Parks and Trails
Sorry I’ve been away for the last few months! I’ve been working as a webmaster for a student media website and by the end of the day, I don’t have two words to put together. Lots of code, non-sensical streams of letters, numbers and useless symbols that no one’s really sure what they mean. Paired with other random symbols and a magic language appears. Not to mention learning the language of a number of diverse clients, what they want, what they need and it’s a big job. I’m learning it as quickly as I can but WordPress is an elephant you eat one bite at a time. With a little-lot help from Coding Academy, I’ve created a new path for myself.
When I need a break from computers, I’ve taken to hiking local trails around the Bar B Ranch. Most are operated by Jefferson County Open Space or are privately owned trail systems. They are short and sweet and only a few feet off the road, it’s like being on the Pacific Coast Trail or Continental Divide Trail but without the heavy pack and blackened toenails.
My favorite trail around here is Upper Maxwell Falls. It’s a four-mile hike about a mile away from the house and is an easy hike for families or for the chronically out-of-shape hiker.
Read the first few pages of Cheryl Strayed’s book, “Wild” and you’ll want to don a pack and hike something. I just finished it last night and though the ending is a hurry-up, anti-climactic summary, it does a fair job of her experience along the Pacific Coast Trail. I could have used images to go along with the book but I can’t imagine adding something like my heavy camera gear on a 2,300-mile trek with a Sherpa or llama to carry the stuff while I carry the creative burden.
Maxwell Falls is a misnomer – from the upper path, you can’t see the falls. You can stand on rocks that look like something out of a John Wayne movie and if you crane your neck (without falling off said rocks) you can see the falls. The hike down the bottom of the falls is tricky for someone like me that needs a walking stick.
From Lower Maxwell Falls the trail is wide and the parking lot is always packed on weekends. Lots of people dressed in snooty hiking gear and lots of dogs and kids also in snooty hiking gear. It’s a mess on the weekends and I avoid the trail unless it’s a weekday. The trail up to the falls is pretty wide and rather urbane. My granddaughter and I walked the trail but we turned around when I came across a fresh mountain lion print and all I had was my walking stick.
I like the upper trail, it’s enough of a workout and is quiet and scenic meaning, there’s lots of trees and the trail would call John Muir himself.
In the summer, there are squatters that camp near the creek and I’ve heard of occasional problems with fires and stupid antics but most are harmless tree huggers who want a peaceful place to smoke Colorado’s legal pot. The huggers are harmless but they tend to have the scariest dogs.
I just like to hike the trail and wish I had the chutzpah to load up 40 pounds of gear and walk a long way. I don’t know about going alone like Strayed did because I’d assume every noise outside my tent is Bigfoot with a coding question. Most likely a question I can’t answer … yet.
So I hike the local trails because I try to embrace where I live. Not just shop here, support the local fire department or make sure my trees are non-flammable but to really see where I live and just how beautiful it is. It is Colorado after all.
It gives me a break when I have to figure out things like plugins, widgets, PHP code and just what the hell kind of plugin the Recording Industry Association of America requires for the student media site.
It’s always something and the trails are always there. Colorado is good like that.