(This post was written earlier before things got really busy around here.)
Mid-April found me on the chairlifts at Wolf Creek Pass ski area on one of the last days the area was open. Already the San Juan River below the pass was muddy with early spring runoff and other skiers were few as we worked our way down the largely deserted runs. As we rode up the lifts, the snow below us was mostly brown, coated with dust from the windstorm that buffeted us as we drove from New Mexico two nights before. I knew it was spring skiing, but I couldn’t help but worry about these fragile San Juan Mountains as we plied the hard, dirty snow.
At the top of the mountain, the wind was howling, and people dashed down quickly to get away from the blasting wind. We too worked our way down, getting past the edges of the cornices and resting at last in the warm spring sundown where the spruce killed trees crowded, casting little shadow except a shadow of doubt about our collective future. The dead spruce stood poles, their bark stripped by wind.
Back on the chairlift. The ski area owners claim they power these chairs with wind power, soon to be replaced with more virtuous solar power generated in the San Luis Valley on the Rio Grande side of the divide. The chairs grind up the slope, making that rubber squeaky sound when the cables cross the rubber wheels holding the cable above the steel towers. Looking out northward, the peaks are nearly barren of snow and the drifts I can see are brown with the recent dust. My mind wanders to the expanse of low desert country surrounding this island of alpine beauty.
Dust comes from wind swept deserts in every direction below us. A century of overgrazing of those lowlands by cattle and sheep have stripped the desert nearly barren. Drought comes in to finish off the plants that the cattle leave alone. Spring wind blows dust in regional clouds that move east and settle on these snows in the high San Juan. Spring sun will melt the dirty snow faster than clean snow.
Already the spring melt comes too fast. This dirt will speed up the snowmelt and the streams will fall to a trickle by early summer. People are greedy and desperate. Grazing the desert is a desperate thing to do but our society thinks ranchers and cowboys are romantic heros. In fact, they are desperados of sorts, people pushing the land past its limits for their own survival. And state and federal agencies help them out. I look down on their dust on the snow and know we’ve gone too far.
Riding the chairlift up, I notice we are way high above the ground below. A little valley opens below, and I feel a little tinge of fear. So high up. I grip the chair’s steel harder but realize there is little to hold onto here. The chairlift is solid except it like all other human constructs can fail. I decide to look up at the sky with the ravens wheeling against the pale blue. Then the windy top again and I am on my skies, braving the icy snow, realizing it is time to grow flowers, plant vegetables, hike into the mountain valleys with my wife, enjoy my time knowing that these peaks nearly barren of snow in April mean a fierce fire year ahead, low streams, strife among the farmers who mostly wastewater growing cattle feed. Another year in the drought west.
Pagosa Springs has a pervasive sulphur smell from what the town advertises as the deepest hot springs in the world. The ancient volcanic rocks that form the tops of the mountains to the east must have something to do with these waters that boil up and deposit white, yellow and black deposits in haystack mounds that steam enthusiastically in the mid-winter nights. For fifty dollars you can join other mostly frumpy middle-aged people in a series of concrete pools next to the San Juan River. Texas accents ring out and the geese fly up the river making sounds that seem more intelligent to me than the chatter of my fellow humans with their self-centered routines. Vacation time in the Rockies, hot water with a stench to be ignored like so much in our lives now. Political stench from the right, stench from our oil addiction that is slowly killing us. Noisy pickups on main street with manly men on their way somewhere.
Driving home to New Mexico we pass miles of dilapidated mobile homes, run down houses with expensive cars sitting outside, junk and a feeling of economic hopelessness. This is a region that most Americans don’t know exists with a population that defies easy categorization. Politicians use the tools available to relieve the poverty, but nothing seems to work over the decades. The land has little but beauty to offer.
Bigger Picture
Daily I think about how fortunate we are to live in a place that is at peace for now. Watching the horror in Ukraine and realizing that all the people who live there are just trying to live a normal life, disturbs me deeply. Imagine having your country’s infrastructure destroyed, having buildings that took generations to build destroyed, have your friends killed for no reason except a madman has access to a military and worse, nuclear weapons.
Vladamir Putin is a criminal of unimaginable proportions. He lives in a fantasy word and wants to make Russia great again. The problem is people don’t want what he’s selling and rather than accept that people in various former Soviet states don’t want to partake of his dictatorship, he punishes them for wanting to live freely. The punishment is slaughtering civilians, destroying the physical structure of the country, starving people, killing children and animals, bombing hospitals, shooting old people. Good old Putin, admired by so many on the American far right.
And then we have the closure of the agricultural system in Ukraine, the source of grain for tens of millions of people worldwide. The crops are rotting the fields, the shipments stopped, farmers idle.
Putin is a mass murderer. In the US we have Donald Trump who is working to destroy our democracy so he can be like Putin. Both of these boys need to be removed from power or access to power permanently.
