As we flatten a trail through the stiff grass of the flood plain the arhythm of their voices is replaced by the peer, peer call of a nighthawk and the hysterical trill of a plover. A terrific splash marks the loss of another wheelbarrow-load of riverbank. The cottonwoods stand aside to reveal a brown shoulder pushing into the water, littered with polished stones and a great driftwood log grasping a tangle of cottonwood branches and a battered palette. The wind is up and the clouds of mosquitoes that have already covered my body with a blazing itch have blown away with it. We wander along the topography of mud, sand and and pebble until we find a calm spot to lay our shirts and towels and we wade into the swift water. The velcro straps of my sandals open in the water and I march stiffly along a submerged ridge, looking with my feet for that ideal depth. We find it in mid-channel and wheeze involuntarily as the cool water covers our bodies. I dunk my head and glimpse a gold swirl of mica and bark that cuts to a hollow rushing of water, then clouds and sky. I drip into the river and look at the cliffs. I still cherish a hope that one day I will see a yellow form questing just under the canyon rim, a big cat finally completing this great loop of his demesne.
On the way out we stop at the Cross-Mountain viewpoint, a partly washed-out gravel drive backed by a sheltered sign and a thicket of willows screening the water. Behind the green band of the Yampa rises the great stacked cliffs of these canyonlands, endlessly perforated, endlessly reticulated, a vertical city of sage, leathery desert trees, bats and swallows. Here a notch has been carved by the river and the sides have become immense orange and yellow pillars. I thread my way through the willows to stand at the base of one of these stanchions and look at the bleached talus rising to the galleries above. The undulations of the rimrock are sharp and hard against the morning sky. On my way back I spot a big green dragonfly hiding in a sage bush.
Maybell, the tiny hamlet near the eastern access to the monument, is just the same as we left it, a welcome anchor right down to the weathered Sinclair station, where we tank up. Then it's a flat drive through the fields of Craig and Hayden, rising into the mountains around Steamboat Springs. Here we stop for lunch, lamenting again the loss of a loved restaurant, Heidi's Little Switzerland, a defiantly themed place with frantic accordion music, yodeling and immense deli sandwiches. The analog seems to be Winona's on Lincoln Street, a local hangout that offers similarly outsized hoagies, nearly impossible to eat in their split-open girth. I put on my ten-dollar sunglasses and Stockman, to shield against the radiation of extreme wealth and satisfaction from a mighty host of young couples wandering around in their cargo shorts, flip-flops and baseball caps, and wearing three-hundred dollar versions of my own cheap lenses. I have their markings, send out their signals, but I wish merely to pass through their hive unmolested. We pick up a supergoo for our punctured air mattress from some incredibly laid-back young blonde with a tanned face and turquoise necklace and drive back up to Lincoln and past the last of the goldrush storefronts. Immediately the climb begins to the Rabbit Ears, and I don't push it. Eventually we spot the notch, which to me looks more like a pair of blunt-nosed pliers opening.
From here it's a winding drive through gorges cut by angry amber streams and pink granite that seems to push the road into the canyon below. In a meadowland between peaks I spot the anvil-shaped head of a moose in a thicket of huckleberries below the road. I pull over behind a white Honda and watch the moose amble up the gravel bank and casually inspect the car. Up the road a second moose with more grey on its haunches picks its way out of the woods and onto the gravel shoulder, unconsciously staging a travel brochure when it steps in front of the national forest sign. Celeste shoots the tableaux. After another long gorge drive we descend into the plains around Loveland and follow the U.S. highway south. It's a grooved alley that funnels the 65-mile-an-hour traffic into a sort of Russian roulette with a long series of signaled intersections with neighborhood connectors– and rows of Subways, Walgreens, Old Chicagos and Big Ks.
We come out the other side on a two-lane road again, into the knowable smallness of Lyons, and turn back into the gorgelands. The cliffs have turned purple in places and the water has changed from amber to chocolate or black. Eventually we descend into another wide valley and turn the shoulder of a gold hill to see the sign for Pinewood Springs, followed by a dirt access road climbing the hill to the right. We take it and climb the hill, passing the sign that urges you to to use a "slow speed– saves roads– saves cars– saves money", then a side road that descends the hill again and crosses a creek at the bottom, then a turn down and left, then left again, into a dark stand of pines, to the low brown walls and pink sandstone flags of Jim & Deborah's. Jim meets us at the door and we file in and greet JoAn. JoAn tells me of what she's been doing in Prescott and Jim tells us about a neighbor whose honeybees drained their hummingbird feeders. A friend has felled the problem trees at the cabin, abandoning the standard chainsaw for a double-bitted axe. Deborah comes out of her bedroom and greets us with a summary of the evening's activities: the benediction of a hot shower, a good dinner with conversation, and rest in a real bed with mattress and springs. Unloading our luggage, calling home and washing off the dirt and b.o. takes longer than I expect and I sit down at the long pine table to a dinner in progress. It's a good, hearty scramble of eggs, tomatoes and tortillas and I can feel the last of my fatigue fading into a past of flickering gas pump displays, futile squirming in the driver's seat and shifting heavy bins while I kneel on the corrugated steel of the truck bed.
We sit up late talking and drinking wine and cider and when I go to bed I have the usual mild altitude headache and fitful sleep.
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