You see, I tried washing my hair this morning to no avail.
October 18, 2020: Andrea and I traveled two hours up a dirt road yesterday – to a ridge dense with lodgepole along the Colorado Trail behind and beyond Purgatory Ski Area – almost to Rico. We hiked for a couple hours and then returned via the same dusty road, coughing and sputtering and sneezing whist reminding ourselves to keep sipping from hydration packs. Arriving home, we exited her trusty 4-wheel drive truck, stomped our feet at the door and entered our apartment. We smelled like dust. In our wake, the kitchen smelled like dust. My hair, freshly washed before setting out, was grey and smelled like dust. As I brushed out my hair – billows of dust scattered everywhere. I thought of my Mom and her stories of traveling the Alcan Highway in 1953. Her hair turned so gray from the dust – she said – that the inn keeper thought she was Dad’s mother when they found a room and stopped for the evening. She remedied this by washing her hair in water dipped from the nearby stream. Her hair returned to dark brunette. I tried washing my hair this morning to no avail. I’m still sporting long shimmering gray over light brown locks. Maybe I need to fetch water from a stream?
Friends don’t let friends miss out on all the good things in life – or – Purple Bliss is just an Emotion on the Water
The first thing you need to know about Janice is that she is older than I – by about four days. This is not the case with so many of my friends. I have a friend of 43 years who never lets me forget she is younger – by four months. Yet I will forgive her generously for this age bias because she accompanies me on beautiful hikes – even invites me. We have enjoyed many adventures together. Thank God for my newer friends who admit they are older. But the thing about friends – older and newer, younger or elder – is that friends don’t let friends miss out on all the good things in life.
Yes, I have friends with an uncanny ability to sniff out the best things in life and then foist them on me. Take Linda, for instance, she tracked me down in Canyonlands and proceeded to hike me to her favorite places in my own backyard. Then, she came to visit me at Glen Canyon and beguiled me with stories from her Lake Powell memories. But more importantly, we kayaked down 11 miles of the John Wesley Powell route of the Colorado River from Ferry Swale to Lee’s Ferry and I have pictures to prove it.
Janice and I have more things in common than just our June birthdays. I met her through Sweet Adelines so it may be safely assumed we both love to sing. But what, I ask you, is ever safe about singing? It is such a gateway drug. First you are sitting on chairs and then practicing on risers and before you know it you are preforming on stages and soon you find yourself not only singing in the streets, but dancing in the streets. I have made many unique friends in this way.
So yes, Janice and I have a June birthday month in common, we are both about 5 foot three or four depending on how you round it, we love to hike and travel, we share a love for singing – and we were both working in public schools at the time we first met – I as a music specialist and Janice as a resource teacher. But in one area, Janice and I are complementary opposites. Janice is a champion foister. I am the foisted upon. Definitely to my benefit.
After my first stint with Sweet Adelines, I moved to Seattle. Janice kept in touch. When she found out I was coming back to Colorado, she immediately engaged her recruiting persuasion. Why would I not want to sing tenor in a newly minted quartet? Sigh. Four of us made beautiful Musique together. But no. Singing and dressing alike was not enough. We must do bonding activities together – the chorus that plays together stays together. Janice and two other Sweet Adelines were going kayaking on the Colorado, would I come?
I was stubborn and full of lame excuses like not having a kayak or PFD. But Janice knows how to foist. She had an extra kayak and PFD. She told me when to show up. She gave me specific instructions on what to wear and what to bring. Those Adelines laced me into the PFD, seated me in a vessel, handed me a paddle and shoved me off. Up ahead, Janice led in her Purple Bliss. Bringing up the rear, I floated in Janice’s original hunter green kayak, taking to the water like a duck.
When I know it’s right, you don’t have to ask me twice – but they did. We also floated the Gunnison that summer. And I spent a fair amount of time kayak shopping in local sporting goods stores.
Seven years later I was still single and kayakless, but I now had a good deal of experience under my belt having rented all manner and style of kayaks for recreation. Sit in. Sit on. Inflate. Deflate. Lake. River. Back-haul. U-haul. Tie in the truck. Shove in the van. Mount in the kayak carrier. Kayak carrier – what a great concept! Janice bought one – a kayak rack – for her motorhome. The rack was second hand – and came with two kayaks. Worst of all for Janice – and best of all for me – Purple Bliss would not fit in the carrier. She was too skinny – at both ends.
And then Janice began her attempts to foist Purple Bliss on me. It took her two years. During that time she visited me twice at Lone Rock. She dined me, tried to wine me, hiked with me and once even lent me the hunter green kayak to go exploring slots in the nether regions of Lake Powell. Every time I mentioned kayaking on social media, she followed up by promoting Purple Bliss to me.
In early October I arranged to meet Janice at her place, ostensibly to sign two of my books which she had ordered on Amazon, but with a covert motive to kayak shop – to see if the purple kayak would ride on top my car. Janice let me do it myself. It fits and rides charmingly. We finally agreed on a price. The transfer took place ten days ago. Janice has released her favorite vessel and I am adoption happy. I have been on the water four times in less than a fortnight.
Purple Bliss is a specialty kayak built by Emotion and brokered by REI. She is designed especially for a small woman. She weighs only 34 pounds. She is a thing of both beauty and independence. I can hoist her to the rooftop of my Rav4 (aka Silvergirl) and take her down – after all, she weighs less than a grandchild – even if she is 10 feet long. We go everywhere together – just the two of us – with a step stool and a purple and red paddle and a red PFD. Friends don’t let friends miss out on all the good things in life.
I exited the dusty gravel road that leads to Mineral Campground and merged onto the smooth, paved road that would take me to Silverton and thus back to Durango. No more had I begun to gain speed then I had to slow down. Traffic up ahead. Cars stopped on both sides of the road. Some double-parked. Alertly my eyes scanned in all directions. No police car. No emergency vehicles. No herd of deer crossing the road. No bear scratching in the autumn undergrowth. Yet everyone had cameras in hand. It was the 4:00 pm autumnal glow. The sun perched on a westerly peak before making final descent. The aspen trees in various stages of green to orange and the weather perfect, just perfect. The cars – all thirteen – stopping for beauty. Nothing more.
How infrequently that happens anymore. Oh, I stop. I slow down. I move over for construction. I pull aside for emergency vehicles. I chose a different route to go around clogged traffic. But do I come to a full stop? Interrupt my headlong rush toward deadline – for beauty?
It was, perhaps, the most beautiful hike I had ever taken – and only four days after the outing previously mentioned where traffic was stalled for beauty. Maybe it was the season. The colors were at their apex in higher elevations and I was again outside Silverton, ravenously hiking leaf strewn trails before the snow flies. Maybe it was the time of day. I dithered around Durango trying to decide my destination until perilously close to noon. So, I found myself on the trail at midday, oooohing and ahhing and hiking a narrow steep trail. Something called Highland Mary. What a beautiful name. Obviously named for some woman like me a hundred years ago. Someone who loved to go a-wandering along a mountain path, someone who liked to sing. Maybe she sang to the sheep – or the cows. I wanted to bubble into spontaneous song, perhaps Loch Lomond, or Lonely Goatherd. A boulder strewn field demanded all my concentration to preserve my ankles and I ceased to sing. Soon thereafter a lake with a small island took my breath away. I followed the path to the next lake and found a flat rock on which to spread my lunch. I dined in silence and in beauty.
Someone asked a seasoned old-timer to name his favorite trail. “The one just taken,” he said. I couldn’t agree more. Returning home, I logged my distance and time for an outdoor challenge I have chosen to participate in. I am usually a faster hiker so I couldn’t help adding the following comment: This hike would take much less time if you didn’t have to stop for pictures so often.
Warning: Hiking may keep you from other social obligations such as social media. Is your love of beauty keeping you in a constant state of peace and contemplation rather than agonizing over the current societal situation? You may be addicted.
Addicted. And now I see my future. For the next 20 years I am going to chase beauty and truth. And I also know where I am most likely to find it. Nature. Music. Books.
She hikes. In sandals. She can’t get her hiking boots on anymore and she hasn’t found a suitable new pair. But she does have a new pair of sandals – with fresh tread – in the box on her closet shelf. Waiting for next season. End of summer sale. The wise woman is always prepared. She also bought a couple new pairs of wool socks – smart ones. Until the snow flies, her sandals will do just fine. Besides, with sandals you can walk right in and through the creek and keep moving forward. Well, if it’s a cool morning, you might want to stop and take off your wool socks first before you walk through the water so you can put them on warm and dry later.
With the right kind of sandals, one is always prepared. One can hike or walk or fish or kayak. One can shove a kayak off from the beach or drag a kayak back from the beach, right through the sand or mud or pooling water. When one wears sandals, she can rise in the morning and bathe and do her toenails after she straps on her sandals and go hike while her pedicure is drying. Sandals are so versatile they go with her shorts, her skirt, her tunic or her maxi-dress.
So it was that she rose on a typical Tuesday morning, made a quick toilette, pulled on her hiking clothes and sandals and took a four-mile hike to the Lion’s Den and back. The trail is well used by walkers, runners and bicyclists. It is quite dusty, though not unbearably hot this time of year. She strode through brush and trees at a good pace, gained 22 floors in elevation, stopped to enjoy the colors of the changing season, and met a masked art class spread out on the trail and sketching. She returned home having passed only a handful of bikers and joggers because it was nearing midday. “Whoof,” she said pulling off her socks and shaking them. She stepped into the bathtub and rinsed off her legs -the final twelve inches from calve down to the dirty feet. She shook her head and smiled wryly to herself. And they actually had to explain the practice and purpose of foot-washing to us in Sunday School when we were kids? I’m telling you, we must have been a pack of nature deprived and trail starved baby boomers growing up. But look at us now! Bicycles. Kayaks. Running shoes. Tents. Campers. Motorhomes. – and foot washing. We’re making up for lost time.
Putting One Foot in Front of the Other, Hiking for Life!
