The fine view from Crested Butte

Woke in Crested Butte to a series of emails from high school friends playing quite cleverly on the name of the town – Crusted Butt, so forth and so on – can you believe one is the father of two ? – and a hot air balloon out front. Cal occupied his spot in the sun. I followed him – and just smiled. The valley created by the mountains felt like one huge hammock – it all had a quality of home.

Soraya had left at six for her job at the mountain base slinging coffee at Camp 4. I had some breakfast and cruised down on the bike. We spent the morning shooting it, Soraya making wonderful chai teas as we chatted and laughed. We returned and made a fine lunch on the deck of raw cheese and lettuce and shredded carrots – all well and good if you’re going to slather up in olive oil and lie naked in the sun, but before a Colorado-style mountain-biking trip ?

I borrowed Chris’ bike, and followed Soraya on the upper loop, then the upper upper loop. At first I had a hard time – I’ve been mountain biking but not extensively. These spandex bandits would come blowing through, bouncing over the rocks and roots with abandon.

And suddenly the trick became clear. Go fast, stay loose, and keep on pedaling. Keep your elbows relaxed, your weight over the back tires, and your shoulders squared. It all made perfect sense.

Not unlike life.

I took a few diggers, unlike life only in that I’m used to taking many more.  But the whole thing began to make sense – although, there at 9500 feet, I was gasping like that sea bass at the end of the Faith No More video – you know the one they got in all that trouble for with the ASPCA. I also came close to splitting a cute hound dog in half, and interrupted a couple, she in a pink tennis skirt, doing some impressive petting smack in the middle or a mountain bike trail. When the mood takes you, I guess.

We stopped, took a pic, and caught our breath.

We continued on into a valley of which I can’t recall the name – but it led back into fine ranch land, a river winding its way out of the apex of the horseshoe of the mountains. Soraya pointed out an old homestead that she said folks rent for marriages. We had a long discussion over whether marriages should be small affairs or hoe-downs. We each made valid points.

We had plans to catch the bus back to the mountain – but missed it, so we sucked it up and biked from downtown, as it were, getting passed left and right by the serious recreationist, a breed truly unique to Colorado. We had a breathless talk on the nature of recreating – the irony being that, as far as I could see, people here recreated at their day job, and truly worked at their  of recreating.

We got back to the place – and found that Chris had gone recreating – in the form of kayaking serious whitewater. We saddled up Mathilda and trotted out to meet him, Dog spread across Soraya’s lap. We watched him rip it on a section, then took a short hike. Right as we started, we saw a speck moving across snow up on the mountain – a cinnamon bear, quite large – that dot in the middle left of the photo, to the right of the aspens, against the backdrop of snow – the one with the really big teeth.

There was a cabin surrounded by marmot traps – and a marmot on the front porch of the cabin chattering away at the hilarity of it all. Cal went over for a look-see, then retreated in confusion.

On the way back from the waterfall, Soraya suddenly froze and started to stammer, “Call your dog! Call your dog!”

And there Cal was, facing off against a porcupine, the size of which I had not seen the likes, for the second time in his life. The porcupine was turning himself around just like a trolley car at a depot, getting revolved 180 degrees. The porcupine looked like the Fattest Cat in the World Photos, except transformed into Hellraiser Cat, armed with quills the size of, well, a quill pen, except these porcupine quills, and I think those were – feathers? I’m not sure. Anyways – really long quills.

This being a lesson Cal had learned – having taken 30 quills in the snout and lips, which we had to pull with needle nose pliers – he thankfully made the right decision and beat a retreat.

We made grassfed burgers back at the house, and all passed out. The next day began the same way – kickin’ it with Soraya at the cafe – this time with Cal – and trying to write entries for this blog. We decided to go up to Meridian, or Long Lake, and do some fly-fishing. We got to the parking area, Soraya took a long look at the creek – now turned into a rushing river – and reconsidered. I removed my fly-fishing rod from its sleeve – to use the metal case as a walking stick as i crossed. Not so easy – and none too graceful, to judge from the hilarity issuing forth from Soraya.

“I should have taken a photo of that !” she said from the other side.

I mean, her laughing at me is nothing new, that I took as a matter of course – but those words. Where was my camera – my phone ? I froze. In my front pocket.

I took it out. Sure enough, my faithful sidekick IPhone, usually covered in its Otter case, but unsheathed so the auxiliary cord in the truck could plug in, was dead.

Soraya took Dog for a walk while I clammered up the side of the hill, swaths of snow in the shadows of the firs still underfoot – until you slipped.

At the top I set the phone on a hot rock – hoping it would dry out. I set up the rod and reel and felt around for my wet fly box – hoping to tie on a muddler minnow or olive wooly bugger with a gold bead – but alas, typical me, no fly boxes to be found. Must have been left in Pennsylvania.

I did have a black #8 rooster tail spinner. In case anyone is even dumb enough to consider casting a rooster tale off a five-weight fly-rod with a six-foot tapered leader – someone who truly knows not a thing about either fly-fishing or spin-casting fishing – it does not work.

So I thrashed around on the side of the lake for a bit, until I heard voices downwind, and figured that no one should be made to witness such a spectacle, especially in natural world.

I packed up the rod, and retrieved the phone off the rock – hot enough now to fry bacon on – but still not functional.  I strongly considered throwing it into Meridian Lake in some momentous, even spiritual move. Not that it would mean anything – the phone wasn’t working. But it might just feel good.

At the bottom of the mountain the creek-turned-river, having already drawn blood, was now downright intimidating, with its churning brown water, tree limbs chugging by, the current tugging at drowned bushes, eddies behind rocks transformed into beaver-drowning whirlpools.

Thank goodness for a black lab who, dutifully fetching a tennis ball from one of those plastic throwers that can chuck for unbelievabale distances – found himself in a similar situation. His owner – a sunglassed high-cheeked young Patagoniaed-out woman – a “recreationist” of the sort this part of the country seems to give birth to, with their charming black labs comprising the afterbirth, slipping out shortly thereafter –  watched her dog, trusting him to figure it out. And he did, jogging down the river to a spot where the river spread out, the current spread out of its bottleneck, and the bottom grew shallower. I followed in his pawprints, stripped down butt-naked not caring, slipping into warm clothes, tried the phone once more, and passed out in the front seat with my tin cloth hat over my eyes.

Now I had heard from a couple folks the thing to do with a drowned phone was to put it into a bag of rice – the idea being I guess that the rice would suck the moisture from the phone. Soraya had hearth the same thing. Why the hell not.

That night we had some of the best pizza – outside Rhode Island, Chicago, New York, and Philadelphia – I’ve had the pleasure to eat, at the Stash – and a mojito that wasn’t half bad either. Soraya and Chris sent the intellectual – or perhaps emotional – hare going, presenting a moral quandary about a friend, and how everyone acted in a certain situation. I chased obligingly, then with great gusto. We walked along the high creek, returned to the spot, and watched one of those perfectly bad Hollywood movies – The Tourist, with Angelina Jolie and Johnny Depp,  where Europe looks like one huge model train set, complete with mustached gendarmes and barber-poled gondolas. It hit the spot – just as Soraya’s incredible fudge brownies did.

The next morning, Cal did not want to leave. I mean, who could really blame him ? Why leave a place like this ? Lying in the grass in the sun. Mathilda seemed pretty at home as well – a house down the road had two other second generation Forerunners in the driveway.

Soraya and I had spoken extensively about the pluses and minuses of living with or without grit, in or out of a bubble. More often we spoke of the complete chaos of our situation ten years ago in Breck – working on the mountain, the T-shirt shop, how she got in trouble for giving me free smoothies, how I helped her mop the floor at the end of the night – of Jen, Truth Eye, Ramona and her ginger tea. We laughed and laughed. Grit or no grit, bubble or no bubble, there are people you wished you could be constantly surrounded by. They make time spent on this earth so much more pleasant.