OK. Best job I’ve ever had was as a cook in Aspen. Skied all day, went to work at 4:00 PM, made decent money. Clint Eastwood came in the kitchen once – just after the Eiger Sanction came out. Lived in Telluride for a while. Sun Valley. Yosemite. BC. Boulder too. Now I’m 55 and living in Iowa. Offered each of my three kids a car if they promised not to go to college. No takers. The oldest went to Bowdoin in Maine and spent her junior year not far from Chilean Patagonia. The other two spent at least part of their college careers at CU Boulder.Closest gym is at a state u about an hour away from here. Last time there I got “way schooled”. Everything was “sweet”. Mentioned that I’d had two kids in Boulder and was asked if I’d ever climbed in the gyms there… No one’d heard of Eldorado. This all came to mind for some reason the other day while I was looking down at a cop looking up at me near the top of a perfect hand crack. It split the backside of a parking ramp. We were about 25 feet apart and it was near dark. I was trying to decide if I could top out and move on quickly enough to avoid having to explain anything to him. Or to the Old Lady for that matter. Just then, as Marshall Dillon turned to look at a growling dog rounding the corner he stumbled over a drainpipe and dropped his flashlight. Bingo. I slapped the top and made for the far stairs. The exit sign wasn’t alpenglow, but the descent was trouble free. Sweet.
Tags: climbing
The Subtle Landscape 
January 16, 2008 at 9:25 pm |
I’m telling