A Summary -- Where I Reveal What I Found

It’s a long way home, if you are coming from Dalhart USA, especially when you must stop and pick up a Sharon, and you have to listen to the Dallas Cowboys lay a stinker of a game in New York.  Come on guys.

I dealt with it by letting Skip drive.  I dealt with my anxious riding while Skip drove too fast and tail-gated too many cars by burying my head and brain in my computer documenting this trip. 

This one I’m doing from home.

We drove right at 3,000 miles on our epic quest.  If you look at it on a map we sort of made a loop from Waco/Austin up to Paris, across to Lubbock and up through New Mexico and Colorado and into Utah and back to Colorado and eventually back to Waco/Austin.  Okay, it’s not really a loop, I just don’t have another word for it….so loop it is.

We witnessed the topographical changes from central Texas to east Texas pine and cedar trees and cotton in dark soil to Lubbock’s scrub oak and cotton in red soil to the pines and colorful aspens in the mountains.  The cotton in east Texas is ahead of the cotton in west Texas and west Texas, Lubbock, was greener and had standing water in the fields.  We saw snow in Colorado (sounds like a song title --- use it if you want).

We saw deer and elk and antelope and lizards and chipmunks.  We saw and heard people from all over the world.  We saw amazing natural, God given beauty, not just in parks but in small north Texas towns and fields and in the faces of the servers and clerks and fellow travelers in Texas, New Mexico, Utah and Colorado.  

People are fascinating.  I love people.

We hiked and played golf and wondered and wandered and talked and listened to music that described what we were doing and how it felt.  

We saw where Marty was born.  We saw where she was formed, we saw where Marty and I met and where our babies were born and where we found peace and where we had fun and ultimately where Marty died.  We made the circle and in a particularly fitting way we closed that circle with as much grace as we could muster. 

I started this quest looking for closure.  That’s not what I found.  Hell, closure is just a word that I’m not sure exists in real life, with real things in that real life.  I don’t know.  I found enjoyment in simple things, I found some new friends, talked with old friends and I found good, hard, belly aching, coughing laughter.  Ultimately I rediscovered some marvelous memories and some of what Marty and I were before she got sick.

I sat on a rock in Utah and looked out over this enormous expanse, this marvelous creation that had taken millions of years for real nature to form.  I sat on that rock and somehow found a sense of peace I haven’t felt it a long time.  I walked away from that rock feeling lighter, feeling less burdened, feeling less sad.  It was a healing.

I can’t recommend the experience enough.  If you do it, you have to find a good friend, a friend who will laugh with you and laugh at you, a friend who will cry with you and sing badly with you, a friend who generally smells okay and doesn’t snore.  Mostly you need a friend, someone you love, someone you know loved your wife and someone she loved who was willing and able to go on a quest. 

Then you must make a plan, a flexible plan and just go.  You go to find yourself; you go to remind yourself of who you are and what you have done, you go to honor all that was and all that will be.  Just go.

Taking care of Marty was the most decent thing I’ve ever done.  Taking her around the state was one of the best things I’ve ever done.  Somehow, somewhere, Marty watched, laughed, gave directions and advice, cussed and cried.  It was just right.

Black Canyon of the Gunnison is not out of Gunnison

When we went to bed the night after our trip to Arches it was about 75 degrees.  When we got out to load the truck the next morning, it was about 40 degrees and it was snowing in Colorado Springs.  The weather had changed and we were like a couple of young colts excited by the change.

Naw, not really, more like a couple of war horses stiff from the cold.

This was a long drive, a seven-hour driving day and we planned on breaking this up by going through the Black Canyons of the Gunnison just outside of Montrose Colorado.  Skip had been there a couple of times and I had seen his pictures and they were amazing.  Sometimes even good photographs don’t do the real thing justice.  Just like pictures of me, I’m too large and spectacular to be captured by a picture. 

And, just like me,  Black Canyon cannot be captured, it must be experienced.

It had lightly snowed just outside of Montrose as we drove to the canyon.  The fields were white with little tufts of grass peeking out.  The snow wasn’t going to stay because of the bright sun, but right now the light flakes clung to the pines and junipers as we went up a winding road to the top of the canyon.

The Black Canyon was formed by the running Gunnison River.  It boasts the highest vertical cliff in Colorado, 2700 feet from tip to toe.  The sides of the cliffs are rough, rocky and have a dark tint.  You go to some of the outlooks and look over the rail and you see the river, you hear the river, you see what the river has made over eons.  

We went to several turn outs where you could walk 100 yards, 200 yards, 300 yard or longer to an overlook protected by a small fence.  It was cold, breezy, snow was on the ground around us and covered the small trees and brush that amazingly grew on the side of the rocky cliffs. 

 

It was a one of a kind moment and once again, we left just a small bit of Marty.

It was another four hours to Colorado Springs, so we had to cut our visit short.  We hit the highway knowing there was more snow and mountain passes to be passed.  We saw snow, antelope, wool heavy sheep and the huge Blue Mesa Lake; it was beautiful and went on for miles as we drove along its edge.

When we made it to Wilkerson Pass, the last mountain pass we drove through, there was snow covering the surrounding pasture.  It was overcast, snow barely falling and 18 degrees.   

I have to say I am not a good rider, I’m a bit of an anxious rider.  Marty taught the kids more driving than I ever did.  Stuff is too close on the right side when you’re not driving.  Skip was driving and I was biting my tongue and hanging on to the “Oh Shit” handle exercising my will power by not saying, slow down or watch that car.

We did get to Colorado Springs to the house of two of Skip’s longtime friends, Bobby and Becky and son Blake.  They live a warm, animal loving life in a place that is exceptionally beautiful.  You really can see Pike’s Peak from their backyard.  They swear it never gets old.  I believe them.

Marty and I honeymooned in Colorado Springs in January of 1976.