16 April, Black Canyon of the Gunnison NP, CO

After making that last entry I spent a rather exciting and restless night in which I tried, ultimately unsuccessfully, to keep my tent up in high winds and a thunderstorm. I was afraid of the stakes pulling out, so I wedged myself against the windward side and pushed those two corners out whenever the gusts kicked up. I could hear them coming because the campground is dotted with little picnic tables whose shelters have corrugated steel roofs that are not exactly fastened down at all corners. I would hear a great rattling noise, wonder briefly if some giant piece of steel was going to come into my tent, and then the tent would try to lift itself off the ground. Why was my tent athwart the wind, you ask? I was not given a lot of options when it came to placement. Things need to be relatively level or at least a little higher on the head side or you will have strange dreams and wind up bunched up in a corner. Anyway, we lasted until about 12:30, when the leeward side pulled its stakes in an apocalyptic blast of wind and rain. I managed, somehow, to get the tent disassembled from the inside (thank you, Bibler!) and then deflated enough to carry to the wind shadow created by my car. There I could extract the contents, stuff the tent into the back, and climb in out the wind. You may recall that I spent the night in a similar position in Death Valley. Here I was more exposed to the rising sun, which woke me up before it rose, and I drove from there to Durango, stopping at Mesa Verde where I went on a crowded tour of the cliff dwellings, saw a nesting great horned owl, and enjoyed very much the museum. I love exhibits put together in the seventies. They’re a little cheesy, sometimes, and a little out of date, but they have a lot of text and a certain straightforwardness that makes them, for me at least, far more informative than the multimedia flashy exhibits that seem to have replaced them. For all the money spent on those things they always seem a little dumbed down.

Durango I will have to write more on later. Biggest place I’d been in some time. Ski town, so lots of kitschy stores, expensive restaurants, rich white folks. Something like Truckee but about three times the scale. Peter was right about the effects of elevation on the human population. Money seems to run uphill. But there are some really nice coffee shops, a lot of bike stores, and the locals at least are pleasant, intelligent, and talkative. Attended the Easter Vigil at a local parish. Packed, had great music (guitar band, but with some wonderful harmonization, almost barbershop, and a woman sung the Exsultet in a high descant plainsong), and was as moving as I expected, since I was baptized at the vigil last year. In place of a high altar there was an elevated statue of Jesus holding his arms out, and below this was an array of lilies. Thought of the passage in Mann’s Felix Krull where the protagonist sees a diorama of a prehistoric man offering flowers to the rising sun. I have to invoke Chesterton again: there is something odd about Homo sapiens, about our ability to recognize death – and life – in Nature, and to respond to it.

Today drove north on US 550 through the San Juans, which are now my favorite mountains. All of that beautifully colored sandstone I’ve been mesmerized by this whole trip is lifted up, tilted, and shattered by intruding volcanos. I don’t believe this area was glaciated, because the mountains are sharp peaks cut by fast streams and now, still, swaddled in snow. Descent to Montrose, another perfectly unremarkable town with all the chain stores, a Wal-Mart, and tacky suburban housing. From there it is a short hop to the Black Canyon of the Gunnison. Truly spectacular. Something out of Tolkien, a rift cut in the earth. Tall spires of black rock veined with pink granites, and the rushing river far below. Convinced the ranger to give me a permit for the hike down, although hike is not really the right word. The first third of the trail – only a mile in total – was covered in patches of snow and ice, and the last two thirds a scramble through creek drainages and talus fields (or rather, scree, as most of it was quite small: I just like saying talus). Here the rocks were anything but black. Pink granites, the occasional sandstone, and a shale or laminar basalt, all flecked and sparkling with small and large bits of mica.

Camping here tonight as it is relatively cheap and relatively quiet, although a big Cadillac SUV full of Israelis pulled up a few minutes ago. They leave the car running so they can play their music. Once again I ponder why some people even bother to leave the city. 8000 feet: the stars are the best I’ve ever seen, and it promises to be quite cold.

(cdm, in ContinuingEastwards | 16April2006 )