IN ANOTHER STATE (CO)

Arctic appearance, somewhere between the "outdoor sports" (read: hunting) town of Kremling and Steamboat Springs.

Fog and snow en route from Denver.
Steamboat is some three hours northwest of the city.

The snow delineates rock layers that cut through ridges and buttes in western Colorado in late fall. More like signs of a Vermont early winter than Halloween time at the end of October which is what it actually is. 

Outside Steamboat Springs is ranch country, the kind of ranch country where modest houses sit in vast open areas surrounded by miscellaneous collections of sheds and outbuildings, stacked hay bales, and plains where cattle roam––real ranches, in other words.  As distinguished from those nearer to this ski town with their huge uniformly western-themed homes, some of which may sport a matching barn, and, very likely, no cattle at all.  Local real estate publications show very large homes (8,000-plus square feet is not unusual) and uncountable condos with soaring spaces built from veritable forests of wood beams, interiors with gorgeous stone fireplaces, chandeliers of elk antlers, filled with cushiony rustic furniture  and sprinkled with Indian artifacts––all looking as if they had been ordered from the same Western motif marketplace. 

Not a hotel,  just another large ranch home

Condos and more condos on Mt. Werner, a few of the large homes can be seen marching up the hill behind.

Ski areas don't look their best without snow.  Just one day later everything turned white,
however, and it was cold enough for snowmaking. (12 degrees!)

Colorado is in an interesting state at this moment in time.  Long heavily conservative, like most western states, Colorado took a turn in the liberal direction recently. For example, marijuana has become legal for medicinal use, and cannabis stores sell it baked in food, candy, smokable–however.  Guaranteed potency, of course, for a standardized market product, a useful fact to keep in mind.

Cannabis in brownies ("Get Happy"), lollipops and a package of gum drops.

Looking almost like gum drops, aspen leaves dot the snow.

Even gun control made headway with current Democratic Colorado Governor Hickenlooper's advocacy.   Outsiders may not see this as an amazing feat, given Colorado's recent history of mass gun violence (notably Columbine High school in 1999 and the Aurora theater shootings in 2012), but most of us know better:  guns have an iconic stature in this country, and logic, morality and scientific data are mostly irrelevant, liberal governor or no.  Both these issues, especially gun control, have––no surprise––brought on a backlash in the more conservative counties like those around Fort Collins in the northeast corner of the state.  They are aiming to secede from the rest of the state.  This will, most certainly, go nowhere.   The ski towns that mostly hug the mountainous central section (Steamboat among the exceptions), plus cities like Denver and Boulder, comprise the other, more liberal Colorado, to a large extent.  Although it must be said that while we were there a major referendum on comprehensive funding and reforming K-12 education in the state was widely rejected.  (Tax increase!) Gay marriage still divides the state.  So the backlash continues.

Rock in the Rockies:  "very hard quartz, probably associated with banded gneiss,"
according to geologist Bill, on our Mount Zerkel area hike.

Visits to Steamboat on our part used to be annual for a while, winter visits to ski and visit Luke and family at the same time.  This, of course, was an off-season visit.  There's already snow, but not enough to ski on except at altitudes over 7,000 feet (downtown Steamboat is about 6,900, while Rabbit Ears pass above town is around 9,400), although judging from the snowfall while we were there, it won’t be long.  But skiing in Steamboat isn't on our agenda this year.

On the way to Fish Creek Falls, a few miles outside Steamboat

Stream near Fish Creek Falls

That there is cancer on both sides of the Rockies, father and son, is surely ironic.  Different varieties, different intensities, but they are both called cancer.  Luke’s dad Ken had a colonoscopy in September that led to removal of a small tumor, that led to an infection, that led to weeks of discomfort and misery, the hellish time described last month in "Dog Days of Fall."  To make certain no cancer cells escaped removal and to totally prevent recurrence, procedures similar to those Luke had, and is having, are proscribed.  (No "stage" name for his cancer, however, the thing described as kind of a “gray area,” meaning that had they been able to grab twelve negative lymph nodes when they only managed to grab six he would already be in the clear.)  Therefore, like Luke, to some extent, he will have radiation and chemotherapy, the chemo in this case described as only adjunct to radiation and supposedly with few, if any notable side effects.   Not a big deal, apparently.  But still.

Petra, Kelsey, and Luke post-chemo, pre-radiation, looking good, on the
Mount Zerkel Wilderness Area Trail.

A horseback group is almost hidden by aspens in the Mount Zerkel area.

The ski jumps are visible behind the lodge as we headed up Howelsen Hill right behind the main street.

Petra, Kelsey, Luke, Ken, Bill, walking up the Howelsen Hill trail

Ever since spring Luke has written candidly and unsparingly on Facebook about his battle against Stage 4 Hodgkins-type lymphoma through months of intense chemotherapy. Ahead are weeks of radiation at a spa-like facility in Vail (sounds nice on the face of it, Vail), and after that, we hope, a life free of cancer. (Hodgkins, even at late stages, has 85% survivability after five years, as the statistics lay it out.)  

  

On a hike up Howelsen Hill, we look over the town of Steamboat (Luke, Kelsey, brother Bill)

***

While we were away from Vermont the trees have shaken off what was left of their leaves, their branches now ready to bear snow.  Only a week, yet the change seemed large. So far the only snow that has arrived is in the guise of heavy frost.  When it’s there in the early morning it delineates the edges of things, like rocks and tufts of grass, as the snow did in Colorado.  Hidden scenes are visible again.  The rock ledge at the edge of the woods is freshly unveiled, the curtains have been pulled back on houses once lost behind trees, and the distant mountains seem taller and more majestic now their tops are dusted white.  So much lost with the change of season, but things gained as well.  

Snow storm as we head over Rabbit Ears Pass on the way back to Denver.

There is nothing like this in the Champlain Valley at all, but we hear the mountains, particulary north at Stowe, have some two feet of snow and will be opening their slopes before Thanksgiving.  Welcome winter!