I graduated from college in Minnesota on a Saturday. I left for Colorado on Sunday. I had a backpack and a large box with my bicycle in it. My parents helped me ship the box, then dropped me at the airport, taking the rest of my belongings and my shiny new diploma back with them to Detroit. Meanwhile, they were happy because I had a job prospect – an internship doing field work for the summer. Who knew where it might lead? My sister prophetically observed they might lose me to Colorado. But I was in love with the midwest and my heart and my college boyfriend were going to stay there while I boarded the plane. “Follow your dreams, not your heart”,  cautioned my wise parents. “Let him follow you”.

I flew to Denver and took a city bus from the airport to the greyhound bus station near downtown. The city bus did not go all the way there, so I had to walk the last two blocks with my backpack. I had good hiking boots, clothes, toiletries, rain gear, a tent and a very small compact, down sleeping bag. My bike, boots, and my sleeping bag were my prized possessions. Denver was hotter than Minnesota in June. The sun was strong and warm and I remember having to squint and shed layers.

I was used to taking the train. Riding the bus was different. You had to watch your wallet and belongings. Some people looked like they lived on the bus. You did not want to share a seat. The trick was to sit in the aisle seat and pretend you were waiting on a friend. I put my backpack on the seat next to me. I was riding the bus from Denver to western Colorado, A rather pushy guy came up and wanted to sit next to me, and seeing that there was no other option, I said okay, moving my backpack to the overhead across the aisle where I could watch it, I slid over to the window. I did not tell him much except for where I was headed and that yes, someone was meeting me there. Even my young radar told me to keep my distance.

He talked and I nodded politely and looked at the scenery. The terrain got very dry and dusty and then we turned west and headed into the mountains. It was exciting to see the new landscape. The sun settled down, casting long shadows against the high hills. In the distance, the mountains looked to be a uniform shade of blue, like a construction paper cutout. Hints of pink light defined the edges. Then darkness swallowed the bus and all my senses drifted inward and I crossed my arms, edging away from the guy next to me in his heavy green coat, with his too many questions. I watched my backpack from the corner of my eye. We arrived at 2 am to the small town in western Colorado where I would be working. My new boss’s motorcycle boyfriend had been sent to pick me up at the station. I was happy to leave the bus with the sketchy seat mate, for this even sketchier one, handing me a helmet, and grabbing my backpack, he said, hang on, I’ll take you home.

Home was a trailer park. In an effort to not disturb my new and unknown trailer mate, I crashed on the couch which was short and smelled of formaldehyde. it seemed like seconds later and it was light outside, my roommate was standing over me, tall and confident, “wake up, we have to go now”.

From the start, Colorado was an adventure. I met hippies like my boss’s motorcycle boyfriend, and my boss, a lady who loved lizards and loved to flaunt her independence by dating guys who rode motorcycles. We attended a two day class on driving safety and mountain safety and had to learn to drive a stick shift the first weekend. They sent us out to the mountains soon afterwards with a map, a handyman jack, a truck winch, a two way radio, and some severe warnings about lightening and 4-wheeling on the montmorillinite clay after a rain.

It never seemed to rain. The sun would spend the first part of the day whittling away the fog that hung around in the valleys. The first few days I walked the two miles to work, waiting for my bike to arrive. We would check in and discuss our routes and territory then all be dispatched out to the field. The first week we would go out in teams, thereafter it would be solo. At the end of each day we would swap stories about the mountains, and elk, and birds, and plants we had seen. There would be stories about 4-wheeling pickles we’d managed to escape using the truck winches, and handyman jacks and our ingenuity.

My bicycle arrived and I reattached the handlebars and pedals. I was set. I lived in a trailer in a campground with other summer interns. My roommate was studying cactus and she already had fallen for the lead instructor. We didn’t get paid, but we had a per diem and free housing. I packed my lunch and rode my bicycle to work each day. There I picked up my government vehicle, charted my course, called the ranchers about access, and went out to the field. My job was to measure and map the water features shown on the map, and take water samples.

Water in western Colorado was, and is, and always will be, a highly sought after commodity. Ranchers would lease public lands and build structures to corral the water or divert it through private lands. They didn’t always like young government workers wandering around asking questions about water. We learned to cross our arms and keep our distance. If you hear a bullet zing past your head, said our lead trainer, you will be okay. It’s the ones you don’t hear that hit you. Hmm, I thought, maybe I should ask for a raise in addition to my meager room and board.

The first part of the day was driving. The first road was nicely paved with shoulders and passing lanes. The next road was paved, no shoulder, no white line, but customary to wave with two fingers at the top of the steering wheel to the rancher just in case he’s thinking about shooting you. There were cattle guards and sometimes you had to stop, get out and yell “Hi-Yah” at the cattle to get them off the road. The cattle were like groupies. They would come up and crowd around my truck, nudging the doors, and tires, looking for food. I would think maybe I should sign autographs, or throw them a piece of my clothing, like Madonna. But a simple ” hiyah” would scatter them. The next road would be dirt, the one after that rutted out gravel and rocks, and the one after that, a foot path. The trick was to drive as far in as possible, because the hike to water could be long and there was a lot of territory to cover.

We had 7.5 minute quad maps and some new false infrared images that we’d study back at the office. The cottonwood trees in particular would show bright red on the images. Where there is a cottonwood tree, there is water, said the lead botanist, explaining about their tap roots. We learned about PJ, Pinyon-Juniper. I learned to love the smell of sage in my tires. My roommate fell ever more in love with the lead botanist.

In the field I would hike along ridges to get my bearings. Then down to the pond I’d go, wearing a small field pack with my water bottle and lunch. The cattle were always hanging around the ponds. I’d have to wave and shout them away so I could get to the pond. Whether dry or wet, each water feature had to be measured. I’d measure and record the circumference, depth, and dimensions of the earthen dam. Then I’d grab water samples if possible and hike back to the truck. The nitrate and sulfate probes were in the back of the truck. The pH strips I could carry in my pack. Keeping the equipment clean and dust free was a big part of the job.

My day started around 6 am and at 6000 feet above sea level. Sometimes I’d go down from there, to the Uncompaghre canyon. If I went into the San Juans, I’d get just above tree line at around 10,000 feet, still surrounded by high peaks. Mt Sneffels and Uncompaghre Peak would gaze down their noses at us from over 14,000 feet. Grand Mesa was another amazing locale. The largest flat-topped mountain in the world. It was a mere 11,000 feet and hosted beautiful fishing lakes. There were whole cities for beavers and deer, and alpine vegetation just below tree line.  We worked in the areas near Dolores, Telluride, Ouray, Montrose, Delta, Crawford, and Gunnison. We’d measure the water, or at least field check the place where water was supposed to be. The terrain was wild and diverse, and lovely. Every day in the field was a new adventure.

One site required helicopter reconnaissance. For the first and only time that summer I walked over to the pay phone and called my parents. I thought they should know I was headed out into the middle of nowhere in a helicopter the next day. Our pilot had flown a chopper in Vietnam. He was not afraid of anything, except maybe the Vietcong and unmarked power lines.

On the weekends we would ride our bicycles up the road and wind our way up to the top of the Black Canyon of the Gunnison. We’d eat lunch at the edge, wondering what it must have been like to be the first Indian who saw the magnificent chasm with the pegamatite painted wall, and told his horse, ” whoa!” We pedaled through soft hills and flat plains, then across a very flat grass knoll, and ” whoa!” there was a 2000 ft sheer cliff right in front of us. The road up was gentle and winding. Our legs were strong from days in the field. As we rode back down the hill, moving fast, flying, one of the pedals on my bike flew off. I nearly met my Maker in the pavement. Instead I got up, scraped and sore, retrieved my broken pedal and placed my foot on the metal stub. It was a slower glide back home, luckily downhill. I learned to ride my bike with one pedal. and my right shoe wore out on the metal peg.

One guy whom we all loved had a car, and he organized all of our trips. It was a station wagon of sorts. Dusty cassette tapes played John Prine and Greg Brown. Our driver played the hammered dulcimer. He was older and wiser and in danger of stealing my heart which I thought I had left safely back in the midwest. We sang along as we headed over Lizard Head Pass. One night we hiked to 12,700 feet and camped above Telluride. We were in a high hanging valley. A thunderstorm roared through and the hair on the backs of our necks told us lightening was nearby. I thought we might become a pile of ashes, scorched in our tents, fried by 12000 lightening volts in my prized possession sleeping bag. I put my backpack with its metal frame far away, behind a rock, under a latched-down tarp.

We awoke to sunshine and columbine and tundra, and marmots and pica chip-chipping in the distance. The ground was already dry and we walked down to the little creek and washed our feet and socks. Clean and dry socks were our other prized possessions. We dried our frozen toes in the sun and donned new clean socks for a new day of hiking. Weekends in Colorado. Every weekend we’d hike and camp and explore. We would sit around a fire at night and talk about nothing in particular, while trying to understand everything. We thought life would always be like this, working in the field, no money, but plenty of time for hiking. It was a Colorado Rocky Mountain natural high, no drugs needed. We were short on oxygen and money both, and it left us all a little light-headed and giddy.

On the fourth of July we drove to Utah and hiked in the Mante la Sal range. We came back down to a station wagon with a dead battery. Hiking and hitchhiking our way out we ended up in Moab, where we bought some food and a watermelon. We managed to grab the last primitive campground at Arches and sat around trying to eat watermelon in an area known for its windblown sandstone. The watermelon tasted of sand and grit and I still remember how great it was. I cannot remember how we managed to get the car running again. I just know the situation left us with two additional days to wander around Arches.

I suppose we were lucky. All of us were in our twenties with degrees and no job prospects. When we weren’t working or hiking, would work extra on the weekends, doing mop-up for the Forest Service fire crews, which paid a healthy $6/hr. My roommate and I helped paint someone’s fence for fifty dollars. We helped someone harvest their vegetable garden and took home armloads of free produce on our bikes.

As the summer wound down, I stayed an extra month working and looking for my next gig, while the trailer turned colder and the first snows in the high country made roads impassable. Some people were going to work the ski lifts in another month. I pounded the pavement in Grand Junction and Denver along with 10,000 other unemployed geologists. The bottom had fallen out of the industry in 1982 while I was busy being free-spirited, hiking, and carelessly riding around on my one-pedaled bike. I fell in and out of love on a daily basis – with life, with new friends, and especially with Colorado.

My midwest boyfriend flew out to meet me in Denver. We surprised my Dad who happened to be there on business, by getting on the same plane back. We sat with arms crossed, cordial and keeping our distance. I was not the same person and neither was the boyfriend. My heart and my next job might be back in the midwest but the mountains had given me independence and it was packed and coming back home with me, along with my tent and boots, and bike, and sleeping bag.

I returned to Michigan to live at home and earn money for a few months working in a department store. It was nice to have money and home might still be better than a distant mountain with no job prospects. I was in the best shape of my life – tan and strong, a little unsettled, but still very hopeful.

The bike box arrived, and I reattached the handlebars and fixed the pedal. I rode down the colorful tree lined streets of my provincial and flat home town, down to the lake which I had missed in spite of my adventures. I gazed out, looking across the water at the freighter making its way along the horizon. It was autumn in Michigan and no place is nicer. I stared across my hometown lake. Had it lost me to Colorado? Not yet. I had climbed mountains. I had survived close calls with lightening and riding my bike on treacherous roads. I had learned how to independently navigate every kind of situation. Like an old friend who had waited for me but not followed, the lake welcomed me back. I was happy to be back. I sat a long while, watching the water sparkle and the waves hitting the rocky ledge. I smiled and thought all about the mountains and the adventures, and the hiking boot print a summer in Colorado had left on my heart.

( 🚵‍♀️ lwr 10/22/2017)