Life among the giants…
This fall my wife is teaching one day per week at Adams State College in Alamosa, CO. It’s about 90 miles one-way, and most of the trip is a sublime cruise on an empty two-lane road through some of the most stunning scenery in this part of the world. That’s saying something, too. It’s also somewhat dangerous at night, what with pronghorns and elk meandering across the highway, which is one reason she spends the night in Alamosa and drives back the next morning. Today I rode up with her and took these photos from the speeding car.
Local mountains as seen from just west of Taos
I’m sitting in the student union building at Adams State right now, and I have to say that this is one cool college. The Campus of the Hooded Sweatshirts, and how they need them… I love watching the students, who all seem to be about 14 years old. Heh. There are bronze sculptures here and there around the campus, big ones too. So far I’ve seen a grizzly bear (the Adams State mascot), a cowpoke with his horse, and a humpbacked whale. And when I parked off-campus in a residential area, i nearly ran into two BIG mule deer standing in the street! Right there in the middle of town, as sassy as you please.
Alamosa is one bizarre little place and probably an interesting town to live in. It’s also colder ‘n hell up here, significantly more so than down in Taos. Tonight, for example, the low is supposed to be seven degrees above zero. SEVEN! And yet, there are plenty of trees that haven’t shed their leaves. Just east of town is a range of “fourteeners,” mountains over 14,000 feet high. Big, scary bastards, covered with snow.
Mt. Blanca massif viewed from just south of Alamosa, CO
To get to this place, you drive past Mt. San Antonio, the largest free-standing mountain in the country. It’s free-standing because it was once a monster of an active volcano, and U.S. 285 cuts right through a nifty lava flow. This landscape gives me goosebumps. Even my sweetie, who never met a curb or sidewalk she didn’t like, is blown away every week when she makes this trip. Mind you, there’s nothing sweet or endearing about it. This is beauty like galaxies, like truth. Like the sun glinting off the tiger’s teeth before they plunge into your neck.
That’s 90 miles of two-lane road without a stoplight and just two stop signs, yet when you finally get here, there’s amazingly normal stuff: paved streets, grass, trees, brick buildings, an actual state college, etc. In that regard, it’s a lot more conventional than Taos, but when I consider where it is, things just don’t compute.
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{ 4 comments… read them below or add one }
That IS a great drive, ‘no’? But beware; I was stopped by an unmarked Colorado State Trooper doing 110 mph. I think he just wanted the chase tho’. When I did finally pull over, he was smiling from ear-to-ear and shaking his head. “There’s a town ahead. Just slow down before you get there.” Yessir!
Nothing like the Storm Trooper Massholes back here.
I drove 285 with a friend two summers ago on our way back to Phoenix from Denver. We drove past San Antonio Mountain an hour or two before sundown, and I was awestruck. At that moment, it seemed to embody all that I had experienced in my years traveling this vast continent. I have been haunted by that mountain ever since, almost to the point of obsession. I am using it as the cover to an album I have been recording, and fantasize about climbing it and camping on it. It is a singular, indescribable metaphor, a Platonic truth rising from the ashes of itself, constantly in the background.
The friend I was with doesn’t really understand this obsession, and to be honest, neither do I. I think he finds it almost comical. All I know is that it calls out to me.
Yo, J.!
Would you like to see more San Antonio Mountain pix?
absolutely!!