Christmas in Crestone

 This post is to say I'm still alive. And traveling.

Like I did two years ago, I decided to book an airbnb in Crestone for Christmas, have a little getaway for myself.

Unlike last time, I was hoping to enjoy a trip free from COVID, which had struck almost as soon as I landed last time I came to Crestone.

Crestone is a quiet town on juniper-covered slopes just where the steep Sangre de Cristo mountains meet the sage-floored San Luis Valley.

It has several opportunities for hiking, as well as an abundance of spiritual sites (you can read more about the town's interesting history with spirituality in my original blog post here).

Each day of my trip, I visited the Tashi Gomang stupa and did a little meditation.

The stupa is quite striking and beautiful, and the site has gorgeous views of the valley and the San Juan mountains on the opposite side.

And the airbnb itself was lovely, a little studio built on to the side of someone's garage. It was made of hempcrete and the walls were very thick.

Unfortunately, by the first night, I was feeling ultra exhausted. Eventually it became clear I was getting sick again, and soon, I felt pretty terrible.

Soon I was too ill to hike or go to hot springs or do much other than lie around the airbnb. It was hard to focus on the writing I'd meant to devote myself too.

But I still drove each day to go walk around the stupa in solo meditation. There were interesting sites along the way, like this little shrine(?) built on river stones.

Or this flag marking the way to the stupa.

In the end, I was pretty bummed to be sick. I felt so awful I had to wonder if I'd managed to get COVID. And I've been sick a lot this year... about a week out of each month... and am pretty tired of it. It has sucked having to cancel all my plans again and again and stay home alone for a week to two weeks at a time. It's isolating and sad.

But for now, I was still in Crestone, away from responsibilities.

The stupa has a mini stupa beside it. I don't quite get Tibetan traditions, but they certainly put a lot of effort into the stupas. The informational sign board said that inside the big stupa were, among other things, 100,000 miniature stupas over which prayers had been said. That's a lot of stupas.

Since I didn't get out much, most of my pictures are of the stupas.

A parting shot of the airbnb. It was back to Denver and a COVID test (negative), and my usual responsibilities. One of which was returning some shoes I'd ordered to try on. I was running up on the deadline for me to drop them off, which I was supposed to do at the fedex dropoff in the Walgreens near me. As I pulled up, I was surprised to see no one in the parking lot of this usually busy store.

Well. Turns out the store was being gutted. That's what happens when you go away for a few days instead of returning packages in a timely fashion.

This image of the store feels a bit like my life at this juncture. Friends are off doing holiday things with family or romantic partners—and even if they were free, I can't hang with them until this cold clears. It's a lot of silence and emptiness.

It's been a good year in many respects, and I hope 2025 will bring more good things. I just need a little patience.

What 2024 has not been a good year for is blog updates. There's a lot more to the story of my travels last year, as well as some fantastic photos, and I'd still like to get all that posted. But given that I have been prioritizing other stuff, I can't say when it will occur. For now, enjoy your stupa photos.

A Hazy Interlude

The sky darkened as I headed from Grand Teton National Park toward Yellowstone. Great burn areas appeared, where blackened tree trunks stood out stark on a barren landscape. The temperature dropped. It all felt quite ominous. I'd left Grand Teton later than I meant to (what else is new?) and now had only a few hours to drive through Yellowstone if I wanted to get to my Montana campsite before dark. But I was still determined to do some sightseeing.

At West Thumb, I found myself immersed in a sea of Chinese tourists as I walked around the boardwalk, admiring the deep blue hot springs. Then I arrived at Old Faithful to find a near-silent crowd already gathered. By luck I'd turned up just when the beloved geyser was supposed to go off. But for fifteen minutes I waited. Every time a little water burbled up, everyone in the crowd gasped and raised their phones, ready to record. Then the burbling would die down. After the tenth such burble, a woman in front of me complained, "Fake news!"

Old Faithful did, of course, eventually erupt.

Next on my whirlwind tour, I was pleased to find an empty parking space at Midway Geyser Basin, which houses Grand Prismatic Spring. The spring is a lovely thing I remembered as being my favorite attraction on the one day I'd previously spent in Yellowstone, a decade and a half ago.

On that earlier visit, I'd seen Grand Prismatic from up the hill at left, above. It turns out you can't see so much from down on the boardwalk, but it's still a weird and inspiring landscape.

At the beginning of the boardwalk trail, I'd noticed a sign warning people that it was windy and we should hold onto our hats. And what did I see at Grand Prismatic? Lots of hats. There are four in this picture alone.

I was so determined to see things in Yellowstone, I in fact did not make it to my campsite before dark. When I pulled into the Bakers Hole campground it was black out, damp and chilly. It was a weird and welcoming relief to see my last name written in dry-erase marker on the reservation placard. But reviews of the campground had mentioned bears wandering through, so as I made hot dogs in the dark I peered with my headlamp into the surrounding bushes. I saw no eyes reflecting back.

The next morning was dreary, in the 50s and pouring. I always have full rain gear, so I put it on and set about trying to make breakfast, but every time I opened the car doors to access food or gear, buckets of rain sheeted in. Breakfast in town began to seem like a good idea.

While navigating out of the campground, I saw a man standing under an awning outside a giant RV. A panel was open on the side of the RV, where a massive flat-screen TV was playing. I boggled at this. Why was the man standing out in the cold? Why did his RVs need a television he could watch from around the campfire? Why even leave home if you're just going to watch Good Morning America? All of this only quickened my need for a soothing egg and sausage biscuit.

I had a long way to drive that day, so I wanted something fast. McDonald's it was. But when I got inside, a long line of Chinese tourists stood at the ordering screens. When I finally made it up to a screen, I saw that the menu items (painstakingly labeled in both English and Chinese) were all lunch options, though it was still solidly morning. I did not want a burger and fries for breakfast.

I felt a bit desperate until I saw a gas station, and went in to find microwavable biscuit sandwiches. I also picked up some much-needed condiment packets. Gas stations are icky repositories of unhealthiness, until they are your savior.

The drive through Montana was depressing. I passed through some of the most beautiful country in the state, which I could barely see because it was so foggy. My windshield wipers squeaked constantly at the varying quantities of rain, which the wiper settings were never quite right for. And then I began seeing interpretive signs.

Knowing how long I'd be in the car today, I took the opportunity to get out and read each sign, stretching my back while I was at it. The signs told the story of a fateful night in 1959, when an earthquake triggered a massive landslide, causing 80 million tons of rock to crash into the valley and dam the Madison River to form what is now called Earthquake Lake.

But this was more than a geology story. It was a human story. Many families were camping under the full moon the night of the quake. They woke to a sound like a freight train, and some stepped out of their tents or trailers to see the ground rolling like ocean waves. One survivor reported feeling the ground drop from beneath his feet, while others had their clothing literally torn off from the hurricane-force wind generated by the landslide. Twenty-eight campers died and others were injured, and the ground itself was torn in two, leaving fault scarps that I could see for myself. After the river was dammed, sections of forest were flooded (see pic above), and cormorants came to nest in the dying trees where there had been no cormorants before.

At the terminus of the interpretive signs was an education center, and I took my time warming up and drying off in here, absorbing all the information and survivor stories. I was grateful for the shelter, and for the opportunity to learn about this staggering event I'd never even heard of before.

It was hands-down the most fascinating and moving interpretive center I've ever been to, and I highly recommend a visit if you find yourself near the west side of Yellowstone.

The rest of my drive wasn't quite so compelling, but the rain did let up by the time I hit the Washington/Idaho border, to be replaced by a smoky haze. I landed in a dispersed camping area at a ski park, and found a pulloff next to an old lift that seemed no longer functional. A weird golden glow was seeping through the smoky air, painting the land in unearthly colors.

The next morning, I debated whether to sleep in longer, but decided to just get up and make breakfast. And just as I was packing up breakfast, an ATV and truck arrived. The guy on the ATV indicated that I would have to move so the truck could get in. I apologized, telling them I thought the lift wasn't operational. He said, "We're getting it started up today."

Then I was glad I hadn't decided to sleep in.

I moved my car down the road and found a semi-level spot where I could hide under the hatch, away from the returning rain, and do some internet research for the next part of my trip.

This need for research would become an onerous part of my trip. Part of it was my fault. I not only needed to know where I could camp, how long it would take to get there, where I could grocery shop on the way, etc., but I also wanted to know what were the very best attractions in the area, so I could make the very most of my trip. (Yes, it is obvious which side of the maximizer vs. satisficer continuum I am on.*)

Before I left the area, I went to investigate a nearby sign, and got a surprise when I wandered behind it:

Someone had made a shrine with discarded items, from toys to gloves and hats to a water-damaged copy of Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance. It was a little bit creepy.

I proceeded through eastern Washington, unable to see much because of the smoke.

One of my few memories from that long day was of trying to cook my last hot dog and do some more research behind my car at a rest stop, while in the parking space next to me a young couple argued on and off for an hour over whether to take a nap and who should sleep where, breaking into occasional angry laughter.

It wasn't until I began to inch northward into the Olympic Peninsula that the air cleared, and in the oncoming darkness I could just see the profile of the Olympic Mountains on the western horizon. Now I wished my long drive that day had gone a bit faster, so I would have had some daylight to see properly.

It was 10pm when I pulled into my destination for the night: a casino about 45m east of where I planned to enter Olympic National Park the next morning. Some casinos offer free overnight parking to travelers, but I'd never taken advantage of such a service before.

I went in to register—this required getting a player's card, which came pre-loaded with $5—and then figured that since I couldn't do anything else with the $5, I might as well gamble. The casino was very nice, quite new, and near-unoccupied on this evening. For the life of me, I could not figure out how to operate the slot machines, whose user-friendliness was on the level of a VCR that is only programmable in UNIX. I had to get an employee to help me.

Within a few minutes I'd won about $4, and decided to call it a night. I'd meant to have dinner there, but since I'd arrived so late and was now exhausted, it seemed best to skip it. In the morning, I'd need to leave early to go get a site at the first-come, first-served campground in the park, so breakfast was out too. I felt bad—when a business offers free overnight stays, it's understood that you should spend some money there in compensation—but here the casino effectively paid me $4 to spend the night with them. And since returning here from the park would be a 1.5h drive, it seemed unlikely I would repay them anytime soon.

Oh, well. I'll have to eat there next time I go through.

I brushed my teeth and went out to park my car in the corner of the RV area. It felt like a safe place. There were many RVs.

In the morning, I rolled out as soon as the Casino opened and I could get in to use the bathroom. Grateful for the safe night's stay, I headed west, unaware that trouble would soon begin.

Tune in again soon!

*I will note that even while composing this blog entry, I read an extensive array of articles to determine which presented the most suitable explanation of the maximizer/satisficer theory.

A Willing Subject

By August, my various doctor's appointments and other obligations were complete, and my feet had healed enough to do more than cursory hiking. There was a large part of me, an inner voice seeded by a lifetime of encounters with authorial figures, that said I should and must find employment again. This voice would continue to make me feel guilty for the rest of the year; but being without my ability to walk for so much of the winter and spring had made me realize how much of a gift the ability to walk was, and how easily it could be lost again. So I decided I would set out for a few months to see many of the things I wanted to see before I died—guilt or no.

The main destination of August was to be Olympic National Park. This was because I'd recently read two different articles that ranked Olympic as one of the country's best parks, judging on such metrics as scenery, crowds, and accessibility. I'd never been to Olympic. Plus, I could check out Mount Rainier and North Cascades national parks while I was up there. Plus, I'd heard that if you wanted good weather in the Pacific Northwest, August was the time to go.

Since it was a long way to Washington, I planned to spend a night each at Grand Teton and Yellowstone national parks to add some interest to the drive. My first night would be dispersed camping at a wildlife area in Wyoming, a couple hours from Grand Teton. And I would be there near the peak of the Perseid meteor shower.

I pulled into the wildlife area after dark and found a spot along the lakeshore. The mosquitoes had gone to bed, and I made tomato and cheese wraps in the warm darkness. I seemed to be the only one there. Slowly, the stars came out.

I've seen meteor showers before, including the Perseids, but have never had an experience like that night. The meteorites were so big, so bright, they made midgets of the stars as they streamed over the lake in front of me. Just before I went to bed, a giant one streaked directly overhead for a full two seconds. Just as it vanished, I heard a couple seconds' worth of distant roar, somewhat like an airplane. I'd heard the meteorite. I didn't even know that was possible.

The next morning, I opened my eyes just as the sun was rising outside my car window—see photo above. Then I drove to my intended campground outside Grand Teton (I had planned my trip too late to get reservations in the park), grabbed a site, and went to explore.

The photo above looks like something I ripped out of a calendar called "America the Beautiful 2006," but it's real. And all I had to do to get it was drive into the park and stop at the first overlook.

Then I went for a hike, which turned out to be the longest since I'd injured my foot, something like six miles. Incredible—feeling recovered, that is, though the scenery was incredible too.

I did discover that my feet still couldn't handle steep inclines well, and they were pretty sore by the time I got down. Also, while on the hike I crossed paths with another hiker who said there was a grizzly bear that could be seen from the area of the next junction. I went to see (carefully, with bear spray) but it was gone. I have never seen a grizzly bear.

This sign reports how many animals had been hit by cars in the previous week. Sadly, it didn't seem to keep people from driving too fast on the park roads.

That evening I had dinner at a picnic area, where a path turned out to lead to a beach. There were a couple guys floating in tubes. They seemed to be enjoying themselves. I stooped to feel the water; it was surprisingly warm. So I decided to go back up and get my suit.

What a beautiful experience. The water was so refreshing, a cool contrast to the 80 degree sun on my shoulders, and it was crystal clear. I could see all the way down to the multicolored pebbles on the bottom.

I walked and swam about exhilarating in the feel of it, enjoying the mountain views and the deep sense of peace. It was one of the best things I've ever done in a national park.

I only got out once I was nearly shivering. It turned out that the guys in tubes belonged to a group that was up from a music conference in Jackson. Some of them had only met that day. They had a picnic laid out, and approached me to take a photo of the group. Then they invited me to partake. I was full from my dinner but I had to take a homemade pop tart someone had made. Who would have thought of making pop tarts at home?

I'd just had one of the most beautiful, peaceful evenings of my life. Now I wanted to spend more time in Grand Teton, but I was all too aware that I had a reservation outside the far end of Yellowstone the next night. Oh, well, I told myself. Some moments are just meant to be enjoyed while they last, and then set free. If we try to manipulate events to preserve them indefinitely, we are likely to be disappointed.

Somewhere around 10pm, I decided this was silly and struggled through 1 bar of cell service to log in and modify my Yellowstone reservation, delaying it for two days. The decision was made easier by something I'd recently discovered: North Cascades National Park, in Washington, was now closed due to a forest fire. Unless they put out the fire soon—and they weren't projected to until October—I wouldn't be able to visit the park at all, and either way it messed up my planned itinerary enough that I was okay messing it up further. 

Now I had more time to explore the Tetons. I launched into a routine that would see me rising in the dark so I could do some sunrise photography, then hiking until it got too hot, having lunch and a nap, then swimming, having dinner in the park, and driving in the evening darkness back to my campsite outside it.

The camping and napping was made more pleasant by a new piece of gear: "window socks," mesh covers that slipped over the car doors.

The days were 80 degrees, brilliantly clear at first and then partly cloudy, increasingly hazy from wildfires to the west. And unlike Black Canyon, the last national park I'd visited—a park known for being difficult to photograph—Grand Teton was a willing subject. There were dozens of easy-to-get-to places from which amazing photographs could be taken. After two more days of great hikes and great beauty, I decided I needed even more, so I bumped my Yellowstone reservation out yet another two days. It was the right choice, and I have the pictures to prove it.

On previous trips within the past couple years, I'd done a mix of writing and exploring each day, but the results had been frustrating. I didn't feel fully invested in either; when I was writing, being surrounded by all that beauty just made me want to go hiking. When I was hiking, I kept thinking how I needed to hurry up so I could get back to the campsite with time to write. I felt adrift, purposeless. So I decided that for the next few months, I was only going to travel and explore; no writing. I hoped that would cure the sense of purposelessness.

It did. I felt present, fully engaged, and able to enjoy what I was doing without always feeling like I needed to be somewhere else. Well, mostly. I did still apply for jobs one day a week, and I dealt constantly with my nagging inner Puritan telling me I didn't deserve to have fun if I wasn't working.

But let's not focus on such things. Here's an extended shoot with some very fat ground squirrels that were used to being fed by people. I would lower my phone down and they would come investigate, thinking I was going to feed them. (Note: do not feed animals. It turns them into pests who will steal anything you turn your back on, chew their way into packs, sneak into cars and destroy your snacks, bite fingers, etc.)

Moving on...

This mother bear and her two cubs crossed a trail not far in front of me, and were foraging for berries in the woods. (I, too, had been pulling berries off and eating them as I hiked: thimbleberries, huckleberries, raspberries, black currants, until my fingers were stained red.) Soon a whole group of hikers was gathered to watch the bears. It was nice to be able to see these animals doing their animal things; usually you just get a glimpse before they run away. The baby bears had a cute call.

I stayed watching the bears so long, I made myself late for Yellowstone. Yes, it was time to move on; I'd been at Grand Teton almost a week, and while the weather had been near-perfect, cold and rain was moving in. Still, it was hard to go. I'd fallen in love with the Tetons: not just the photography opportunities, but the general lack of crowds (at least, compared to many parks I've visited), the number of flat trails for my healing feet, the swimming, the fact that I could get internet within the park and keep up with applying for jobs and paying bills. It was a wonderful, welcoming place. I would definitely be back.

I took a final shower at Colter Bay, washing some choice clothing items in the spray as I did so, and headed toward Yellowstone, where clouds were already rolling in...

Tune in next time!