It was a white-knuckle drive
across the high plains of Wyoming this morning. Fog, snow blowing sideways,
drifts, low-teen temps, near white-outs when passing trucks, actual white-outs
behind snow plows.
Crossing the Red Desert, I
couldn't see much due to the weather. It's a little-known and poorly-protected
expanse of grasslands, sagebrush, remote canyons, archeological sites, and
antelope. I got up close and personal with the Red Desert on a visit fifteen years
ago with leaders of the environmental group where I worked. The threats are in
plain sight -- a terrain already pocked with drill rigs, pipelines, service roads,
and oil storage facilities.
Wyoming has this backwards
attitude that they don't want any more land protected by the government.
Period. So I doubt much has been done to guard the Red Desert. Parts of it should
be a National Monument.
Despite the lousy weather, I
watched through swirling snow the great, dark silhouette of a golden eagle, wings
outstretched, flap low over the hills. It was one of several I would see this
day.
I had looked for one
yesterday during my tour around Fort Collins. Becky took me to the prettiest
places, especially the canyon of the Cache la Poudre River, where I watched a
fly fisher land and release a small brown trout. It would prove quite a
contrast to weather a day later.
Becky and her husband, John,
moved to Colorado from Ann Arbor two years ago. They seem transformed with
happiness in their new lives. It's quite a wondrous thing. Their enthusiasm for
their new geography is understandable -- spectacular mountain scenery and none
of the dreariness of Michigan winter. Plus, a nice town, from what I saw.
Everywhere I've gone, people
have proudly shown me their own paradises. A wooded subdivision in central
Florida, the backyard of an East Lansing home, the lake-studded glacial hills
of southeast Michigan. Even downtown Houston, of all things. And Fort Collins. Paradise
is where you find it.
I found a break in the nasty Wyoming
weather about the time I hit Green River, so I pulled off to have lunch on
Expedition Island. This is the spot that many famous expeditions have launched
to float the Green River down to the Colorado River and on through the Grand
Canyon. Most famous was the Powell Expedition of 1869, which was the first-ever
such trip.
On the third day of our last
raft trip on the Colorado River through the Grand Canyon, we bobbed in the
surreal-turquoise-colored water of the tributary Little Colorado River. One of our
friends sighed, and declared, "Except for the fact that we're surrounded
by atheists, you might'a thought we'd died and went to heaven." Paradise.
I dipped the toe of my
sneaker into the Green River. The backdrop of sandstone mesas and cliffs, and the
namesake color of the river, would have been the same in Powell's day.
On this last night of my four-week
road trip (I'll be home tomorrow night), I'm camped alongside another river,
the Snake River in Idaho, in a deserted BLM campground. White pelicans are
spending the night on rocks across the river.
Day-before-yesterday: EAST-WEST
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