Crossing the last of Kansas before its border with Colorado, we run into the most beautiful line of low-hanging clouds. They look like soft pleats on some silk-chiffon gown, or maybe the graceful lines from a spatula swiped straight through vanilla icing. They mesmerize. They are gray-white but not at all gloomy.
A day later, the opposite effect appears. Skies above the Roxborough State Park near our friends' home, southwest of Denver, are unbelievably blue. This, plus a few thin wisps of white serve to contrast nicely with the huge upthrust of red sandstone rocks in the park. In fact, it is all so dramatically red, white and blue, so to speak, that it's the only state park designated by the U.S. Department of the Interior as a National Natural Landmark (www.parks.state.co.us/roxborough).
We hike with good friends Beki and William Adams for about three miles -- up to a lookout, over to the little homestead of newspaperman Henry S. Persse in the early 1900s who purchased this spectacular land in 1899, and renamed it Roxborough Park, so the story goes, after his family's estate in County Galway, Ireland. "In 1902, he and two other men formed the Roxborough Land Company to develop the property into a premier tourist destination," says a Flickr entry online. "Persse died in 1918 when he was hit by a tramway car in Denver, with his plans of a world class resort unrealized." All the better for us in the 21st century who love nature and wilderness. As we walk back to our car through wildflower-edged paths, tiny blue butterflies -- as blue as the sky above them -- dot the way. They land at our feet to get, apparently, any moisture in sandy soil below.
We’re having the best time catching up (William used to live in St. Louis and was one of the regular musicians at our house for Sunday-night, wine-and-music get-togethers). Besides hiking, we eat great hot Thai food (at Wild Ginger) and a mellow Middle Eastern meal (at Jerusalem, next to the University of Denver) and drink sublime Denver brew-pub beer (Great Divide Brewing Co.’s Titan IPA, http://www.greatdivide.com/). Sitting on the wide back porch of their new home near the foothills of the Rockies, we also laugh, talk and look out over a new raised bed plus other handsome gardens-in-the-making and wish that they still lived in St. Louis (or we moved nearby, to Montana perhaps?).
We depart sunny Denver after two days and enter a Wyoming buffeted by winds of up to 50-miles-per-hour. Clouds are low and blue-black, dropping so close to the ground that you think a Missouri-style tornado might materialize...
... Rain pummels our car. Could hail, or worse, be far off?? Buttes to the left of us, buttes to the right of us, mountains on the horizon and mayhem threatening overhead. Twenty minutes later, there’s blue sky and puffy clouds. And a huge and cheerful statue of a buffalo greets us at the state line. Welcome to the ever-changing weather of the West! And to our very quirky overnight at the Mill Inn in Sheridan, Wyoming (http://www.sheridanmillinn.com/, a converted flour mill and, let us say, an acquired taste; read the online reviews and judge for yourselves).
Here’s the real reason that I am on this trip. Who could resist this little face? It's my husband Alex, age 7, barefoot and proudly flaunting his new cap pistol in front of two jealous Montana boys -- Kelsey and Eric.
Alex and his Tulane-faculty mother and father used to pile into their car every summer in the 1950s and drive all the way from home in New Orleans to Hamilton (just before the Interstate highway system, http://www.fhwa.dot.gov/interstate/history.htm) to visit Montana friends.
And that's my Montana connection -- Alex, his wonderful, cap-pistol-stealing friend Kelsey and our own trips in the early '90s to re-visit Montana. Al wants to return for real. He wants a permanent foothold in the foothills of the Bitterroot. I am not sure that I do. Therein lies the joy (and the tension) in this fantastic trip. Tomorrow, the real thing -- an overnight at in Gallatin Gateway, MT, before we get "home" to Hamilton.
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