I’m out of gas.
No, seriously. Out. The tank is dry. Empty. I am standing roadside with my thumb in the air as I jot this note, hoping to hitch a ride to New Castle, or possibly Glenwood Springs, where I initially decided to pass on petrol at $3.51 a gallon sheerly out of principle. Figuring my motorcycle had 10 more miles in the tank, I rolled the dice. And now I’m paying the price, in time.
But hitching has always been a ponderous pastime of mine, all but abandoned in this formal era of adulthood. With life literally at a standstill as the world passes by, there’s an odd relief replacing my former sense of urgency and I’m left to contemplate my predicament as a metaphor. Could it be true? Am I really out of gas?
My counterpart on this page, Alison Berkley, commented recently on the “work hard, play hard” mentality of mountain dwellers such as myself, and the apparent paradox of endorsing the two seemingly opposed lifestyles. She prefers to chill after a day on the hill, but like her friends and a throng of thousands I joined at the Widespread Panic concerts at Snowmass on Labor Day weekend, I view the lifestyles as more complementary than contradictory. Just as night follows day, it’s only logical that ski leads to après ski. And the same holds true for just about any other mountain activity. There are, after all, 24 hours in a day.
Partying, of course, is not a mandatory part of playing in the mountains. But my theory as to its prevalence was unwittingly formed in that wanderlust hitchhiking era of my life that took me to Alaska for a four-month summer stint. It was around the summer solstice in The Land of the Midnight Sun that the carpe diem reality of the seasonal psyche hit me like a slug of Yukon Jack.
I marveled over the celebration of the longest day of the year as the cosmic clock just south of the Arctic Circle seemed permanently reset to sunset.
Entire families took part in 7 p.m. activities like walking the dog or partying on the patio while kids rode their bikes down the street as if it weren’t really after midnight. Sleep, it was summarily explained, was an option reserved for fall, winter or three-day rainstorms, when it gets cold, wet and, of course, dark. Meanwhile, it’s time to cram in as much of everything life has to offer as possible, even if it’s not necessarily good for you.
The same holds true here in the mountains of Colorado, where summer – if you’re lucky – might be stretched to 75 days between seven months of winter and a soggy spring. They are the best 75 days of the year, however, charged like an adventure race of the 24-hour sprint variety, and deserve to be celebrated, whether it’s a day in the bush or a night on the town. As I surveyed the crowd surrounding me at the Jazz Aspen/Snowmass festival last weekend, I realized I had shared some sort of outdoor adventure with dozens of folks on hand.
Often, yes, the limits are pushed, and sometimes the tank runs perilously low, but there’s always an opportunity to pause and refuel as the offseason settles in. The party we call summer is over, and there won’t be another for a while.
Myself, I managed to hitch a ride back to the gas station and make my way out to Westwater, Utah, for a two-day paddling trip with a crew of river gypsies and a dog named Hudson with juice to spare. For many of them, this trip qualified as the refueling stop, a chance to do for themselves what they spent an entire summer doing as guides for paying clients – sort of a caddie day at the country club. And just when I thought old age and a long weekend in Aspen might have been my undoing, their overflowing energy helped me realize I still had an untapped reserve. We paddled and played and, yes, even partied a little, and as hard as we tried, we couldn’t use it all up. But now the urgency is over. Like every summer in Colorado, it was just a matter of time.
Scott Willoughby can be reached at 303-820-1993 or swilloughby@denverpost.com.
