N.b. the following several posts will be wildly out of chronological sequence as I finally get to synopses of photos since 2019.

The 24 months after my repatriation into Charleston was tumultuous for two reasons. First, I wanted badly to scratch the hiking itch, which isn’t so accessible from a Charleston doorstep; and second, because COVID rendered travel impractical for months. Just prior to airline and border lockdowns, I was back in Germany on an equipment preacceptance. Two weeks later after I got back, international travel into the US stopped altogether. In late 2020, once domestic travel restarted awkwardly, I realized it was faster to fly to Denver than to drive to the Blue Ridge Mountains, and in June 2021 I found myself flying to Colorado again as the snows thawed.

“Planning” hiking trips is a catch-22. Booking early renders the entire trip subject to weather influence, and waiting until days before a hike to be able to confirm a weather forecast almost undoubtedly ensures high fares. (Making decisions about whether to head to the mountains is easier in the Alps in that sense: is the sun shining?) Thankfully, most of my planned excursions have had decent weather, and Colorado was the same way. My first day in was a bit rainy, but I had planned to visit the Denver Art Museum anyhow. Contemporary works are housed in the Frederic C. Hamilton building, a quartz-sharped silver structure in the heart of downtown Denver.

While I didn’t pay any particular attention to how efficiently the resulting interior space was to housing art (which maybe does speak to its efficiency), the design of the building is certainly unique. I roamed inside for a few hours before heading to grab lunch.

The raison d’aller* for the trip itself was to shake out my legs after years of neglect. I decided to do a hike in Rocky Mountain National Park, which that year introduced a time-based entry system. As I was too late to nab a pre-booking timeslot and wasn’t fast enough on clicking “refresh” to win the evening-prior lottery, I chose to drive into the park before 5:00 AM to avoid (legally) the timed entry checks — and to be there in time for sunrise, naturally. I failed to consider the long travel day I had to get to Denver, so I overslept twilight and woke up mostly just cold. The trailhead was at 9,000 feet, and in June the temperatures were still in the low 30s. I kept my puffy on and started the hike up, surprising myself by passing people as I climbed. As I started off, the sun had risen but the color kept popping for some time, giving me time to snap some shots of an orange-red fire bringing the world to life and to let everyone I passed pass me.

My destination was Sky Pond, an alpine lake sharing space with clouds. Given my lack of any significant uphill trajectory the last two years and the altitude, I was surprised that the hike felt easy: somehow, some portion of my fitness base was still intact.

Several noun pairings with “sky” evoke an almost wistful response, and Sky Pond is one. (The Phoenix Sky Harbor International Airport is another.) Unassisted flight is repressed by our awareness of physical limitation, but the freedom and aspiration associated with the idea of flight — the vast heavens above — makes us human. For me, hearing the name “Sky Pond” brings warmth, namely by alluding that there could be some tranquility, joy, or even just a breath away from bustle can be found in some natural earthly environment high in the air. I had most of the lake to myself and skirting toward its south bank I was pretty much alone. While I snacked, a few hikers came and went, and by the time I started back toward the car park, sunny spots on the north bank also started to fill.

I passed by a waterfall on my way down, stopping and testing how well I could hold the camera steady as I tripped the shutter on a somewhat-long exposure. Anytime there’s a waterfall on a hike, I’ll try to grab a picture of it. Perhaps it’s a subconscious omen: in my travels I’ve learned how much water has shaped what we think of as peaks and summits today.

Further down the trail, I stepped off a log bridge and came nearly face-to-face with an elk. We stared at one another before she backed away a few meters into the words and continued foraging. I don’t often spot wildlife on my hikes, so this was something of a treat.

The next day, I met up with a buddy living in Denver and we drove to Colorado Springs. We had planned to drive up Pike’s Peak but clouds had settled in at its summit, so we managed a walk around the Garden of the Gods and lunch before I bid adieu and grabbed my flight home.

The idea that a “weekend dayhike” would involve a nonstop flight hadn’t crossed my mind until 2021, and despite the beauty of Sky Pond I wasn’t entirely convinced that having just one day available for hiking was the optimum solution in case of weather disruptions. As such, I haven’t repeated the Denver experiment since 2021, but it did set up several other excursions, and even ones that violated the original simplicity of a nonstop flight as transport into the mountains: I’ve since started to fly into Salt Lake City and Phoenix, both of which require connections from Charleston, to get my elevation fix. Tell me again how fortunate I am that the US offers so many nature options…

* pun on raison d’être, lit. “reason to be.” Here aller is the infinitive “to go”; i.e. “reason to go.”