Seasoned Grand Canyon river-running veterans will tell you there is a phenomenon known as “re-entry” common among those who have shared an extended experience in America’s largest rut.
It’s an affliction, really, a mind- gnawing malady embedded in your gray matter like post-traumatic stress disorder in inverse. After a few weeks immersed in an impossibly photogenic landscape of unmitigated bliss, the shock arrives the moment you encounter traffic, public restrooms and e-mail spam again. My God, you think, it’s only been three weeks, yet a computer seems like an alien visiting from another planet, a sarong feels like oddly appropriate office attire and foods taste strange for the lack of sand on my spoon.
“It still takes about two weeks to get past the urge to go outside to use the bathroom,” said Donnie Dove, the 20-year owner of Flagstaff, Ariz.,-based Canyon REO Outfitters, who has floated the Colorado River through the Grand Canyon 31 times. “I’m not sure if there’s any real cure for it.”
It’s no exaggeration comparing the re-entry process to acclimatizing for an approach on Everest or refamiliarizing yourself with gravity after a visit to outer space. Although precious little has actually changed, the world, it seems, is spinning just a little faster. The important issues of the day suddenly seem much less significant. Work, you tell yourself, can wait.
But the choice isn’t really yours. During the time it took to shake off the weight of the “real world,” you were faced with only one daily task: float downstream. Despite the countless conveniences left behind, it truly was a simpler time. The return to reality should not — could not — be rushed.
It is in these times — for me now nearly three weeks into re-entry — that I am most thankful for Colorado. For if there is a remedy for re-entry, it’s found in the snowcapped peaks spawning the healing headwaters of the river that put my condition in the condition it’s in.
There is a phenomenon equally common to my own personal re-entry affliction I like to call “coming home.” The healing process begins with the recognition that I’m not on a flight to Newark, N.J., or a bus to Houston. I’ve landed in a vacation destination that serves as an attraction for millions of travelers worldwide, where skiing, hiking and, yes, river running may not have been invented, but were arguably perfected in America.
It’s a dreamland no less distracting than the Grand Canyon, and no less comforting either. The re-entry process may take just as many hours, maybe even more, but the sting is certainly softened by the knowledge that our return to reality here in Colorado includes an opportunity to ski or snowboard one day, mountain bike the next, hike, hunt, fish, paddle, climb or simply soak in a hot spring pool until I’m good and ready to go someplace else again.
I’ll admit it took a little longer than normal this time around. But this past weekend’s snowstorm finally helped me turn the corner. A visit to the Colorado Ski Expo on Friday felt like a family reunion, surrounded by throngs of like-minded enthusiasts eagerly lining up in front of the Paramount Theatre to catch the latest Warren Miller ski film, “Dynasty,” afterward.
A blistering rock ‘n’ roll show with the Black Crowes at the Fillmore Auditorium downtown certainly didn’t hurt my cause, especially given the opportunity to follow the band up into the high country for an encore performance at Beaver Creek Resort’s Vilar Performing Arts Center (check for a show report).
Another snowfall on Sunday morning brought it all full circle. These mountains, this snow, another spectacular winter season to look forward to before it’s all recycled and sent downstream in some metaphysical re-entry of a different sort.
Perhaps that’s why the pull remains so strong. It’s that little bit of home flowing beneath those grandiose canyon walls that tugs at my traveler’s soul. And it’s that bigger bit, right here in Colorado, that keeps me coming back where I belong.
