The Ballad of the Grand Traverse, by NC Weil

The Ballad of the Grand Traverse

 By NC Weil 

I'll introduce our hardy team, 

Training for this since 2018: 

Page and Josh, equipment geeks, 

Skiing and suffering endless weeks. 

They’ve never made it all the way 

Crested Butte to Aspen, night then day,   

Forty miles of ice and snow, 

Hoping frigid winds don't blow. 

First attempt, turned back by weather, 

Then Page must pause to be a father, 

His son born the day of the second try, 

He had to let the race go by. 

In 2020 Covid hit, 

Every gathering stopped by it. 

 

So of this Grand Traverse I’ll tell: 

It didn’t start so very well: 

Early on, a ski pole breaking, 

Then Page’s hands commenced to shaking, 

Legs soon cramping – are we finished? 

Electrolytes those spasms diminished. 

Now to the slog they bend their wills, 

Up the dark and towering hills 

While moon peers down and pairs spread out, 

Spandex and plastic round about, 

Five hundred headlamps up the climb 

Laboring to make good time – 

The Brush Creek cutoff’s coming soon – 

Steady striding is your tune. 

Climbing more, up to Star Pass – 

Scarf those snacks, step on the gas, 

Make it to Checkpoint Number Two, 

Up on top with a moonlit view – 

High above the Taylor River, 

What a sight – it makes you shiver! 

A leg-burning grind to Taylor Pass, 

Knowing the Mutants are hauling ass, 

Up and over 12,000 feet, 

Lungs a-throbbing, thighs dead beat 

And mercifully, a downhill slope 

With sunrise greetings – sign of hope! 

Skiing across the top of the world, 

A vista of peaks in snow unfurled 

Down and up to Barnard Hut, 

The last check-in for your weary butt. 

Well past halfway – you’re going to make it! 

Not the record – you won’t break it,

Except the one you’re aiming for: 

Your body’s strength you must explore 

Why else be in this crazy race, 

Not just the distance but the pace? 

Eighty teams are turning back, 

Not fast enough where slopes might crack 

And avalanches take them down – 

Reversed, their path leads back to town. 

But you are fast enough to pass 

So on you go for your final gasp. 

Aspen Mountain, here you come, 

Having earned encomium – 

Wittiest team name convergence – 

You’re the Forty Year Old Virgins! 

Prize in hand, your bottle of rum,

On to a meal and beer you come.

But now that you’ve gone all the way, 

“Experienced” is yours to say. 

Way to go, you hardy mensches, 

Wowing those of us warming benches. 

Witnesses to long rehearsal,

We laud you for your Grand Traversal!

April 2, 2023

FIRE!

Colorado is on fire this summer, a situation likely to worsen as light winter and early heat exacerbate our desert climate. This seems a good time to reflect on what wildfire does, good and bad.

This last week Fred and I went camping in an area where forest fires swept through ten years ago (2002 was as dry as 2012). Trappers Lake became popular in the 1930's and 40's with visitors escaping the summer heat of Texas and the Midwest. My parents started taking fishing vacations here in the 40's, and in 1999 celebrated their 50th wedding anniversary with a family trip to the lake.

I hadn't been back since, and my brother warned me the fire had changed everything.

Well, my first memory of Trappers is of the silvery sheen of dead trees, killed in the early 40's by the spruce beetle. Over time, live trees have greened up the area somewhat, but those dense stands of deadwood enabled the 2002 conflagration known as Big Fish Fire. Ten years later, what we see are bare trunks, standing or fallen, and among them new growth.

Few aspen grew around Trappers before, because the spruce formed what geographers call a "climax forest" - once certain vegetation dominate, they make an area inhospitable to other species by changing the soil acidity and forming a light-blocking overstory.
But now those spruce are out of the way. Oh sure, there are lots of dead trunks, but among them grow berry bushes, chaparral, abundant wildflowers - and aspen and Douglas fir are coming in. Birds are plentiful, along with mammals small and large. The plants thriving now will transform this forest into one which will over time be more beautiful, to many eyes.

Yes, those charred stands look like stubble, and it's difficult to walk through the burn areas where trees have fallen all directions. It's dangerous too, because any wind will knock down the standing trunks, and it's hot in the absence of shade. But in ten more years this will be a beautiful place again, a mixed forest. We'll see hillside meadows dappled with aspen, which in the autumn will shimmer gold against deep blue skies.

From that vantage, we may even be able to appreciate the fire.