Cabin Journal

The Odd Behavior of Tourists

A few weeks ago, I ran into a middle-aged woman who was floundering in thigh-high snow on a steep slope above Alberta Falls in Rocky Mountain National Park. Apparently when she and her son arrived at the sign that says “Alberta Falls“ and they didn’t see any waterfalls, they headed up a steep hillside, where no trail exists.  Apparently, being from Florida, it didn’t occur to her that all that snow might be covering the falls and so set out to look for the popular attraction, which the Park Service had cleverly hidden someplace else.

A bit farther down the trail, I found another curiosity: a bridge over a small creek (about 5 feet across) roped off with orange cones. I can only assume the ropes were meant to prevent people from jumping into the creek, which was obscured by snow. Park rangers must have had to rescue people enough times that they decided to take preventive measures. Maybe they also needed to add some signs:

Warning: Creek below. If you jump in, you might get wet, and you might get cold. Just so you know.

As has been widely reported, since the pandemic started more people have turned to the great outdoors, both for distraction and spiritual solace. These newbies apparently haven’t spent a lot of time in nature, because they seem easily confused.

Last month, some hikers on the Glacier Gorge trail apparently didn’t expect snow on the trail in March, Colorado’s snowiest month. I saw women wearing leggings and tennis shoes that would have been proper wear in downtown Denver but didn’t hold up on a snow-packed trail where a few inches off the trail you sink into deep snow. On a steep section of the trail, a bottleneck formed with people lined up, unsure how to navigate down the slippery, icy slope in their shoes that had no tread. Some  decided that sliding on their backsides was the easiest way down.

I just read an article about a rescue group in a remote part of Wyoming that is now getting 10 times the requests for rescues than it did a year ago—some from wilderness users who just got tired while hiking and wanted to be helped back to their cars. One Denver newspaper article last winter mentioned a woman walking on an avalanche-prone mountainside, dressed only in shorts and a tank-top (somehow, she came through unscathed). By not being prepared, some of these backcountry tourists are putting others in danger, like the rescue groups and rangers who must search for them, often in bad weather, and bring them back to civilization.

But there’s another danger: that too many people see the world through the lens of our screens—whether social media, TV, video games or something else—so the natural and artificial worlds blend into one. Nature becomes a commodity that can be plucked for our amusement rather than being a world unto itself. Last month, two tourists stopped me at Wild Basin to ask how to find the spectacular mountain views, someplace they could take photos to be admired on Instagram. Another time, two young men asked me where they could find elk, their sole reason for coming to the park.

I love the high mountains and the huge herds of elk, but the tourists’ consumerist attitude—I want an experience that I can record and post—leaves out any genuine interaction with nature, any appreciation of this complex world where nature exists on a different plane than the human one. If you’re not so intent on finding the falls or getting that prize photo, you might glimpse an amazing world: lichen thousands of years old, ouzel flying behind the waterfalls or tiny forget-me-nots that can only be seen by crouching on the tundra floor.   

Part of me hopes the pandemic tourists return to the human world opening up again: fitness clubs, shopping malls,  bars and restaurants. I would love to get rid of clogged parking lots, endless lines of hikers on the trail, and visitors who let their dogs chase the chipmunks.

But that’s not the world we live in anymore. I can only hope that those who came to take a selfie with a nearby elk leave with more than a picture. Maybe a taste of a different world than the human one, some small bit of silence and calm outside of the chaotic human world, a brief brush with animals who struggle to survive with grace and courage. Maybe they’ll even learn what snow is.

Cycles of Ice and Life

Last November I started my search for one of the more ephemeral forms of nature: ice. Even though the autumn had been warm, ice was already forming on the St. Vrain River. I found it first on the pond below Copeland Falls, where it resembled a thick layer of slush, with a greenish tinge (right).

All winter long I walked along the creek, which gleams in this dark forest of pines, as the cycle of melting and freezing produced ice sculptures and formations that changed from week to week. When I returned to the falls in December, the pond was clear and frozen, and the falls themselves were a spectacle of frozen icicles and rounded ice clusters.

There’s something reassuring about this cycle. The whole world might be in chaos, but the river keeps flowing, insistently finding its way lower, moving downward. As the water continuously freezes and forms a new dam or impediment, the river finds a new channel, skirting the main one, going to the side or deep underneath. I can hear its beat, its thrumming under the ice: sometimes hollow sounding, sometimes like glass bells.

 

 

In the first few months of winter (which starts here in November), there was a lot of back and forth on the river: melting and then freezing and then melting, so every week there were new formations, something new to delight. There’s no end to the ingenuity of the creek. Between different weather conditions, gradients in the creek, boulders and rocks that block the way and divert the waters, the variety of ice formations is limitless.

In fact, I found hundreds of terms for how ice forms in lakes, rivers and the ocean. In addition to border ice, which is formed along the shore, there’s candled ice, which looks like thin vertical crystals shaped like candles; and frazil, which are fine, small, needle-like structures or thin, flat, circular plates of ice suspended in water.

I couldn’t find the name for one of my favorites:  the rounded ice goblets formed as the ice first melts in the sunlight and starts to drip into the creek and then freezes—all the while these crystal orbs getting bigger and more complex.

Before climate change, many towns celebrated winter with ice sculpture contests. But no human sculptor could create the intricate pattern of lines in the pond or the ice that forms along the edges of the creek. Water is the best sculptor because  it’s malleable and able to yield to changing conditions—from sunlight to darkness, from cold to warmth.

About a month ago, the creek went silent after more than two feet of snow smothered the whole landscape. I was happy we finally got a good snowfall in an otherwise dry winter, but I missed seeing the creek. Then last week, I was surprised to see clear dark pools among the piles of snow as thawing temperatures opened the creek again, with the river making hopeful, gurgling noises, as if life was stirring again. No matter what happens—a year of isolation and too many unnecessary deaths, destructive wildfires last fall, and horrific shootings across the country, including here in  Boulder—the cycle of life keeps going.