Discovering New Lands

I was supposed to be in Alaska next week but, like everyone else, I’m not going anywhere. And, like most people I know, I’m feeling desperate to see new landscapes, but the state government discourages travel beyond 10 miles of our homes.

As much as I love my walks around Meeker Park, last week my brain needed some new stimulus, even if it was just driving five miles down the road to the big metropolis of Allenspark—population 500.

Sometimes we just need to reorient our brains, jolt them a bit. From Allenspark I can look up at the southern side of Mount Meeker rather than the majestic eastern flank that I see from my cabin. It’s a slightly different view, enough to make me rethink the landscape a bit, to remind myself there is no fixed view of anything.

I’ve driven to or through Allenspark hundreds of times—to eat at one of the two restaurants in town or to get water from the springs. But I don’t think I’ve ever explored the town on foot. The “downtown” area is a cluster of a few commercial buildings, the post office, a tiny log church, an historic tourist lodge and many cabins. Realtors use the word “rustic” for these small log buildings that look like a good wind would topple them. One cabin sits precariously on tree stumps. Yet some have been sitting there since the late 19^th century, when Allenspark became more than a gleam in a prospector’s eye.

I walked west out of town on one of the main roads that dead-ends at a Forest Service trailhead. There were few cars, so I was free to let my eyes roam, without worrying about traffic.

Scattered throughout the hillsides and aspen groves are cabins, both big and small. One looked like the original cabin had additional rooms tacked on to it, but not in any cohesive manner, as if they were added by different people at different times who had conflicting ideas as to the best design. Another cabin was nestled up against a boulder three times as large as the cabin.

Like Meeker Park, instead of street signs, Allenspark residents tack boards onto the trunks of pine trees, with the names lined up vertically, like a ladder. They form a kind of group sculpture, each board reflecting the creativity or personality of the owner: different colors, shapes, lettering. Each assembly is unique, much more interesting than a government-issued street sign.

A bit farther down the road, someone had neatly stacked wood that could have won first prize for most artistic wood pile. And farther down the road, horses softly greeted me from a fenced enclosure.

Along the way, I heard hummingbirds and the lilting sound of a ruby-crowned kinglet. Water was running everywhere: through aspen forests, alongside the road, and forming pools in the fields, from which I could hear the sound of frogs. In these fields, popping up from last year’s dead grasses are this year’s first pasqueflowers, almost the only color now in this still barren landscape.

I thought of one of my favorite quotes, from Marcel Proust: “The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes, but in having new eyes.”

But one of the things I love about traveling is that I see everything with new eyes. In this newly closed world, even a trip down the road is enough to awaken me.

Comments

[shoney]

What a great post. Thank you for allowing me to revisit Allenspark with you again....and taking me on a little trip out of my California neighborhood.

[Julene Bair]

And reading on of your posts gives my imagination new eyes. I admire how you appreciate the details that many would not notice. Those signs and the wood pile are wonderful.