East West
I stood on the Great Divide yesterday. One foot in the east, one foot in the west, straddling our big country. I was at Wolf Creek Pass, elevation 10,858. I wondered how in the world any wagon train ever made it through these mountains to settle the west. I wondered how Lewis and Clark felt when they saw these big mountains after paddling up the Missouri. I wondered what the land was like before two continental plates collided and pushed these mountains into the air.
I then took those puzzles with me as we drove into the mountains on a dirt access road just to see what we could see. And what we saw were golden Aspens, pine beetle victims, a few burned trees, crystal clear lakes, and miles and miles of wild scenic wonder. Around every turn there was a new view, a new perspective and I was happy the roads were hard to reach and a little rough because it meant you had to want to be there, and we did, and we went, and it was solitary.
When we finished, we sidled on home to sit in the driveway of the home our intrepid band of travelers was renting to watch the sunset, because we just hadn’t seen enough beauty that day, and did I mention we also went to Chimney Rock National Monument earlier that day to climb up the high peak and wonder how an ancient people built stone houses in the wild landscape. All in all, it was quite a day, and in the end, we sang songs because that’s what you do when you’re happy and you’ve stood on mountains alongside people you love to see the whole world spread before you.
John W. Wilson is the author of The Long Goodbye: A Caregiver's Tale