Into Thin Air in the Rockies

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October 21 - November 9, 2006
Billings, Mont. - near Grand Junction, Colo.
23,699 miles to date
1,315 miles this leg


We were gasping for air Nov. 7, and not just because we’d spent two weeks at altitude. But because the preliminary election results showed a flip-flop of party power in both the U.S. House and Senate, and we could hardly believe so many voters had come to their senses.

One of the national events that pushed us take a year to travel the country was the 2004 RE-election of George W. Bush. Surrounded by like-minded liberal and solidly Democratic citizens of Port Townsend, we realized we were sorely out of touch with the apparent majority of Americans, and this was worrisome. Who were these people who believed in Bush bravado? We wanted to meet them and find out why. Was it true there were “two Americas” out there? If so, we wanted to find where the lines were drawn. It was quite simply a matter of patriotic duty.

So, after 10 months of informal polling, here are our top three theories for why Bush was granted a second term:

(1) Family tradition. Patriarchal patterns die hard, even when the Republican party has morphed so much in the past 50 years that voting Republican often means voting against the self-interest of middle- or lower-class voters. Encouragingly, we’ve met folks who have told us they are now sorry they voted for Bush in 2004. Some of them may have even voted out Republican legislators this week.

(2) Conservative churches. Yes, yes, we know that to maintain their tax-exempt status, churches cannot engage in politicking, but it’s hard to prohibit them from preaching against abortion, or gay rights, or stem-cell research. Our experience in Southern Baptist-land leads us to think that followers are being indoctrinated in the “correct” sides of the “moral issues” that have crept into national politics (where they should not be). And subtly or not so subtly, this peer pressure follows churchly voters into the ballot booth.

(3) Liberals who have checked out. This is even more worrisome, because already voter turnout is so low as to be only partially representative of American opinion. In the age group I just aged out of, 18- to 29-year-olds—who are likely to be more liberal than their elders—only 24%!o(MISSING)f those eligible voted nationwide in this week’s election (according to analysis by the University of Maryland’s Center for Information and Research on Civic Learning and Engagement). Too many people have wearily admitted to us that they just don’t vote. They don’t see a distinction between Democrats and Republicans, and indeed, we believe big-money influence has blurred party lines to a shameful degree. They’d like to vote for the Greens, but have little hope of their victory.

Here I have to put in a plug for instant runoff voting, which we support as the solution to breaking out of our two-party system. We first learned about this highly sensible voting option when honeymooning in Ireland, and it is also used in Australia. Take some time to check out InstantRunoff.com, a website created and managed by the Midwest Democracy Center. Quoting from the site: “ only requires one single election to work. Voters simply rank the candidates and mark their ballots with their first choice, second choice, etc. Ballots are counted by first choices to see if there is a majority winner. If not, a runoff election is counted by ‘eliminating’ the last place candidate and transferring each ballot cast for him/her to the remaining contenders, based on the voter’s ranking. If this doesn't produce a majority winner, the process is repeated until it does.”

Regardless of the flaws in our election system, we didn’t want to miss out on voting in this recent mid-term election. We didn’t have to, thanks to absentee ballots forwarded by our wonderful property manager and mail-handler, Jenifer, who deserves heaps of praise for keeping at-home logistics off our worry list.

Now that the votes have been tallied, we also have to thank the astute Washington voters for voting down Initiative 933, the “property rights” measure that really would have eviscerated state and local planning efforts - in which citizens have a say in how their communities develop - and would have likely thrown Jeff’s career as a land-use planner into a tailspin. Although some rural and economically depressed counties voted for the initiative, the state defeated it with 59%!a(MISSING)gainst.

With no promise that this relief was forthcoming, we nonetheless spent the last 20 days relaxing in familiar territory. In Montana, Wyoming and Colorado, we enjoyed 5- and 6-day stays with three families, those of (1) Jeff’s high school chum, George; (2) Jeff’s former co-worker and friend, Dan; and (3) my sister, Jill. In the spring of 2005, we visited each of these three on a “test trip” to Yellowstone National Park and surroundings. We took 3-1/2 weeks (all of the vacation time Jeff had remaining) and tested out a budget, drive schedule, etc., in preparation for leaving on the big trip eight months later.

The significance of re-entering known territory on such a wide-ranging road trip as ours cannot be overstated. For months on end, we’ve had the true pleasure of exploring landscapes and people entirely new to us, but always with that underlying anxiety of the unknown. There is ease and comfort in encountering the familiar, irrational as those feelings may be, for seasons shift, landscapes are transformed, and even people can change.

Happily for us, our friends were constant, in their friendship at least. In Billings, Mont., we were glad to reconnect with George and Selena and their sons Jared, 14, and Austin, 13. Their family had recently moved from Laurel to Billings proper so George, a Coulee-Hartline ’85 graduate like Jeff, could be closer to the evangelical church where he is doing great things as the outreach pastor. (And where Selena works as the head pastor’s administrative assistant.)

We attended a packed Saturday night (!) service at Harvest Church, which boasts nearly 3,000 members and were interested to learn how the congregation is committed to identifying and meeting the needs of its community, much like a social service agency, only with ample funding and a common, compelling mission. The more we learned, the more impressed we were by bold and innovative programs like converting a retired ambulance into a roving homeless supply van, or soliciting donated cars, fixing them up, and giving them away, one per week, to transportation-challenged families. Harvest Church is also raising millions of dollars to build an aquatics center, an identified recreational need for the community, with the intention of deeding it to the City of Billings once it is operational.

Our contact with George and Harvest Church gave us a lot of food for thought, first and foremost what America’s religious communities could accomplish for the good if all congregations were focused less on self-preservation (what George calls “the holy huddle”) and more on serving their immediate communities. For example, Harvest Church members met in a rented gymnasium until they could afford to build a facility of their own, but even then, they held off building a sanctuary and built a community gymnasium instead! There are two rock-climbing walls in the lobby that are open weekdays and childcare rooms and staff offices, but worship is still held in a space with fold-up basketball hoops and moveable chairs instead of pews. Made us rethink what a church is.

George and Selena took us on an outing to Pompeys Pillar, a natural rock tower on the banks of the Yellowstone River where Capt. William Clark stopped to survey the land in 1806 and which he named after Sacajawea’s baby, nicknamed Pomp for “Little Chief.” Selena and I collaborated on many delicious meals and George (a computer technician in a former life) helped us purchase a second external hard drive because we had nearly filled up our laptop’s hard drive (and our external drive back-up) with all these darn photos!

Heading south to Riverton, Wyo., we sandwiched our stay there with visits to two public hot mineral springs, one in Thermopolis and one in Saratoga. Both are developed, with changing rooms and showers, but operate free of charge - as a condition of an Indian land treaty in the case of Thermopolis. We also spent two half-days at the Buffalo Bill Historical Center in Cody, Wyo., the minimum amount of time needed to soak in the artifacts in the five related museums on site. Then a run through the Wind River Canyon, to us the most scenic stretch of highway in the U.S.

In Riverton we were welcomed by Dan and Kelli and their three kids, Grover, 4, Charli, 2-1/2, and Eme (“Emmie”), 1-1/2. Grover and his two younger sisters had grown so much since we’d seen them a year and a half ago, when Eme was a newborn. They were very excited to have new friends to romp with in their playroom, and we all had fun dressing up on Halloween and going trick-or-treating down the main street of town. Full-body, zip-up costumes were the norm, as the bank thermometer read 31 degrees Fahrenheit at 6 p.m.!

Kelli is still juggling motherhood with her work as an attorney focusing on divorce cases. The change for Dan, a former land-use planner and co-worker from Jeff’s Yakima County (Wash.) planning days, was his new job as a safety compliance officer for an oil and gas drilling company called SST Energy Corp. Dan has wormed his way into the booming oil/gas industry since moving to Wyoming, and was thriving on the challenges of this new job, although it required a god-awful amount of driving throughout a two-state area. One day he took me along for the ride, and we left the house at 5:30 a.m. to drive 2-1/2 hours one way for his monthly inspection of a rig drilling for methane gas on the Jonah Plateau of west-central Wyoming.

I was amazed by the amount of activity on this bleak and desolate plain, which is owned by the Bureau of Land Management but whose mineral rights are leased by dozens of big-name energy companies. There are no permanent dwellings on the plateau, but the 12-person crews manning each of about 50 active drilling rigs live in bunkhouse trailers on the drill sites, and the one convenience store/fueling station on the edge is as busy as a New York City hotdog stand. If you’re willing to work 12-hour shifts, one week on, one week off (in the middle of nowhere), you can earn $90,000/year, no education required. There are few women who choose this lifestyle, but Dan says there are a few.

Dan took Jeff on a solo outing another day: huntin’ for elk near Togwotee Pass in the Wind River Range. I was rather looking forward to seeing the photos of the butchering, but since they didn’t see any elk to shoot at, I had to be content with stories of sighting three moose and fresh black bear and grizzly bear tracks. On another outing, Dan and Kelli booked a babysitter and we met up with Kelli’s parents for a Chamber of Commerce fundraiser in nearby Dubois. It was a Wild West-themed murder mystery dinner, with a handful of costumed characters playing the main roles and clues for each of us guests to decode. Right before dinner was served, the lights briefly went out, a gun was fired, and a card shark lay “dead” on the floor. All fun and games, but we most enjoyed meeting “Seldom Seen Slim” (a.k.a. Joe), a fellow diner who had once driven from Alaska to Newfoundland. There is a kindred spirit between fellow long-distance road-trippers!

A day trip to Lander hooked us up with a former co-worker of mine. Darci and I hadn’t seen each other since we both worked as trip leaders at Four Winds Camp nine years ago, but we bonded again on a hike up Sinks Canyon and introduced our husbands at dinner. Darci and Carl served us butternut squash from their garden and ground pronghorn antelope (very lean and mild-flavored) that they had secured by putting their name on a list at the local game butcher. It is apparently illegal for trophy head-hunters to leave edible game in the field, per Wyoming’s “wanton waste” law, which requires the hunter to transport the carcass to a butcher and to pay for processing of the meat. The meat is then distributed free of charge to persons who sign up for it, or given to food banks, or shipped overseas to supplement the diet of U.S. military forces.

In addition to remodeling their 1920s house, Darci and Carl are doing good work in the world, and we had a lot to talk about over dinner. Carl’s passion is organic gardening, and he runs a program that involves kids in growing food that is then sold to local restaurants, but he also is a high school English teacher in a district that serves the Shoshone and Arapaho tribes. A letter to the editor that one of his Indian students wrote as an assignment resulted in the removal of a sign that had been posted in the school entry for as long as anyone could remember, noting current graduation rates for “whites” and “natives.” (The latter percentage was always smaller, of course.) We couldn’t believe such blatant segregation was still being practiced. Can you imagine a sign in the south listing “white” and “black” graduation rates?

Darci works for the Wyoming Conservation Voters Education Fund, which aims to raise awareness of environmental issues for Wyoming politicians and voters, only in Wyoming “environmentalist” is a dirty word, so she’s a “conservationist.” Wyoming struck us as being the most wild and scenic state in the West, its remoteness reminiscent of Alaska in many ways, but activists like Darci struggle against its citizens’ reluctance to restrict certain personal property rights in favor of preserving the open spaces that make the state unique.

We traded the emptiness of Wyoming for a very different setting: metropolitan Denver, where we spent our first night in the suburb of Aurora. A housemate of mine from Smith College, whom I’d lost touch with, had contacted me after reading of our trip in the class notes of our alumnae magazine. It was great to see Sara again and learn about her work-from-home career as a freelance indexer. Ever wonder who compiles the indexes in the back of reference books? Well, professionals like Sara, who with her Smith degree in biochemistry happens to specialize in the medical field. She was generous in sharing notes on how she got started in the field and founded Atlantic Authoring, and I came away invigorated to explore a new avenue for my freelance writing business.

Sara’s husband Kevin has a most interesting job: he attended the Air Force Academy and since then has been an active duty officer in the military’s World Class Athlete program as a competitive race-walker. Wearing an Air Force jersey, he competed in the 2004 Olympics in Athens and is now training for 2008. On the international relations front, Kevin is a good investment for the military, as he is recognized everywhere he travels overseas by sports fans who follow more than American football and baseball. Check out my collage of Kevin in motion in the photo album.

Even Sara and Kevin’s toddler, 2-year-old Savannah, introduced me to a new experience, as I attended her “Music Together” class and clapped out rhythms and sang songs along with all of the parents and children. It was a lot of fun for everyone, and I’m glad to know there is a national program out there promoting early music appreciation and education.

A note on Denver being literally the “mile-high city”: at 5,000 feet-plus, we definitely felt the thinning atmosphere, mostly when we exercised vigorously. I found I couldn’t catch my breath after biking up a steep hill, or after jogging around the block. And combined with the cold, my muscles often felt like lumps of wood, not responsive tissues. However, we lucked out and enjoyed a streak of 70-degree days in the Denver area that nearly made up for all the chill and blustery days we’d endured in the mountains.

On Nov. 3, our good friend Sierra was officially awarded the “met-up-with-the-Randalls-the-most” prize, as we picked her up at the Denver airport and reconnected for the third time on our trip. Can you recall the other places we met up with our travel-happy Seattle friend? (Answer: Phoenix and Annapolis.) Sierra made this trip especially to spend time with me and my sister Jill, who is only two years younger than me and also a dear friend of hers. For the 2-1/2 days we had together, we used Jill’s hometown of Boulder as a base and hiked in Rocky Mountain National Park and went salsa dancing and hung out in a coffee shop for hours and cooked good meals and knocked ourselves out with a new word-play game called Apples to Apples. It was especially fun to play with Jeff and Barton.

Barton is Jill’s partner of four years and the reason she moved from Bozeman, Mont., to Boulder this summer. Barton had a great opportunity to help open a new office here for the solar panel sales and installation company he works for, Independent Power Systems (IPS), to capitalize on the solar energy rebates recently passed by Colorado’s legislature. The rebates are working: IPS is busier than ever, growing from two to eight employees in the past year and getting big bids left and right for commercial and residential power systems. We were pleased to help its owner (and Barton’s boss), Tony, celebrate his birthday while we were there with a special dinner and dessert at Jill and Barton’s place.

One day Barton took us up on the roof of a 9,200-watt residential system under installation and explained that the total cost of the system is about $70,000, but the homeowner pays only $29,000 out of pocket with the rebates, a sound investment for hedging her energy costs for the long term. A system that size will produce about twice as much electricity as one home requires, so she’ll be selling electricity back to the power utility, and if she bought an electric car, she’d never have to buy gasoline again. It’s theoretically possible for all of the U.S.’s electricity needs to be met by capturing solar energy, and when you think of all the polluting coal-fired power plants we could shut down if we just started installing solar panels with all the money being poured into our current “oil war” in Iraq…well, traveling has opened our eyes to the inequity of energy “subsidies,” at least.

With the National Renewable Energy Laboratory in nearby Golden and the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder proper as well as the University of Colorado and the headquarters for Celestial Seasonings teas, as well as awesome bike paths and a plethora of recreational opportunities, we thought Boulder was the hippest mid-sized city (pop. 100,000) for intellectuals and outdoors enthusiasts that we had encountered so far. And we hope Jill, who is in the process of finishing up her prerequisites for nursing school and applying for programs, can eventually find there what she misses about Bozeman.

One more Boulder experience: the three of us hung out at the Shambhala Meditation Center one night, sitting through a short meditation workshop and then a lecture on “Being with Discomfort,” as informed by Buddhist teachings. Jeff and I thought it was an appropriate topic for us to explore proactively, since we expect to the transition from trip mode to settled-in-one-place-and-working-again mode to provide some inevitable discomfort. We learned that we should anticipate the discomfort, acknowledge it, examine it, then let it go. Don’t repress it. Don’t pretend like it’s not there. Make friends with it, be with it. So now, family and friends, you’re forewarned!

All of which is a nice segue to sharing some thoughts from a book I recently finished, a travelogue about crossing America via its rivers by William Least Heat-Moon, the same author as Blue Highways, which I read at the start of this trip. In River-Horse, he writes of people asking, “as they often did, ‘Is it fun?’” and thinks of the perpetual threats to life and limb he encountered on the rivers, to which I would add the generic traveler’s constant uncertainty, sometimes loneliness, and lack of comforting routine. These factors are “a sure depressant of that so American thing called fun….Toys are fun—cross-country trips are something the hell else.”

And on a more positive note, here I will replace “river” with “road” in another passage:
“Yet, of the times in my life I must count as wasted, squandered, spent aimlessly, I knew our days would never be among them because, ephemeral as they were, the had done what it could to make them memorable enough to carry forward to the end.” How true.

With only two weeks to go before we circle back to our home state and pause for the Thanksgiving holiday with family, we are winding down our trip, both physically (this is the last time we’ll have to wash the sheets!) and emotionally (this may be our last navigational argument, fingers crossed).

A monumental milestone was achieved with our crossing of the Rocky Mountains on Nov. 9. We did so on Interstate 70, via Vail Pass at 10,600 feet. It was a warm and sunny day, not a trace of snow on the bare and dry roads, and Jeff breathed an immense sigh of relief. He’d been worrying over the mountain barrier between us and our home state for months, and his one eye on the winter snow report had been driving our timeline as much as anything else.

So now we have time for a short and final fling in the Southwest. We’re headed to Arches National Park, hooray!

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Photos

Shelly & Jeff
In the scenic Rocky Mountain National Park just west of Denver, Colorado. Photo courtesy of Sierra R.

Herd of Elk
Just part of a large herd of elk we hiked past in Rocky Mountain National Park. Photo courtesy of Sierra R.

Jill, Sierra, Shelly
Sierra (middle) wins the award for meeting up with us the most times (3!) on our trip. She flew in from Seattle to visit with both us and Jill. It looks like we're on safari with all the elk in Rocky Mtn NP.

Jill the Climber
Shelly's sister Jill showing off her climbing holds on a Colorado boulder. (She's not that far off the ground!) Photo courtesy of Sierra R.

Barton Ascends a Chimney
Jill's boyfriend Barton challenged himself to ascend this "chimney," or crack in a huge boulder. Jill looks on. Photo courtesy of Sierra R.

Barton Makes It
By wedging his body in the "chimney" crack and levering himself upwards, Barton makes it to the top! Photo courtesy of Sierra R.

Mill Creek & Mummy Range
Very scenic view in Rocky Mountain National Park. Photo courtesy of Sierra R.

Jill & Barton
Stayed six nights with Shelly's sister Jill and her partner Barton in Boulder, Colo.

Tony's Birthday
While in Boulder we had a birthday dinner for Barton's boss, Tony. The employees of the company he founded are all very close.

Beautiful Boulder
We were very impressed with Boulder as a mid-sized city (pop 100,000) with great bike paths and recreational opportunities galore in the Flatiron hills it nestles against.

Jill Overlooking Boulder
Sister Jill pauses on a hike up the Flatirons to oversee her city of Boulder.

Sister Twins
Shelly had to laugh when she saw that her sister Jill had cut her hair exactly the same as hers! They hadn't seen each other since Christmas '05, when they both had long hair.

Music Trio
Adding Jill's violin to our whistle and guitar made for a lovely folk music jam.

New Game
Sierra introduced us to a new party game called Apples to Apples, and we whiled away a very enjoyable evening with her and Jill and Barton. Photo courtesy of Sierra R.

IPS Installation Job
Tony's company is called Integrated Power Systems and specializes in solar panel sales installation. Barton showed us around one of their residential jobs.

Solar Panels
Up on the south-facing roof, the IPS crew begins to connect what will eventually be 42 panels providing 9200 watts of power. Check out the obscenely large house under construction next door...

Savannah Singing
We visited a fellow Smithie near Denver. Shelly accompanied Sara and her daughter Savannah to a toddler/parent music class. That's 2-year-old Savannah with the blond curls.

Instrument Experimentation
The music class, part of the national "Music Together" movement, was very interesting. The kids loved to experiment with the different music makers.

Kevin the Champion Racewalker
Sara's husband Kevin is a champion racewalker who competed in the 2004 Olympics and is training for 2008. He blazed past us on his workout. Flexible joints!

Darci & Ebony
In Lander, Wyo., we visited Shelly's former summer camp co-worker, Darci, and hiked up Sinks Canyon with her dog Ebony.

Sinks Canyon Snow
The trail up the canyon was snowy, but the weather has not been wintry.

Comments

[Lorraine Price]

Shelly and Jeff, after your visit here a few months ago, I too have enjoyed reading your various escapades and adventures. I have similar thoughts as you, regarding the political situation in this country. I'm crossing my fingers things are going to get better! You must be getting close to home now. All the best during the remainder of your travels. P.S. David is happy at Cal Poly, SLO, as is Drew at NU, and Leah is merrily marching and riding. All the best.

[Audrey]

Y'all are making me homesick for the Colorado Rockies. Luke and I are taking Evelyn that way for the holidays at the end of December to meet all of her grandparents and her great-grandma, plus paying tribute to her great-grandpa's memory. I am sooo looking forward to having you meet Evelyn and to play some olde time tunes with you guys again. Hope you are bringing back some "new" ones for us to learn. :-)