Camping up in York Gulch has been an uncomfortable revelation. The nights are cold, iron-black and seemingly endless. I tried hiking during the night in an attempt to confront and war with my fear of being alone in the middle of an inhospitable winter forest. I say I tried because after about 15 minutes I felt an overpowering need to escape to the illusion of safety inside my tipi.
That sometimes bright white orb that hangs from the black Coloradoan skies was nowhere to be found that night. She was cowering somewhere on the other side, a loner who only shows herself when you don't need her.
I brought along a flashlight but used it sparingly, to avoid draining it, to make it as difficult as possible to navigate the interior of the bush. There was no fear of falling off a cliff as I knew well the topography of the land between York Gulch Rd and Ditch Rd. The only caveat was an old abandoned gold mine but even that is covered in a huge mound of mine tailings, so falling in was next to impossible.
I encountered no wildlife other than hearing a barred owl which seems to have moved in 50 or so yards northwest of my campsite.
Normally, as the sun disappears just over the Divide to my west the howling and yipping of the wolf hybrids who are being raised by a family a mile away to the southwest sends a shudder up my spine. These are not coyotes but wolf hybrids. Out in the wild you learn the difference made by both species when listening to their respective howling. But, this dead night they were not to be heard.
I began my careful descent down the rocky and steep hill down to York Gulch Rd and found my campsite welcoming me back with the smoldering firebrands of my original supper cook fire. I immediately placed more firewood on the dying embers and stoked it up real hot. It wasn't heat I particularly wanted it was light that I desired, light to ward off anything or anybody who could have been following me in that ghostly stillness.
It's the quietness that most unnerved me about camping and hiking in the woodsy nights up on York Gulch. The interstate is too far away and hidden by the valley foothills to make intrusive sounds. In fact, I cannot hear any traffic from the valley.
Most of us have been conditioned to hearing white noise or background noise. Up in the forests of York Gulch there is no such thing as white noise. It's primal and eery.
The damp night air is yet another oddity that I had to get used to. Seemingly out of nowhere snow would form and swirl around even when the sky appeared clear.
Looking up at the winter black skies there is no collateral light as Denver is hidden by the surrounding mountains. Orion's Belt, the Big and Little Dippers, the bands of the Milky Way swirl high above in a quiet dazzling display of the Creator's artistic talent.
As I sit next to the fire soaking up it's inviting warmth, gazing up at the cold starlit sky I begin thinking of the time when time began, what it must have been like for early man to look up and wonder about these sparkling little lights dancing about.
Who is man that you are mindful of him? Or the son of man? Or what about me?
What am I supposed to do with this life given me? What possible difference can I make, one lone man, with no resources, few family and friends? Does anything I do matter one way or the other? What about 75-100 years from now when I'm but dust and ash and everybody I ever knew is gone? It will be as if I never existed at all.
These are the thoughts that go through my head as the red and yellow spires of my fire dance in the troubled wind that blows up in York Gulch.
These are the same questions that drove me out of society, onto the road and finally here in the boundless piney winter woods. So, I am back full circle from where I began. And, that's OK because these questions aren't supposed to have answers. They are not problems to be solved but are instead designed to bring me back to the Lord.
So, as I pack up my day bag and take a last glance around my tipi and camp I begin my hike back down the mountain to Idaho Springs. I feel refreshed having escaped the manipulative, consumerist, bickering society I used to be part of if just for only a few days at a time and more importantly to meet up with my God high up 9200 feet on top of the wild mountains of York Gulch Colorado.
BR Schoenbein
December 10, 2015- Thursday
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