Mike in the Wild

I recently visited for the first time the two National Parks near Moab, Utah: Canyonlands and Arches.  Maybe due to the heat - it was almost 100 degrees F - or possibly the long time it took driving there earlier that day from Durango, I was disappointed on my initial visit to Arches.   Undeniably, the namesake sandstone formations were beautiful.  And so was the isolated desert setting in view of snow-capped mountains.  But my first stop in the park was at a site described as Fallen Arches, where a drawing reimagined the vista.  Instead of gazing at the two distant red-rock mountains, the viewer was invited to imagine a time when the formations were connected via two towering arches.  My immediate thought was that the park was originally created because of this no-longer-existing Natural Wonder of the World.  Due to some unfortunate event since the park's founding one hundred years ago, like an earthquake, visitors would have to settle on witness...

With enough time in Durango for only one short, late-afternoon hike, I decided on the Colorado Trail.  Of course I realized I wouldn't be hiking the entire 567 miles to Denver.  I wouldn't even be completing a segment, of which there are thirty-three.  In fact, I would only be traversing a short distance along Segment 28, the very last stretch of the Colorado Trail when you start in Denver.  The segment extends 21.5 miles from Kennebec Trailhead to Junction Creek Trailhead, my starting point.   I originally hoped to reach Gudy's Rest, a stop along the trail that offers a panoramic view of Durango and the surrounding San Juan Range of the Rocky Mountains.  However the four-and-a-half miles was a little longer than I had the time or energy for, so I turned around after three miles, at the bridge that crosses Junction Creek in an idyllic and restful setting.  In fact, that's the way I would describe most of the hike's peaceful landscape.   ...

Durango has always been one of my favorite ski towns. Purgatory ski resort is thirty minutes away, and Wolf Creek with its abundance of powder is just an hour and a half drive.  During my frequent winter visits, I have mostly ignored the Animas River that flowed through town.  In the cold weather, the waterway was gray and icy, its riverbanks lined with snow and leafless trees.  However in early June, as I recently discovered, the river was flowing heavy with snowmelt, and its lush banks teamed with birds.  With sunrise temperatures in the low fifties, the Animas was actually inviting me for a morning run.  And as always on any trail, I was hopeful I'd encounter a variety of birds.  Even in my hotel's parking lot, I spied a magpie, apparently curious about the extensive collection of trucks.  While I followed Bennett Street to reach the river, a pair of deer munched on a home's front-yard shrubs.  When I arrived close to the riverfront at 32nd Str...

I wasn't back from my Alaska cruise much longer than a week when I found myself driving through Western Colorado.  The snowy peaks of the Rocky Mountains' San Juan Range lay behind me, the canyons and deserts surrounding Moab in Utah straight ahead.  In between stretched miles of rangeland and crop fields.  Red-winged blackbirds were easy to identify as they flew manically between their perches on fenceposts and power lines.  But it was one lone, swarthy bird, especially large and still, sitting in a leafless tree on the side of the road, that quite suddenly grabbed my attention.  I would later be thrilled to discover it was my first ever sighting of a golden eagle. In my photos and on the internet over the next several days, I obsessed over ceres, boots, and napes, a few of the details that would confirm my sighting was indeed this raptor.  The time I spent analyzing the pictures was infinitely longer than the minute I spent slowing down my speeding SUV, t...

Judging from the views out of our aircraft's window during descent, we knew we weren't about to take just any cruise.  We were landing in Alaska, passing over the majestic, snow-capped peaks of the Kenai Peninsula.  At almost 11pm, it was light enough at Ted Stevens Anchorage International Airport to make one think it was five hours earlier, the time we left Phoenix.  The visual splendor of Alaska was only just beginning to reveal itself. View over the Kenai Peninsula as my plane descended into Anchorage. The drive out of downtown Anchorage the next morning offered views of even more mountains, including the Alaska Range extending north to the home of Mount Denali, North America's highest peak.  The motorcoach followed Seward Highway southeast, in parallel with the Alaska Railroad along Turnagain Arm, far below the previous evening's flight path from Phoenix. The Chugach mountains stretched to the east and north while those Kenai peaks created a panorama across Turna...