Yesterdays’ News

Occasionally I will post some old stories that I’ve written, many that were initially penned to be included in LIVING LIFE RIVERSIDE: Our Nightmarish Pursuit of the American Dream.

This particular entry didn’t make it into the book, partly because it is grim, negative and somewhat grisly, which totally goes against the grain of the fun-loving laugh fest that is LIVING LIFE RIVERSIDE. It’s important to remember that this was written over 10 years ago, and some things have changed, so don’t get too wound up in details that may seem to be inaccurate. They may either be outdated, or fictitious!

THE MOUNTAINS

As one approaches the Rocky Mountains from the east, most will revel in their beauty, while I saw only the epitome of intimidation; daunting, overwhelming, imposing, massive - name your favorite adjective for something large that you fear, the Rockies were for me all of them combined, heaped one upon the other.

Living in the heart of the Rockies, in a space known as Middle Park, we were surrounded by these beasts. There was no getting to where we had to go, either home or away from home, without trekking up, over and down. (The term “park” as in North Park, Middle Park and South Park, refers to the relatively level, relatively flat area that encompasses the center of these mountainous areas, basins for the North Platte, Colorado and South Platte rivers. When seen from above on a topographical map, looking down on the Rockies in Colorado you can see three distinct ‘rings’ of peaks, the middle of each containing an expanse of land some 4000- 6000 feet lesser in elevation. Don’t consider it a valley, which is the sloping land between peaks – in Colorado, that vast expanse of river basin, each of the three 1000 square miles in area, is a park.) At the risk of being trite when referring to these mountains as a ‘fortress’, it is a truly apt description, and beyond the usual reference to their stony edified, castle-like appearance, as once beyond these granite peaks, safely ensconced within the walls of the park, you feel as if you are held prisoner, isolated from the rest of civilization. The often-brutal weather compounds this feeling of forced remoteness, as the highway gates slam shut when the pass closes, literally locking you into this elevated hoosegow.

The mountains have a tendency to overwhelm you with both their precipitous height and their vast scope, constantly lording over you, eternally making you feel small and insignificant. As they flex their mighty muscles when blasting you with snow and wind, or while hurling vicious javelins of lighting at you, seemingly emanating not from the clouds but directly from their jagged peaks, they whip you into submission, while grinding you and your psyche down to that of a whimpering puppy. If you live there long enough, you will ultimately end up prostrate before them, submissive, broken, as you recognize that they are your lord, your master, and you learn that under no circumstance will they ever be inclined to show you mercy.

I actually began to view the mountains as animate objects, and not animate in the sense of the old cartoons where you would have things like jolly smokestacks, belching smoke and singing songs; rather, they were mean-spirited hulking masses, waiting to pounce, an enormous arm coming out of nowhere to smite you. Animate in having an intellect, certainly smarter than you, and animate in having a mood, always foul, and a heart, always cold.

As my time living in the mountains increased, I started to observe among my fellow mountain dwellers that my feelings towards the Rockies were not unique. The more I got to know the locals, most of whom had dealt with these peaks for far longer than I, I began to notice a common personality trait in them; a complex, many faceted trait that was composed of fear, mistrust, forlornness and demoralization. I had never imagined that we would move somewhere that was inhabited by a more unfriendly collection of people, a people that kept their thoughts and their words to themselves, as if they were all up there hiding from someone or something; the truth be known, probably most were. My guess is that they weren’t bad people at heart; they had just been oppressed by their environment to the point of resigned submission, and that submission manifested itself in their perpetually dark moods and sullen interactions.

The omnipresent darkness and despair that pervades the mountain dwellers psyche can also lead to some despicable acts of violence and desperation, the following of which is a classic example that would seem shocking were it to happen in sunny California, sultry Mississippi, or any imaginable green-lawned suburban expanse; but in the mountains, the shock was minimal, the reality predictable.

In early December of 2011, a Colorado Bureau of Land Management officer made a grisly discovery in southwestern Grand County, 20 miles SSW of the town of Kremmling, off of County Road 102 – barely a spit of a road spun off from the infamous Trough Road. I’ve made mention of this road before as being not more than a narrow, winding path, devoid of guard rails yet flush with opportunities to dive your car over the edge, down hundreds of feet to the icy waters of the Colorado River, which the Trough Road parrots in their mutually serpentine westward journey. In my one time traveling the Trough Road, there were two features that scared me into never taking it again, the obvious one being the heretofore mentioned unguarded hairpin turns and the dizzying precipices, but the other, a frightening aspect that was a bit more subtle - the feeling of isolation and desolation, while not something you can point to and quantify, was overwhelming to me. I was cognizant of the fact that if something bad did happen (bad as in losing control on the icy road and toppling over the side of the cliff) it would be an eternity before someone happened upon us, and certainly not prior to the mountain lions or coyotes having their way with our corpses.

How long had the silent, mostly hidden early-model Chevy Van that the BLM officer happened upon been there? The vehicle was off the Trough Road, down a little gravel finger that led nowhere, partially obscured in a cut of pinyon trees and sage brush. It would have been extremely rare that someone other than a BLM officer would have any reason to be on that road, especially in the dead of winter. Unlike my Trough Road fear of rounding a corner and free falling into river and woods below, this van had been driven to its current location, as there was no evidence of damage, and the van was quietly resting upright on all four wheels.

The BLM officer would quickly discover that he was not the first person to stumble upon the van, remote as it was.

**********

Despair and darkness know no bounds, but they seem to have found a welcome home deep within the walls of Middle Park, Grand County, Colorado.

The driver of the van, this seeker of seclusion that came upon a place in the mountains that would possibly forever hide him and his tribulations, was a 62-year-old resident of the beautiful city of Denver, some 90 miles ESE of his chosen final resting place. It is possible that the individual believed that a massive snowfall was just around the corner, and not necessarily a bold gamble as December 9th was the day that he came to Grand County and the Trough Road, and the resultant drifts of expected snow and a dozen other subsequent winter snowfalls would make his road off limits until springtime, some 5 - 6 months away – even to a diligent BLM officer.

But his gamble turned out not to pay off, as unusually dry conditions made for a relatively snow free December in Grand County, and his plan for a temporary asylum for his crime, like the winter snow, never materialized.

In the white Chevy Van lay the bodies of a 62-year old father and his 9-year old autistic son, the son murdered by a single gunshot wound to the head, wrapped in a blanket, laying in peaceful repose in the back of the van on the floor. The father sat in the front seat, slumped over sideways with his head in the passenger seat; a head that also contained a single, fatal gunshot wound. Both bodies were frozen solid, and well preserved.

Was it a money issue? Was the father in a state of despair over his son’s disability? Could it have been a custody issue? Two articles appeared in the Denver Post, neither of which made mention of anything other than the fact that a murder-suicide had occurred, as if this sort of thing, much like a traffic fatality, happens with regularity.

What sort of tragedy drives a person to this? Can you possibly imagine any situation that would be so dire, so without hope or resolution, that driving to a desolate place in the mountains and committing such an act would play out as your best possible alternative?

As the initial shock of this find began to wear off of the BLM officer – remember, these individuals are trained to deal with the occasional poacher or unlicensed angler – he realized that much more was at play than the murder-suicide. There was a wallet on the driver’ side floor of the van, open and empty of money, credit cards and all of whatever else it had previously contained. The glove box lay open, the contents of which had obviously been gone through to the point of looking as if a small tornado had found its way into the car. But the BLM officer’s final glance at the crime scene revealed an act of violence that at first was beyond his reason or comprehension.

The shooter’s left arm was hanging limp over the edge of the passenger seat, the left hand frozen in space a few inches above the floor of the van. The thumb and index finger had been severed from the hand, cleanly; the hacksaw that had been used for the operation resting askew on the floor against the passenger door. The missing thumb and finger were not in obvious view, nor was the gun that those digits had held so dearly.

It didn’t take the experts long to piece together a scenario of what they believed had occurred. Sometime between the 9th of December, the day the father and son drove to the mountains from Denver, and December 17th, the day that the bodies were discovered by the BLM officer, someone had come across the van and the bodies and stolen whatever valuables had been in the van, including the murder weapon, which had been intertwined in the hand of the shooter, particularly his thumb and his forefinger; the fingers frozen to the point that a hacksaw was necessary to free the gun from this natural encumbrance.

It also didn’t take the experts long before they had a track on the perpetrators of this heinously unnatural act, which is understandable, as anyone who would be desperate enough to saw a gun from a frozen hand, let alone steal money from a corpse, having taken desperation to a heretofore unseen level, would be certain to quickly make use of their ill-gotten gains. A male and female, both known meth-heads from Craig, CO, were tracked through their use of the deceased’s credit cards to a hotel in Snoqualmie, WA, approximately 25 miles ESE of Seattle - more mountains and wilderness in which they could seek shelter from normalcy - and 1220 miles from the scene of their crime.

The first question one begs to ask is what were two people from Craig, CO, a good 100 hard miles to the northwest of Kremmling, doing in a remote area of the wilderness in the winter where they would have had, apparently for them, the good fortune to stumble across this meth head’s gold mine of a find – a corpse with credit cards and a gun? A litany of questions further ensue, but the next most obvious is what drove these people to commit this unthinkable act – their dire need for money for their dire need for drugs? Imagine their desperation, a force so profound that it was able to overwhelm any sort of basic emotion towards the obvious human tragedy that they had uncovered, emotions that would have the coldest of hearts closing the door, stepping back to mournfully ponder the misfortune of this man and boy and then calling the authorities.

Many might consider my parallel between this desperate act of violence and mountain living to be intellectually lazy and based upon no quantifiable facts or cogent reasoning; that would be a fair charge, as my parallel is based upon personal bias and little more than limited observations and a gut feeling. However, I’ll offer the supposition that perhaps not all Coloradans cherish the mountains; rather, there are many more of my ilk who cower under the constant threat and intimidation of these peaks that eternally hulk over their every move.

A little-known fact… but, Denver, as beautiful a city as you will find because of the snow-capped Rockies that hold this city in their hands, leads the United States in alcoholism; Colorado Springs, another city with its back up against the Rockies, is third. (We are not talking about alcohol consumption, but alcoholism.)  How can this disease, whose most prominent root cause is generally argued to be depression and despair, be running rampant in a city typically known for its beauty, healthy living and as a gateway to fun and frolic? I’ll argue that those mountains have more of a negative effect on the human psyche than one might imagine – and I know, because I’ve lived it, and they whammed me good.

After the couples capture and extradition to Grand County, they await trial on the charges of identity theft, theft, criminal trespass, possession of burglary tools, tampering with physical evidence, criminal possession of a financial device, violation of bail bonds, criminal mischief, abuse of a corpse, and telecommunication crime; they’re now sitting uncomfortably sober 500 yards south of The Riverside Hotel in the Grand County Jail, nestled at the base of Mt. Bross, he hulking over them and the rest of Hot Sulphur Springs, brooding, sullen…..but clearly in charge of their moods, if not also their deeds.

**********

On three occasions would the mountains and the weather literally threaten my continued existence on this planet. The first aforementioned trek that had me hauling the U-Haul up a snowy Loveland Pass en route to our date with destiny at The Riverside was simple child’s play compared to three that would follow. These three trips were so bad that it is hard to pick the worst – perhaps the last of the three was the least deadly, only because it occurred during the day, although the snow was heaviest and the visibility probably the worst of the three occasions. Also, by the time of the third blizzard drive over the pass, I was something of a seasoned veteran; instead of peeing my pants and crying out to God for mercy, I was resigned to just say “the hell with it”, and forge onward. I was also in serious financial straits at that time, and my demise at the hands of a Berthoud Pass blizzard would have at least put my kids in good financial stead for the long term, the very least I could do for them having blown their inheritance on a fetid money pit in an out-of-the-way mountain burg.

It was the last week of February in 2008, and we’d owned the hotel for two months. We still lived in Kansas City and were relying on the talents of three early 20-somethings to manage our life investment from 600 miles away. I had a business reason to be in Denver, a trade show, and needed to transport a show booth and samples along with a business associate. Had the trade show been in Indy, Chicago or Orlando, we would have loaded the booth and whatever else on a Yellow Freight truck, and boarded Southwest Airlines to get to our show; but Denver afforded me the unique opportunity to save some freight costs, airline costs and….oh, as luck would have it I could also haul some more nick-nacks and furnishings to our new purchase in the Rockies, just a few short miles beyond Denver.

We loaded up what would be the second of three 9x12 U-Haul trailers and planned on pulling out of KC at 7:00 AM – a drive that would normally put us in Hot Sulphur around 5:00 PM MST, but pulling the trailer would add another two hours, assuming there were no issues with weather, and none were predicted. The ‘we’ that was making this journey was of course me, my business associate John, and for the purpose of adding a little color to the venture, I brought along Crazy Mike, our terribly unreliable and always overpaid painter and handyman. Crazy Mike had early on exclaimed an interest in not only de-wallpapering and painting The Riverside for us, he had also expressed intentions of signing on permanently in Colorado as the live-in handyman, jack-of-all-trades kind of a guy that every 103-year-old hotel, bar and restaurant relies upon to keep the operation running smoothly. Remember the Newhart Show? – Crazy Mike was Larry, Daryl and Daryl all rolled into one, only singularly he probably smelled worse than the three of them combined.

30 miles west of Kansas City, at 8:30 AM, we made an unscheduled stop at a U-Haul dealer in Lawrence, KS and unloaded the trailer, a trailer that had been crammed so full of this, that and the other that there wasn’t sufficient room left in the loaded trailer for a bag of peanuts. The wheel bearings on the trailer were bad, and every time we got our speed beyond 45 MPH, the trailer shook like a bartender at a martini competition. Also, we’d apparently loaded the trailer badly – too much weight here, not enough there.

At 10:30, we were re-loaded into a new trailer, our weight properly distributed, and off we went onward to the western wilds of Kansas. Good, clear, dry roads had us making relatively good time, our speed averaging 65 MPH, a marvel to me after having previously pulled a trailer over icy roads at 50 MPH, feeling then like I was cheating death with every foot forward. We arrived in Denver just after rush hour, and all seemed in line for an 8:00 PM arrival at The Riverside.

No sooner had we started the climb up I-70, just barely in the foothills and still in the western city limits of Denver, than the un-forecasted snow started – heavy and wet, but not accumulating, as the temperature was only in the upper 30’s. Up and up we went, the snow increasing in intensity, the temperature dropping in linear opposite tandem; the snow was now accumulating at a rapid rate, along with my stress level. The stress was compounded by the constant chatter of Crazy Mike in the back seat, all but childlike, asking, wishing, hoping and then pleading with me to pull over so he could pee. (Perhaps his decision to have that third Mountain Dew was not a prudent one.) Right before the town of Idaho Springs, about 30 miles west of Denver, the first sign of civilization after your initial up-down and all-around roller-coaster ride on I-70 into the mountains, there is a short tunnel – and right before the tunnel is the only shoulder, maybe a 50-yard stretch of shoulder, that a car could pull off for a guy to take a pee. There aren’t trees, or a little ditch that you could hunker down in for some privacy; just enough space for a car to pull over and Crazy Mike to get out and pee against the face of the adjoining mountain, cars whizzing by all the while, snow blinding the eyes of any who would wish to peruse – this is what occurred….and mercifully, the whining stopped.

Unlike my first U-Haul haul through the mountains, I’d decided on taking Berthoud Pass, which was some 30 miles shorter than the Loveland Pass route, and I’d decided after my previous bitch of a journey up icy Highway 9 to Hot Sulphur, that Berthoud’s snaky twists and turns couldn’t be any worse. We struggled to get to Empire, the turnoff from I-70 onto Highway 40, the snow now blinding and building on the road at a rate that is unimaginable to flatlanders…certainly this flatlander. As we started the ascent onto the snaking Berthoud Pass road, snow coming at a rate of maybe 2’/hour, I passed a State highway employee standing at the gate that closes the pass….we were to be the last car allowed over the pass. Damn our luck.

Berthoud Pass, from initial climb to final descent, is 14 miles with 5 switchbacks up and 5 down: I got to know them like I know the back of my hand, and hate them with an ever-increasing intensity. If you're so inclined, cut and paste the following link, watch it, and imagine making this drive at night, at the tail end of a 10-hour drive across Kansas & Colorado, in a white-out blizzard, pulling a loaded U-Haul with a whimpering, foul-smelling painter in your back seat.

A Colorado Road Trip Over Berthoud Pass | US HIghway 40 - YouTube

This particular evening, I drove up the mountain in a blinding storm, never exceeding 10 MPH. I was sturdy, resolute and complete in the knowledge that there was no going back – we were locked in, and I had to get us out. When we hit the top of the pass, 11,000 feet at the top of the mountain in a windswept blizzard, both John’s and my need to rid ourselves of Mountain Dew kicked in, and our stop-off pee at the apex was fulfilling mostly in the notion that it might be our last, and I wouldn’t have to worry about rescue personnel finding us dead with soiled britches.

Down the mountain I went, the U-Haul trailer pressing on my back like a 2000-pound jackboot. I was in 1st gear the entire time, traveling no more than 5 MPH, yet every second of the journey I felt that my car legs were about to fall from under me; and this says nothing of the visibility issue, as I was struggling to hang on to the car and the trailer, but to go where, as I couldn’t see but one foot beyond the front of the car.

I’ll be honest and tell you that I prayed fiercely during that 14-mile, hour-long trek over the mountain. I questioned myself, asking ‘what in the world have you done to put yourself in harm’s way like this…you’re out of your element to the point that you’re jeopardizing your life.’ God answered my prayers and got me down that mountain, only to put me in the center of Middle Park, where the snow raged, the wind blew a gale, and visibility ceased to exist on any human level. I still had 35 long miles to go before I would hopefully be able to climb out of this rolling coffin.

Most highways these days have slits cut into the pavement at the edge of the shoulder; if you should doze while driving and start to veer off the road, the tires hit the slits and make a loud

BDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDD

noise that zaps you back awake and into your proper travel lane. In Colorado, those slits have nothing to do with waking you up – they’re there to keep you from driving off the road in a white-out blizzard, which no question I would have done innumerable times that evening without the slits. After 16 of the longest hours of my life, we pulled up to the front of The Riverside at 10:00 PM MST. I waited in the SUV for a bit, absolutely spent, while Crazy Mike, ever being Johnny-on-the-spot when it came to mechanical and maintenance issues, went into the hotel to get a crowbar, which he would ultimately use to pry my rigid, ashen fingers from the steering wheel.

**********

Monday, August 12th, 2008 was as spectacular a day in the mountains as one could ever hope to witness – 75 windless degrees, zero humidity and a blue sky for which there exists no proper adjective to describe its beauty; it was also my 52nd birthday. As it was a Monday, the hotel was closed and the day was mine to enjoy; barely two months into our new life and I was already desperate to get away from the hotel and that garbage dump of a town whenever the opportunity presented itself.

The plan involved Julie and I driving to Steamboat Springs for the day, some 70 miles west of Hot Sulphur on Highway 40, for the purpose of eating a relaxing lunch in someone else’s restaurant and me buying my birthday gift, which was to be a pair of waders and felt-soled wading boots – the tools necessary for me to take up the sport of fly fishing, of which I could literally participate out of my back door. (I lived on the banks of the Colorado River on a stretch of gold medal trout water, water that people came from all over the United States to angle, and I loved to fish, yet I donned those waders and boots and stood in that water and fished…..once.)

The drive west of Hot Sulphur on Highway 40 to Steamboat Springs is relatively flat, as you drive along a fairly neutral route that is the Colorado River basin and Middle Park – a high plateau surrounded by a ring of higher mountains. When you find yourself about 15 miles east of Steamboat, you start to climb what is the northwest flank of the Middle Park ring, the apex of that summit before you head down into Steamboat Springs being Rabbit Ears Pass; so named for a prominent rock formation that resembles a pair of jack rabbit ears. Rabbit Ears Pass differs from Berthoud Pass in that the switchback curves on the way up seem to be much less hairpinnish than Berthoud, and the downside traverse is one long, steep hill, two lanes climbing and a single lane descending, and except for the first 2 miles after the summit, it is void of curves for the most part. Were you able to sled down that hill, it would be the longest, gnarliest sled ride you could’ve ever as a kid imagined. I had taken this route one other time during my first adult visit to the Rockies in the summer of 1993; being a novice to mountain driving and down shifting at the time, the descent had my brakes smoking by the time we were a third of the way to the bottom of that run.

On the upward ascent of Rabbit Ears, we were stuck behind a service truck of some type – a big white thing with tanks, pumps, a compressor, pipes, valves, gauges and four wheels on dual rear axles; it was about the size of a UPS delivery van, a pretty stout piece of metal in motion, and no question the kind of truck you wouldn’t pick a fight with. As I was in absolutely no hurry, the thought never occurred to me to attempt to pass the truck. We finally reached the summit, and like all mountain passes on Colorado highways, it is announced by signage, and started our downward decent into Steamboat Springs. We hadn’t gone but maybe two miles down the two big S-curves on the descent, when I started smelling major brake overheating from what I assumed to be the aforementioned truck which we were following. I knew it wasn’t me, as I’d been downshifting instead of using my brake to slow the car, but I was surprised that any native, especially a native that drove a truck for a living, wouldn’t be downshifting as well.

On we went with the smell getting worse by the yard, and when we hit the long, steep, three-lane straightaway, smoke is now visible from the truck’s rear wheels. I’m starting to get a little nervous, but not too nervous, as the truck is still in front of me – I’m nervous for the people in front of the truck. Then it hits me, that I am about to watch something that I’ve always wanted to see but have never had the opportunity, that being witness to an out-of-control, brakeless truck driving into the “runaway truck” ramp. You’ve seen these if you’ve ever driven on mountainous highways with steep grades; they’re long stretches, maybe 500 yards, of pea gravel or sand that will bring the truck to a slow and safe halt, should the brakes be overheated and non-functional, as were the brakes on the truck before me. The ramps are announced well in advance, two or three times, so that if you’re having a brake issue, you’ve got plenty of time to plan your exit.

Whoosh!

I watched in disbelief as the truck sped right past the runaway ramp, brakes smoking now like a house afire. I figured that possibly this was no native, and it was in fact the first time he’d ever driven on a mountain in his life. Finally he seems to slow enough to where he begins to pull over on an area of shoulder, of which there was little on this road –I quickly take the opportunity to pass him. Continuing down, and preceding me in my lane in this order, was a gasoline tanker truck, a large cattle trailer being pulled by a large, tri-axled pick-up truck, a dairy tanker truck, and one more gasoline tanker – four big, slow, flasher blinking trucks in low gear, heading downward at maybe 20 miles per hour. Like a dumb ass, I decided to pass the gasoline tanker that preceded me, as there was no oncoming traffic…..at that particular time.

No sooner do I pull in the oncoming lane to pass the rolling 6000-gallon container of fire and brimstone than I catch a glimpse in my rear-view mirror of a big, white truck with tanks, pumps, a compressor, pipes, valves, gauges and four wheels on dual rear axles screaming down on me at a rate of speed that was possibly double that of mine. There is no room now to pull in front of the gasoline tanker, as he was pretty solidly on the tail of the cattle truck; my only option is to hit my accelerator and drive as fast as I can to get to the next break between traffic, hopefully between the cattle truck and the dairy truck, but probably all the way in front of the gasoline tanker that was leading the parade. This would have all gone smoothly except that there were cars coming up the hill, in the passing lane, straight at me, and they couldn’t get into their free lane, as both of the uphill lanes were occupied.

I’ll reset the situation for you; perhaps you’ve seen something like I am about to describe in a movie starring Sylvester Stallone or Bruce Willis. I’m in the wrong lane, driving down a 7% grade at 80 MPH, cars coming straight at me, a 10,000 pound out of control machine shop traveling 90 MPH about to smash into my rear, on the left a guardrail that would give way and offer a 1000-foot drop into the valley, and on my right side - to buffer my inevitable crash into the side of the mountain were I not to opt for flying off of the left side - were two gasoline tankers, a milk truck and a trailer full of cattle. Oh, and both my wife and I are screaming at the top of our lungs for the Hand of The Lord to deliver us from what we were certain was to be our very unwanted and very untimely 15 minutes of fame.

There is obviously no longer suspense to the story, as the fact that you are reading my version of this occurrence tells you that we survived – and it indeed required the Hand of The Lord. But for real, there was more than a moment in that 10 second span that seemed to last an eternity, that I felt with absolute certainty that not only was I a goner, but I was more than likely going to be taking additional innocent humans and a few head of cattle with me.

 I pulled in front of the first gasoline tanker, just missing the oncoming traffic by 25 yards as he was able to get in his right lane, and the smoking white behemoth flew by me, barely missing my rear left flank, and quickly disappeared from view as it screamed on down the mountain. I was flabbergasted that we didn’t find a gnarled mass of truck and machinery at the bottom of the hill; there was no evidence that the white truck did anything beyond cruising down that hill and eventually coming to a safe stop somewhere, off the road and out of sight. My guess is that the truck driver’s eventual stop involved a bathroom and a change of uniform.

Having a near death experience can sure take the starch out of a pleasurable day. I was in a surreal fog for the duration of our trip, going through the motions of eating lunch and buying waders, unable to think of anything else other than my morning pas de deux with the Grim Reaper.

 Never again did I, or will I, ever drive over Rabbit Ears Pass or visit Steamboat Springs, the memory of that nearest of misses on my 52nd birthday still so real, so raw and so jarring. I can also say with certainty that never of my own accord, (I would have to be handcuffed and in the back of a squad car) will I drive over Berthoud Pass, through the Fraser River Valley, and westward to that fetid little burg that is Hot Sulphur Springs.

For a fact, I hated those mountains.

***********

Fast forward to 2021, 13 years later, and I have been back to the Rocky Mountains, and Hot Sulphur Springs, maybe five or six times. The mountains are still massive, but even more spectacular than I remember, and, as I no longer live under their domain, I can enjoy them without being intimidated by them.

During our most recent visit to Hot Sulphur Springs in early October of 2021, we walked our two-mile trek along the western banks of the Colorado River with our dogs; Lucy was all but raised on that walk along the river, and she seemed to be smiling at the memory. The sky was as blue as I remembered, and we were still able to enjoy the last glimpses of sparkle and gold in what aspen and river birch leaves remained on the late-fall trees. I’m so glad that we’ve recovered to the point where we can go back to the town, and enjoy that walk, without suffocating to death with regret about having made that near-fatal leap into the hospitality business, in one of the most inhospitable places one could imagine.

Sadly, the town of Hot Sulphur is even more depressed than when we lived there, if that is possible. The 2008 economy that helped take us under did a number on the place, and what the bad economy didn’t destroy, was neatly circumcised by the pandemic.  We drove up and down the few streets and pointed out where this person or that person lived, but they live there no longer. The last remaining restaurant, The Glory Hole, sits empty, with a ‘For sale’ sign in the window. After our river walk on the unseasonably warm, and typically bone-dry, 8,000-ft altitude day, we were parched, and made our way to the lone gas station to buy a few bottles of water, certainly the only place left in town where water could be purchased. As if this didn’t sum it up, at 2:00 in the afternoon, the station was closed, with a handwritten sign on the door that read “I was sick this morning and closed. Hopefully I’ll be OK and back tomorrow.”

And then there was the mighty Riverside Hotel. It’s no longer a hotel, and hasn’t been since the day we shut it down in March of 2010. It is a private residence, the inhabitants as invisible as the ghosts that lived with us when we owned the hotel. The condition of the building is absolutely heartbreaking. I couldn’t even bring myself to take a picture of it, with it’s rotted cladding, it’s paint peeling to a degree that the flaking chips could be measured in square feet, and taking on the general demeanor of the yawning maw of a disinterested, slothful, slovenly beast. I don’t know the people that own the building, and I’m not privy to their financial condition, but I believe it a crime to own such a historic piece of property and let it go to this degree of absolute hell. Shame on them!

As our visit to Grand County was drawing to a close, I was at peace with the notion that I could return to the mountains, to Hot Sulphur, and enjoy what there was to enjoy, and not beat myself up over the stain that Grand County living had left upon my soul. I was resolute in my newfound belief that those spectacular mountains weren’t beasts that devoured my fortitude, rather, they were welcoming monoliths, their lofty arms open wide, begging one and all to come and enjoy, partake in our glory and revel in our magnificence.

As we prepared to head back to Kansas early on the morning of October 13th, I loaded our luggage in 15-degree F temperatures, after brooming 6 inches of snow off of our car, to ultimately head eastward and down, and get pounded by a blizzard as we traversed the ups and downs of Berthoud Pass.

Some things never change.