Off the westbound lane of highway 160, smack dab on the La Plata-Montezuma County line at the summit of a grade locally called Mancos Hill, you can turn right into National Forest. Just take Madden Peak Road.
If you’re in a pint-sized Toyota Yaris with about one inch of clearance and those skinny little tires, you […]
I drove west along I-40 through central New Mexico until I hit 285. I took that north through Santa Fe and followed the mountains. 30 miles east of Pagosa Springs, the storm gathered itself in fingers drawn into a great hand. Sun blotted behind the clouds, and the world caught fire.
Virga streaked the sunset. The […]
Just shy of the Veteran’s Day weekend, I had some business in Grand Junction, so I decided to take my beat-up pickup and my beat-up old truck camper for a walk and make a long weekend out of it, do some cold camping out in the central Utah outback called the Swell, the San Rafael […]
At the end of Forest Service Road 610, a few dozen yards from my cliff side campsite, I entered the Saddle Mountain Wilderness. The trailhead marker identified the trail as Nankoweap, but most other sources would call it Saddle Mountain Trail. To be safe, just call it by its NFS designation: Forest Service Trail 57. […]
Amazing how chance works. I need to let someone know I’ll be out of phone contact for a few days, but my cell has no service. Four mountain bikers show up, one of whom has a perfectly splendid and working cell phone. Then I ask God for inspiration, for an intuitive thought to guide where […]
From a bivouac of dirt, necklaced by fragments of Kaibab limestone, winds roar like jets, never stop blowing. 40 miles west by southwest, Mount Trumbull and the Uinkareets rest on the straight horizon line of the North Rim. The wind strafes everything, twitters every branch and limb, driving the flies and bees alee. Talus slopes […]
A geologist I know once said that southeastern Utah is the busiest place on earth, geologically speaking. In late October, I decided to take a drive there from Mancos, Colorado. Mancos, tucked away in a seam of the Four Corners quilt, has, maybe, 1,500 people. Then I passed by Dolores, with even fewer citizens, and […]
I dream about these vacant places. I lull myself to sleep with imaginings of desert solitude when I’m cooped up back in my Chicago rowhouse. Desolation, dark winds are my fantasies, always alone. I drive over a thousand miles to be alone. I pack gear and read survival books and study maps, so I can […]
The day before Halloween. It seems too strange to call it All Hallows Eve Eve. The road to the Colorado Overlook in Canyonlands National Park, Utah, is paved with hazardous jutting claws of rock snarling from lips of stair-step drops “which visitors may avoid by parking on the road and walking to the overlook.” And […]
On the Grand Canyon’s North Rim, across gravel roads 39 miles from Jacob Lake, I arrive at Parissawampitts Point, a vista point just west of the National Park. The forecast calls for rain over several days. The rim cools down, devoid of people in its early October mien near the NPS closing point of the […]
