Editor’s note: This is the final installment in the Aspen Journalism’s “Crisis of the Commons” series. In the first four parts, author Paul Andersen explored the legacy of public lands both nationally and in Colorado. Part five takes Andersen on a road trip across the West in May including a weeklong river trip in June, plus an October desert canyon backpacking trip and a close encounter with a flash flood. Throughout these adventures, he explored public lands on foot, skis, bike and raft, interviewing other public-land users as he went.
“On the Loose” was more than a book; it was a passport and a ticket to public lands. It was an irresistible invitation to the mountains and deserts of the West, to the iconic landscapes merging with the national psyche.
“To Paul and Norman,” inscribed my prescient Uncle Don to my younger brother and me on the flyleaf of my cherished 1967 first edition, hard-cover, denim-hued, boxed issue of this Sierra Club classic. “Hope both of you spend many years on the loose and that you find our country’s wilderness to your liking.”
It was the ‘60s — when America went camping — and I had my eyes opened to Western lands on family camping trips to Yellowstone and Glacier national parks, the Badlands, the Grand Canyon and many other remarkable landscapes in the West.
Andersen family camping trips were organized and run by our parents, Walter and Agnes, city-born nature lovers who enjoyed escaping the urban and feeling the wind in their hair, the sun on their faces, and wonder at the unknown horizon. Three of us kids — my brother and sister and I — our parents, plus our two golden retrievers crammed into a 1964 Rambler station wagon and rolled west like the Jode family from John Steinbeck’s “The Grapes of Wrath.”
At campgrounds, we packed, like sardines, into a canvas “umbrella” tent. We slept on air mattresses in quilted, cotton sleeping bags. Meals were cooked on a classic two-burner Coleman stove that our dad pumped huffingly and our mother prepared lovingly, a plaid scarf covering her unruly hair.
Our trips were tame compared with those described by Terry and Renny Russell, authors of “On the Loose,” who paid an ultimate price. Terry lost his life during a raft trip on the Green River with Renny in 1967 when their boat flipped on a rapid. That tragic sense of finality seared my respect for the risks of being “on the loose” in wild, self-willed country, but it also acted as an enticement.
Risk factors did little to curtail my peregrinations to national parks, forests and monuments; to state, county and municipal parks; to mountains, deserts and seashores; and to my most expansive wanderings across the seemingly limitless domain of the Bureau of Land Management (BLM). Over the ensuing 60 years since the publication of “On the Loose,” I have often been with Terry and Renny in spirit, drawn by the insatiable lure of untamed places.
What follows is a narrative of a five-week “on the loose” adventure from my home up the Fryingpan Valley to the Oregon coast and back again, camping all the way, mostly free and unfettered. While traveling in my 50-mpg Volkswagen Jetta wagon, I conducted informal interviews with fellow travelers I met along the way. In small vignettes, they conveyed a diversity of heartfelt connections to our shared public lands, revealing that Americans of every stripe cherish the common heritage the Russell brothers adored.
Finding Terry’s grave
“My brother’s body was found circling in an eddy above Florence Creek Rapid,” wrote Renny Russell in “Rock Me on The Water,” self-published in 2006, “The discovery came after an exhaustive search of the Green River in Utah. Terry had just turned twenty-one and did not leave this world easily. When the boat that retrieved his body arrived at the eight-foot-high diversion dam at Tusher Rapid, a six-inch gash had been cut in her bottom. Another rescue boat wrecked a motor. The following day, the hearse carrying my brother had engine failure and had to be towed. There seemed to be a kind of cosmic resistance to his untimely departure.”
A rock cairn in a hidden ravine on the banks of the Green River serves today as an appropriate memorial for Terry Russell. I practically stumbled upon it on a solo walk not far from our camp on a Desolation-Grey Canyons river trip the first week of June. It was a rainy afternoon with low, dark clouds, and for some unknown reason, I pushed my way through brush on a faint trail that led me to the cairn. Atop the rock pile was a green ammo can of the type river runners have long used, emblazoned with a bright-red dot.
After prying open the lid, I found a handwritten note from Renny Russell honoring his brother’s memory and the dispersal of his ashes here. Deeper inside the can was a copy of “On the Loose,” and from deeper still came a flood of emotion, the combined feelings of loss and discovery, of risk and reward, of life and death, of past and present.
“Adventure is not in the guidebook and Beauty is not on the map. … Seek and ye shall find.” So reads the artful calligraphy of the poetic text from “On the Loose,” a work spare in words yet rich with imagery and ideas, as good poetry should be. “Play for more than you can afford to lose, and you will learn the game,” dares another page in Terry’s prophetic script.
The Russell brothers wrote that they went on the loose, “Not to escape from but to escape to — not to forget but to remember. We’ve been learning to take care of ourselves in places where it really matters. The next step is to take care of the places that really matter. Crazy kids on the loose; but on the loose in the wilderness. That makes all the difference.”
That last sentence echoes Robert Frost’s “The Road Not Taken,” where choosing the road less traveled “… has made all the difference.” Frost’s poem and “On the Loose” give voice to individual choice on the paths we take, idealizing a sense of freedom and independence that led to Terry’s cairn on the Green.
The story continued for the surviving Renny, who wrote a deeply personal sequel, “Rock Me on The Water,” which I had the honor to edit, bringing me full circle with the Russell brothers. Both books illuminate a rare view of life on the edge as a stanza from “On the Loose” describes:
The point of it all is Out There, a little
beyond that last rise you can just
barely see, hazy and purple on the sky.
These pages are windows.
And windows are to see through.
Getting out there
Communing with Terry’s spirit inspired a late-fall desert backpack trip on Utah BLM land where a flash flood instilled a deep respect for the forces of nature. For more than an hour at the start of this five-day adventure, my son, Tait, and I heard — or, more accurately, felt — the constant rumble of thunder from an immense black cloud up-canyon that loomed over the Bear’s Ears.
When we first entered the head of the shallow draw that miles later grew into a twisting canyon with 200-foot walls, a small flow of murky water rippled over the gravel, the runoff from a storm from earlier that morning. The deep blackness of the present storm booming across the mesa signaled that more was on the way.
We walked fast under a light rain and soon passed the advance tongue of this slow-moving rivulet. Ahead, the canyon was dry except for scattered potholes of clear water. Sensing that the flood was imminent, we stashed our packs in the shelter of a high cliff overhang, then hurried back into the canyon to gather drinking water from the potholes. Turning often to look up canyon, we strained our ears for the telltale roar. It was not a matter of if, but a matter of when.
Tait heard it first and shouted a warning. We collected our water bladders and scampered up several layers of sandstone ledges. Then we saw it: a fast-moving crest that swept around a bend and raced in our direction. There was no way of outwalking this frothing torrent, which approached at about 30 mph.
“I wanna see it hit the pour-over!” called Tait. We ran through scattered junipers to where the canyon made a 40-foot plunge. A moment later, we could almost feel the ground shake as the floodwaters filled the gorge. It was as if an enormous serpent were writhing toward us, unstoppable and consuming all in its path.
Suddenly, it was there, a churning tumult of chocolate milk cascading into the basin below, filling it with the sound and fury of a raging river with standing waves. A rising mist smelled of fresh earth. Our expletives of wonder at the raw violence before us had to be shouted to be heard against the thunderous roar. We glanced at each other with disbelief. Here was a once-in-a-lifetime event that had transformed the canyon into a certain death trap for anything caught in that wild rush.
As the flood crested, a white foam appeared, swept along on the waves. “It’s hail!” shouted Tait, who scooped a handful of pea-size ice from a safe perch above a churning rapid. The current was white with hail that was swept from the mesa tops and carried miles downstream from a downpour so intense that the earth could not absorb the storm’s torrent.
That night, the newborn river maintained its flood as distant mesas continued to shed the millions of gallons of rain and hail unleashed by the storm. The roar lulled us to sleep in our safe overhang. By morning, the flow was down by half, but the sediment-laden water continued to flow a deep red. Where the hail had congealed, it had turned to solid ice, a remnant of the black cloudburst that had later rumbled menacingly off to the east.
Two days later, having enjoyed a quiet, restful, solitary perch with plenty of food and just enough water, we were able to hike along the floor of the canyon without having to wade. Where our tributary canyon met the mainstem of a much larger canyon, we were met with an ominous sight. A backpacker’s hammock was strung like a twisted rag between trees where the flood had surged 10 feet above the canyon floor. In another section, I noticed a nylon strap protruding from a sandbar. A tug revealed a stuff sack containing a tent and a package of sanitary wipes. A creeping sense of dread filled us that day as we wondered who had lost their gear. Had the hikers been swept away? We never found out.
Terry and Renny Russell had extolled the magic they discovered in the deserts, just as Tait and I did on this fall trip. My son and I share a love for these deeply riven landscapes on what we consider sacred ground. Over five days, our trip yielded not only a biblical flood, but daring ledge walks, countless bouldering moves, ancient granaries, petroglyphs, pottery shards, arrow points, chippings and a sense of total remove from the outside world.
We had walked into a rare life experience, saved as memories that will last a lifetime. It all happened on public lands where we saw no other person for five days and nary a footprint. We heard the cackle of ravens, the song of the canyon wren, the roar of water and wind. We saw balanced rocks, soaring escarpments, jutting spires and the swirl of constellations at night. We shared an appreciation for the profound, ethereal silence that the canyons so aptly convey to the attentive soul. In the sandstone layers and archeological sites, we discovered frozen time.
Bikes, antelope and wild horses
The big, powerful maverick strutted like a thoroughbred as he emerged from the sage-covered draw pushing his herd of mares and foals into the nearby hills. He sighted us and made an advance, as if in challenge to our presence on his turf. It was early May in southern Wyoming on the open range when Steve, an old Crested Butte friend, and I gazed at wild horses beneath a troubled sky of dark, brooding clouds.
We had begun our mountain-bike tour at Dutch John, a small outpost near Flaming Gorge Reservoir. After turning off the paved highway, our route led into high-desert foothills where a sign announced “public lands,” a welcoming invitation to explore vast acreages of open range under BLM jurisdiction.
There was no traffic and, as on most of my self-supported bike tours spanning more than five decades, we rolled beyond the trappings of civilization into a realm of quiet and solitude. We carried all the gear needed for a five-day expedition — except for water, which presents a challenge to find and an opportunity in finding. Water searches in remote, dry country often lead to hidden canyons, deep draws, remote springs or cattle tanks. We have filtered water from them all.
Some would call southern Wyoming desolate, but these vast rolling hills and winding valleys are an alive and enticing home to deer, elk, antelope, wild horses, foxes, coyotes, marmots, badgers, mountain lions, raptors and many other species. These lands, mostly leased for grazing and for oil and gas exploration, convey a rich, historic legacy where native peoples, mountain men and wagon trains penetrated an enormous wilderness after Thomas Jefferson’s Louisiana Purchase of 1803, one of the greatest real estate bargains in history.
Bike touring is an acquired taste for which Steve and I, both septuagenarians, have been well suited. Pedaling over hill and dale, we talk little, breath hard and plot a loosely contrived route on what is often a maze of dirt roads, each one the “road less traveled.” On bike tours, we shift our focus from the mundane to intriguing unknowns as every bend of the road reveals new horizons and discoveries.
Navigating remote dirt and gravel byways requires flexibility in speed, endurance and the practical challenges of where and when to camp. Finding good water in these high deserts is the determining factor for avoiding dry camps and the parched thirst for “cool, clear water,” as the Sons of the Pioneers harmonized. Isolated, quiet landscapes, comfortable tent sites, and small campfires echo the experiences of long-past travelers.
At one camp, I stayed up after Steve had turned in. I watched the fire turn to glowing embers and a smear of stars glimmer above. The air was still and cool. Night birds trilled their last nocturnal scales. Alpenglow lingered on the western ridge. A thin crescent moon shone overhead in a brilliant silver arc.
Our tour had been blessed with perfect weather until the final day, when we rolled into Green River, Wyoming, in the face of an oncoming spring deluge of snow and rain and a bitterly cold wind. Rain pelted the windows of a motel room that felt downright luxurious as we took stock of our journey.
The 125 or so miles we covered had been either up or down, biked at a pleasurable pace with an invigorating sense of freedom and adventure. Time was marked only by the spinning of Earth against the heavenly clock of the cosmos and measured by the meditative spinning of our pedals.
Public lands and iconic places
Bidding Steve farewell after a shuttle back to Dutch John, I repacked my car and motored north on a leisurely road trip that took me through the Wind River Range, Jackson Hole and the Tetons, Yellowstone, Craters of the Moon, the temperate rain forests of Oregon, and the coast of Oregon to meet an old college friend from our days at Gunnison’s Western Colorado University in the early ‘70s.
From Newport, Oregon, I journeyed south to Ashland, over Siskiyou Pass, to ski on Mount Shasta, then I went east from Reno, Nevada, across basin and range on Highway 50 — which carries the apt superlative of “The Loneliest Highway in America.” At Green River, Utah, I linked up with Crested Butte friends to spend the first week of June rafting Desolation-Grey Canyons. It was there where I chanced to find Terry Russell’s memorial cairn a stone’s throw from the Green River flowing with runoff from snow I had skied a month before in the Wind Rivers, and taking this self-guided adventure full circle.
Equipped with touring bike, skis and backpack, I utilized it all over the course of four weeks, starting with the Flaming Gorge bike tour, a multiday camp outside Pinedale, Wyoming, where I skinned and skied corn snow at White Pine, a small ski hill on the fringe of the Winds. A ski tour a few days later on Teton Pass gave me breathtaking vistas of the Teton Range. That night, I heard wolves howl for the first time in my life at a remote camp just south of Yellowstone National Park, which I entered at the South Entrance the day after it had opened on a road banked with 4 feet of snow.
Old Faithful was familiar from a family camping trip in 1964, when I was 13, and I joined the throng of geyser worshippers as it erupted with perfect timing. The Old Faithful lodge felt as rustic and inviting as when I was a wide-eyed boy wondering if it was possible for a suburban Chicago kid to go on the loose in the West.
Exiting through West Yellowstone, the Jetta flew across the expansive plains of Idaho to the craters and pinnacles of lava flows at Craters of the Moon National Monument and Preserve. That night, I was strobed by a brilliant electric storm that flashed against my rain-battered tent. Further west, the landscape morphed into eastern Oregon’s rolling farm and ranch country where prized fishing rivers, among them the renowned John Day, meander through emerald valleys where small, quaint communities speak to humble agrarian values.
Crossing Tombstone Pass from Sisters, Oregon, a narrow dirt road led to a deep, lush valley where stood pines that towered 150 feet. A rushing stream roared with waterfalls, and the understory was thick and verdant and bedecked with spring flowers. I felt as if I had stepped onto the set of Avatar. Here was a Garden of Eden celebrating the living earth. Resting on an enormous, moss-carpeted log in the midst of this teeming ecosystem, I doubted the wisdom of colonizing Mars when we live on a bounteous and wondrous green earth where the long term future of our species deserves stewardship.
A day later, I pulled into a state park campsite on the Pacific coast at Newport, popular among the megacamper set with their chrome-gilt, rumbling diesel trucks, testaments to my entitled generation, the all-consuming baby boomers. I staked my tent and set out on my bike down a sandy track to the beach for a delightful ride on firm sand at the very edge of the Pacific amid the roar of crashing ocean waves and the fragrant sea air.
My old friend, Charlie, arrived the next day from his home in Pendleton, visiting Newport for a law seminar that gave him enough breaks to hang with me at the beach and surf cast with an especially long rod, jangly lures, shoulder-high waders and an emergency inflatable vest in case an ocean current pulled him off his feet. I watched with humor as Charlie futilely flayed the waves rolling in from the infinite horizon.
I treated Charlie to my usual camp fare of ramen and quesadillas. After dinner, we traded off strumming songs on my travel guitar and musing over old times, old friends and the winding tracks of our lives that have crisscrossed on public lands where we have skied, hiked, biked and camped together for more than 40 years.
North Umpqua, Rogue, Shasta and ‘Lamb Chop’
Driving south along the Oregon coast is a journey through natural wonders that adorn calendars and offer spectacular vistas of a rugged coastline where waves crash and send fountains of sea spray into the cool, moist air. From a small campground at Cape Perpetua, my tent was tucked beneath huge deciduous trees and verdant shrubs along a frothing creek.
I hiked a steep trail to a coastal overlook where a memorial to the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) of the Great Depression honors young men from every walk of American life who labored together for a pittance of income and bonded by working together on thousands of public-lands projects. The closest we have today to the CCC is AmeriCorps, a youth work program created in 1993 by the National and Community Service Trust under the Clinton Administration. AmeriCorps was designed to improve public lands and bring together a diversity of young Americans in a constructive workforce through a visionary program that today could deliver huge benefits to our politically divided nation. AmeriCorps was gutted this year by the Department of Government Efficiency and was left with bare-bones funding.
Following trails down to the beach, I discovered a faint trail that led to a hidden cove where I rested against a driftwood log and let the rhythm of the waves lull me into a nap. Dew soaked my rainfly overnight at my creekside camp where I awaited the bright sun while sipping a cup of rich, dark coffee. Route 101 took me south on a fog-shrouded highway where wisps of mist lingered in the woods. I turned east up the North Umpqua River Valley where Charlie and I had bike-toured years before on a cliff-hewn single track.
I revisited the fly fishing-themed Steamboat Cafe for a club sandwich and a local draft beer. Camp was at Tokatee Lake, which feeds a large-scale hydroelectric network of pipes and flumes. Early the next morning, in a light rain, I rode my bike up a steep Forest Service road to the North Umpqua Hot Springs to bask in solitude in travertine pools above the roar of the river.
Light snow fell at Diamond Lake on a chilly morning where a snowpacked trail led toward Mount Thielsen, a sawtooth peak jutting from the forest. The sun warmed as I dropped down to the Rogue River Gorge on a narrow highway cut through tall pines. A streamside trail revealed a geologic wonder as half the river is channeled underground through a lava tube that disgorges like a massive firehose 100 yards downstream. Dispersed camping provided an ideal setting in the deep forest where a crackling fire held off the evening chill.
Jason, an Aspen Institute friend, met me the next day at Phil’s Frosty, a bright-pink burger shack in Shady Grove where cheeseburger, fries and a malt filled the hungry void. Jason and his two friendly chocolate labradors welcomed me onto Jason’s artfully built wooden dory for a float down the Rogue on a bluebird day. Jason, a regionally noted fly fisherman, demonstrated an 80-foot cast over rapids to a big eddy. As we drifted along, he told me about his role as an Oregon state senator advocating for dam removals on the Klamath River that led to a successful campaign that has restored Jason’s beloved steelhead trout to its headwaters.
Jason’s farm is postcard perfect with white picket fences, barns, stables and a fishing room filled with dozens of rods, numerous reels and all the fly-tying gear imaginable. Jason’s collection of flies is impressive in its diversity and artistry mimicking the flies that hatch on the Rogue.
On a layover day, I drove to the base of the Mount Ashland Ski Area and skinned up for two runs. From the top, I gazed south at the impossibly picturesque Mount Shasta, snow-covered and beckoning. Jason’s unparalleled hospitality included detailing my car and repairing my broken fly rod. I promised a reciprocal hosting in Colorado and drove south over Siskiyou Pass, with Shasta filling my windshield.
After a bike ride around Siskiyou Lake, I found the perfect hidden camp on the flank of Mount Shasta and set up for the night. My alarm woke me in the dark the next morning for a quick breakfast and a half-hour drive to the end of the road at Bunny Flats. As the day brightened, I donned ski boots, skis and a daypack to begin a two-hour skin up the beaten snow track to the halfway point on Mount Shasta.
Hundreds of cars and outdoorsy people clogged the trailhead from where summiteers were stretched for the mileslong approach to the distant peak on a picture-perfect spring morning. The sun beat down from a deep-blue sky at my turnaround spot as I gnawed a protein bar and waited for the corn snow to soften. Launching off on my telemark skis, I passed dozens of hikers, boarders and skiers making their way slowly up a series of connecting gullies in a mountaineering pilgrimage.
Back at my quiet, sheltered camp, I felt wonderfully tired from my morning sojourn and appreciated the warm sun. That afternoon, I rode my touring bike on part of a large single-track mountain-bike trail system contouring through the verdant forest. The freedom I felt was elating as I knew my journey was coming to the final push back east across the basin and range deserts of Highway 50.
Three days of rolling across the two-lane cross-country route featured austere landscapes and little traffic. A camp on Nevada’s Wheeler Peak where bristlecones, the oldest trees in the world, grow was perfect staging for a hike to the snow-line and a vantage to the wide, sere desert spreading below. A camp the next afternoon in the Fish Lake Mountains of western Utah placed me among aspens at the edge of a grassy meadow.
A couple of through hikers showed up, one who bore the memorable name Lamb Chop, looking worn and haggard after two days of post-holing over a spring snowpack. I cooked them a dinner of ramen and grilled-cheese sandwiches, and heard tales of the epic hikes they have made and of the gravitational pull of the prevailing culture and the need to make a living from a world in which they feel increasingly distant.
Another drive farther east landed me in the San Rafael Swell west of Green River, Utah, where the first day of June sent the mercury up to 100 and heat waves rippled from the desert landscape. On isolated BLM land, I parked in the scant shade of a juniper, set up camp and loaded my bike bottles with water to ride a dirt track leading north down to the San Rafael River. After an hour descending a rough jeep trail, I hiked into a side canyon and sheltered from the sun beneath a sandstone overhang to sip my precious water and commune with the welcoming stillness. Having come from the cool of the coast and the mountains of Nevada and Utah, this was the first real heat I had felt from the coming of summer.
I packed up and left early the next morning to rendezvous with Fred, a Crested Butte friend of 40 years, who had drawn a permit for Desolation-Grey Canyons on the Green River, the headwaters of which are in the Wind River Range where I had camped a month earlier. We met at Green River State Park and went over gear and food for the trip on which two other boat teams were waiting at the put-in, located several hours north. I left my car and hopped in with Fred for the final phase of my journey.
Free rivers and free spirits
The Green slithered past the Sand Wash put-in as we gathered to hear the river ranger’s requisite orientation. Veteran river runners, my compatriots patiently listened, nodded acquiescence, then pushed off in the total commitment river trips through wild lands require.
As he rowed his 16-foot raft into the current, Fred explained that Desolation Canyon, named by the John Wesley Powell expedition of 1869, is deeper than the Grand Canyon and utterly remote. For five days, we would be self-sufficient. However, given the packing of the boat with every possible camp accouterment, self-sufficiency seemed a bit pampered and, for a lightweight bike tourer and backpacker, a bit excessive.
Rowing a fully laden raft is a rigor, especially with the long, wooden oars that Fred prefers. I took my turns, feeling my shoulders getting worked ferrying the raft into position for rapids, some of which were turbulent and complex, with jutting rocks and gaping holes. But the majority of time was spent drifting with the current, talking and gazing at an ever-unfolding canyon.
Fred has been running rivers for 50 years, and he values public waters as a lifeblood of risk, adventure and discovery. He recounted many of his trips in Western waterways with mutual friends, each of them marking a time of his life as a fluid journal. Fred knows this canyon well, and he pointed out landmarks without reference to the river runner’s guide to which I referred when not caught up in Fred’s narrative or fishing out cold beers from the net drift bag clipped to the raft with a carabiner.
Mosquitoes swarmed our first two camps, making headnets a necessity, each of us veiled against the droning swarms. “CFS talk” predominated with tales of derring-do and harrowing river experiences, and there was even some gossip about friends not in attendance. Gear was extensive, so camps on sandbars or beneath rustling cottonwoods required a lot of unpacking and packing; hefting water jugs, coolers and ammo cans; and securing the same before pushing off for another day of “float and bloat.”
Days were hot and sunny, with occasional rain squalls that blessedly cooled the air and freshened the breeze, which often seemed to be a headwind into which we had to row. Meals were hearty and mostly well planned, and beer and cocktails flowed, lubricating dry throats and chatty vocal chords. Trip members with guitar and banjo harmonized to familiar folksongs, and there was an old school feeling of reminiscence and river-born tribalism.
Petroglyph panels were found on well-trodden trails revealing early river inhabitants, and the canyon’s timelessness was revealed in sandstone bedding and the deep erosive force of water. Most camps were within range of rapids where the rush and roar of the Green kept us thinking about the next day’s challenges. Thunder echoed as dark storm clouds amassed and shed their loads with a cozy patter on our tents.
Our last day on the river had us joining a flotilla with other trips that were stacked up for the takeout amid the hustle and bustle of derigging. Pickups with trailers idled at the river’s edge, and everyone seemed eager to load up and head for home — or for a burger, fries and cold beer in Green River.
Eager to get home, I opted out of the traditional farewell gorge, said goodbyes and reloaded my car for the last time. I merged onto Interstate 70 eastbound and soon left Utah in the rearview mirror, keening my gaze to the rising mountains of my home valley. Driving up Highway 82, I felt a warm pang of emotion as Mount Sopris loomed and the Elk Range came into focus.
Despite all the beautiful places I had seen over five weeks, the Roaring Fork Valley remains my choice for home. It is my place, and there is no other place where I would rather live. The connection is soulful as the high mountains and lush valleys call. I am moved by my family, friends and community with whom I share deep gratitude for the public lands and waters that we have in common. The land defines us and reflects our respect and care, or lack thereof. There is nothing like being “On the Loose.”
Who loves our public lands?
Below, the author shares snapshots of some of the people he met along the way:
A smiling camp host named Kathy shook my hand at my campsite in a cool pine forest in Wyoming, across the broad valley from the looming Grand Teton. Kathy and her face-licking dog, Jazzy, were making their rounds greeting campers, warning about bears and acknowledging the free stacks of firewood at each camp.
“I fell in love here with the beauty and the grandeur,” reflected Kathy, an itinerant woman of 23 grandchildren who divides her time between California, Texas and now Wyoming. The wizened, lined face of this twice-divorced, independent nomad revealed an outdoor lifestyle and plenty of sun. Her small camper van evinced lots of road miles and a homey touch with strings of Italian lights crisscrossing over a table and chairs.
“My father was a mountain man, and he brought me up,” she explained. “We lived in a bus and traveled the California coast, shopping at flea markets. I discovered my love for nature at Yosemite, but now I prefer national forests to the big parks because of the crowds and trash. People trashing the beauty of nature drives me nuts!”
A frontline steward of public lands, Kathy thrives in her calling to share the lands that she loves with her campground guests while exulting in her chosen settings. “I love my life,” she smiles, and it’s easy to believe her.
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Joe is a 50-something veteran of the U.S. Marine Corps looking for a new way of being through a monthslong road trip to Alaska. We met on a trail in Yellowstone where I asked about his appreciation for public lands. “I’m not a religious person,” he said, “but I find spiritual renewal on public lands, from the mountains to the deserts. They offer different perspectives of time and space, and I want that in my life now.”
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Shirley and Liz are old friends who were waiting patiently for the eruption of a favorite geyser a mile or so off the main trails in the Yellowstone geyser basin. “I’ve been coming to Yellowstone for 50 years,” said Shirley. “Public lands offer me relaxation, peace and rest.”
“I come here when I need a break from city life and pavement,” added Liz.
Shirley lamented access closures to public lands by rich property owners where she lives near Jackson, Wyoming, “who fenced and gated places I used to love to go. So, Liz and I support conservation and access, especially for young people, many of whom don’t know these places exist.”
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Post-holing a snowpacked trail toward Mount Thielsen (9,184 feet) north of Crater Lake, Oregon, I met a woman with blond braids packing out a split board. Freesia, in her early 30s, told me that her unusual name, given by her mother, comes from a small southern African plant in the iris family, with fragrant, colorful flowers.
I asked where she had been riding that morning, and she beckoned toward the dramatic, jutting peak and pointed out a couloir she just soloed. A former competitive surfer in California’s Big Sur area and later in Hawaii, Freesia told me how her mother taught her reverence for nature by calling the outdoors her “church.”
“I feel that same reverence for the ocean,” Feesia explained. “We often live in narrow confines in our lives, but this” — she gestured to the forest and mountains surrounding us — “is expansive and grand. It’s where I feel safe and secure.”
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I met Susan and Roy on a hike to Pearsony Falls on Cod Creek in central Oregon. This New Hampshire couple is embracing the gypsy life after selling their home two years before and buying an Airstream and a truck for a new life exploring public lands.
“I marvel at the rivers, the lava tubes and how the river flows through them. I wonder about these trees and want to know what kinds they are,” Susan said, gesturing to a massive Sitka spruce.
“We are very happy to have made the decision to see the country this way,” said Roy, smiling.
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Victoria, in her early 40s, was strolling a gravel trail around scenic Siskiyou Lake in Northern California. I asked about her attraction to this place and she confided that she is “finding solace” in light of her stepfather’s recent admittance to end-of-life hospice care. “I need this slice of heaven,” she said.
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Jessica, in her early 30s, was tattooed and pierced. She had been living “on the road,” she said, for a year after her fiance’s suicide. Familiar with Colorado, she lived in Creede and said she knew an old college friend of mine. She has been camping free on public lands where her grief has been healing, but where life is still pressing.
“I need to get back to work,” she lamented, “because I’ve run through most of my savings. But it takes a long time to heal from a huge loss, and I know of no better place than our public lands.”
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Lamb Chop — her trail name — shouldered her pack across a grassy meadow in the Fish Lake Mountains of Western Utah. She wore a hoodie and dark sunglasses and paused at my camp to wait for her hiking partner — Unity, his trail name — who staggered into view, weathered and a bit worse for wear.
These through-hikers represent a breed of foot soldiers who traverse huge distances of public lands. For Lamb Chop and Unity, the Fish Lakes are part of a cross-Utah route that they were pioneering at the behest of a friend and fellow hiker who has envisioned the “Eight Wonders Trail” as a new addition to the through-hiker catalog.
Lamb Chop and Unity are backcountry veterans, with Lamb Chop on the hoof for five years. “I hiked my way out of corporate life in order to simplify,” said the Seattle native. “It rescued my faith in humanity through a symbiotic instead of a parasitic relationship with nature.”
Originally from the East Coast, Unity nodded to a similar alignment. “I don’t want the West to become like the East,” he intoned as a conservation ethic endorsing the value of expansive public lands. “Lands you can get lost in.”
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A father/son team from Rapid City, South Dakota, Jason and Zane tent-camped at Green River State Park in Utah with their tricked-out SUV loaded with two kayaks and a dozen crates filled with camp gear. Jason said he is divorced and has been a high school English and history teacher for 28 years. Zane was working a corporate job and planned to be married in the fall.
“My work is high stress,” said Zane, “so public lands are my antidote.” Jason nodded in agreement. “My dream,” he said, “is to retire in two years and drive my truck from Prudhoe Bay, Alaska, to Tierra del Fuego, Chile.”
Their many trips together — including two each to the Boundary Waters Wilderness — have become their bond, and they wrangle their gear as a coordinated team, enjoying each other’s banter and seeing the country together. “We don’t give Christmas gifts; we give trips to each other,” said Jason.
Editor’s note: This story was updated to correct an error in the caption accompanying the photo of a mountain towering above a Wyoming Lake. The peak pictured is Mount Moran, not the Grand Teton.