, where I get up with the sun, make my coffee in the cool mountain air, and face a day ahead with nothing planned but wandering around where the only trails are made by elk, with my wild-hearted border collies, Ben and Maggie.

Darn, those days are good, so good in fact that I am not sure I really mind these in between times. The hope of my next trip can sustain me, as long as it is not too far in the future. I can usually go about a month, tops, before I have to load up my pack and head my truck west with the dogs in the back, even in the dead of winter.

I only have a few spots that I return to every year. Most of the time I try to find a new trail to backpack on, a new area to check out, because I enjoy the edge of discovery felt by hiking up an unknown trail.

So as the light rail is turning the corner onto Colfax at Auraria, and my stop is coming up, I have to say I feel like I am lucky that I can leave my truck in the garage all week long, to only get it out when I do errands or volunteer nature programs or go on backpacking trips. Most of the time I get to sit and read or write, letting someone else drive, thereby lessening my impact on the natural world that I enjoy so much.

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