A week has passed with no post. It’s been an eventful week.
After fishing the Dolores near Telluride, I headed over to Creede, CO to float the Rio Grande. I didn’t have time to write up my second post on my Telluride week, but figured I would get to that after the Creede trip.
Traveling over Wolf Creek Pass to South Fork, I was disheartened by a forest that has been totally decimated by the Pine Bark Beetle; it was difficult to find a single tree alive. From the west side of the pass you could see smoke rising above the peaks but the sky was still blue and the air free of any smell of smoke. As I reached the summit, a rapid change in air quality and visibility occurred and I knew that it would not be long before this whole pass was on fire.
In fact, that happened the next day when I was floating down the river. My photographs will tell that story, but I don’t have access to those yet because of the rest of the story. I will tell the story of the float with photographs next week.
The rest of the story is that I was evacuated from my cabin after my day on the river and headed north to Creede to watch the fire at a distance of 15-20 miles. That may seem like a distance but with a timber dry forest and high winds, no one knew if either South Fork or Creede would be overtaken.
I had to find a different route back to Durango and decided to try a backcountry road that would make my Jeep earn its keep – Engineer Pass. A bit too hastily I threw my stuff into the back and headed off. The photo opportunities cried out to me and I stopped the car every few miles to take some other amazing shot. Although the trip took longer than expected and had some rather dicey turns, I found myself back in Durango and west of the fires.
When I went to look for my computer to write up my adventure, I couldn’t find it along with my notebooks, my Kindle, my Hotspot… etc. After searching everywhere, it became obvious that either it had been stolen or had fallen out of the car. The latter seemed ridiculous. On the other hand I could only remember a couple short moments when the car hadn’t been locked. How do I deal with the loss of my computer with six months of writing and photographs saved? I tried to keep a perspective – I did have a recent backup and compared to my fellow Coloradans who have lost their entire home, this was nothing.
I would love to make this more dramatic, but since it’s a blog post and not a chapter in my book, I will cut to the chase and reveal that the computer did, in fact, fall out of my car, and someone turned it in to the Lake City police. So, on my travels next week I will stop by and get the name of this kind person who has once again restored my faith in humanity.
So much more to tell. I can’t wait to get my computer to do that.
