ZEN AND LONGING IN HIGH COUNTRY: A ROCKY MOUNTAIN JOURNEY TO THE CENTER OF THE MIND
11 days, 659 miles
It was there in the wrap, sunk in the Soft Pak “floating table,” that I first relax on the day after the Antichrist was supposed to show, but as usual didn’t.
Smothered in goo made of pumpkin and orange and tea leaves, enwombed in an expensive German therapy machine, I feel fine about the telecom problems that frazzled me earlier in the day in Denver, 2,870 feet below.
Then I vacillate between meditation and discomfort, sweating profusely. Enya-like music plays in my dim therapy room. I feel really fucking good. Then I want out. I am wrapped like a burrito in pumpkin salsa and a plastic sheet.
This is my first spa experience, at the ritzy Aria Spa in Vail, Colorado, elevation 8,150 feet.
Soon after being freed from my cocoon, I got an invigorating lotion massage and my mind revisits memories of birth, my mom telling me everything is okay, and adolescent longing. My left buttock tenses when Diane, my therapist, gives it a good kneading, but I stay otherwise calm. I forget about the cell phone crap-out, the ATM strip burnout, the overflowing voicemailbox.
Pumpkin and orange smell pretty damn good. I wish I was a baby. I’m sleepy. I’m hot.
“Are you ready to come out?” Diane is back.
“Yes, I think so.”
Soon I am mad at myself for my previously irritated,brought on by earlier stresses mere minutes after being released from the serenity of the spa. At one point, I wanted to move into that organic body wrap and never leave. But now I’m back out in the nearly independent city-state of the Vail Cascade within the semi-synthetic resort environs of Vail.
Then I eat buffalo ribeye and drink wine and forget about everything, and later sit on my balcony and listen to the roar of Gore Creek drown out The Best of Emmylou Harris.
After a day in Vail—which is a construction zone at this off-season point in early June—I have margaritas and a quail/enchilada combo at the Minturn Saloon, then back to the ridiculously fancy Ritz-Carlton, Bachelor Gulch, near Beaver Creek for the night. A masseuse named Anna gives me the first professional massage of my life, and undoubtedly the best, pro or am.
Why can’t I teach myself to attain this level of relaxation on my own?
Aspen is ridiculous. Glitz and hype and money, a little suburb of Beverly Hills 1,000 miles from the Pacific Ocean.
But it’s just a short drive from the Maroon Bells, a vast tract of perfect, roadless wilderness. It’s only 15 miles as the crow flies to Crested Butte. To reach Crested Butte via asphalt, however, is 300 miles. Hiking around Maroon Lake, I find it hard to ignore such beauty, and even harder to lose control of my emotions in the face of it.
My second night in Aspen I take the local bus to the Woody Creek Tavern, Hunter S. Thompson’s old hangout, and have some killer tamales and plenty of margaritas and beer. I talk the ear off Ric Rock, the bartender. He talks back.
“I think this administration is like Nazi fucking Germany,” Ric says at one point.
“What was the only show the Beatles didn’t sell out on their first U.S. tour?” I ask him later. I had to tell him Red Rocks was the answer.
I take a break from my barstool and climbed the ridge above Woody Creek (which is the tavern and a trailer park surrounded by the holdings of large property owners, surrounded by mountainous wildlands) and smoke some weed. An inactive bulldozer sits on the side of a big hole it apparently had previously dug.
I go back down. Ric knows nothing of the project. I give him a copy of a book I wrote as a tip. He is quite concerned about me driving.
“I’m not driving anywhere,” I slur. “I got a ride coming.”
My ride is Jon Barnes, the owner of the Ultimate Taxi. I smoke more weed. He has a computer monitor on the dash, where he plays a roller coaster simulator and almost makes me puke. Then he puts on a light show, jams out on an odd wind-instrument synthesizer, gives me 3-D glasses, and drops me off at the Limelight Lodge just before my bladder bursts. I show good judgment and go to bed.
The next morning I tour the chic Sky Hotel, which has about the smallest $500 rooms I’ve ever seen, and then drive several hours to Steamboat Springs. I wander around the mostly deserted ski village and drink beers with locals and second homeowners.
I feel my temper rise on the trail the following afternoon. I am hiking to Strawberry Park Hot Springs, a funky mountain facility that’s reachable by car but I’d chosen the back way: three miles through the forest by boot. My aggravation started earlier, some combination of needing to go to the bathroom while in a semi-annoying conversation. Next thing I know, I’m hot and sweaty on the trail, and my mood is sour.
It culminates with me cursing nothing in particular after I felt the manager of the hot springs blew me off. I climb the hill and pokedaround a caboose that’d been converted into a kitchenette.
I am still mad, for no good reason. Must get control. I go into the springs for a soak. My anger melts away in the 100-degree water. The surrounding forest, the babbling creek, the sun…why was I mad?
And why do I require a soak or a massage or some other external stimulus to soothe the wrath within?
On my hike out, I feel much better. Cloud cover eases the heat, lizards and butterflies and wildflowers keep me company, and I make it back to my car around 5 p.m.
The next day, I have lunch with Blair, a sales guy for Steamboat Resorts. I tell him of my plans: to spend the night at the Home Ranch, an ultra-luxury guest ranch 30 miles north of town in Clark, then head to State Bridge, a legendary biker and hippie party spot an hour south of Steamboat.
He finds it pretty amusing that I am planning on going from an $800-a-night cabin to a $50-a-night cabin.
“This may be the first time someone has stayed at these two particular places on consecutive nights,” I note.
He agrees. “I’m sure of it.”
11 days, 659 miles
It was there in the wrap, sunk in the Soft Pak “floating table,” that I first relax on the day after the Antichrist was supposed to show, but as usual didn’t.
Smothered in goo made of pumpkin and orange and tea leaves, enwombed in an expensive German therapy machine, I feel fine about the telecom problems that frazzled me earlier in the day in Denver, 2,870 feet below.
Then I vacillate between meditation and discomfort, sweating profusely. Enya-like music plays in my dim therapy room. I feel really fucking good. Then I want out. I am wrapped like a burrito in pumpkin salsa and a plastic sheet.
This is my first spa experience, at the ritzy Aria Spa in Vail, Colorado, elevation 8,150 feet.
Soon after being freed from my cocoon, I got an invigorating lotion massage and my mind revisits memories of birth, my mom telling me everything is okay, and adolescent longing. My left buttock tenses when Diane, my therapist, gives it a good kneading, but I stay otherwise calm. I forget about the cell phone crap-out, the ATM strip burnout, the overflowing voicemailbox.
Pumpkin and orange smell pretty damn good. I wish I was a baby. I’m sleepy. I’m hot.
“Are you ready to come out?” Diane is back.
“Yes, I think so.”
Soon I am mad at myself for my previously irritated,brought on by earlier stresses mere minutes after being released from the serenity of the spa. At one point, I wanted to move into that organic body wrap and never leave. But now I’m back out in the nearly independent city-state of the Vail Cascade within the semi-synthetic resort environs of Vail.
Then I eat buffalo ribeye and drink wine and forget about everything, and later sit on my balcony and listen to the roar of Gore Creek drown out The Best of Emmylou Harris.
After a day in Vail—which is a construction zone at this off-season point in early June—I have margaritas and a quail/enchilada combo at the Minturn Saloon, then back to the ridiculously fancy Ritz-Carlton, Bachelor Gulch, near Beaver Creek for the night. A masseuse named Anna gives me the first professional massage of my life, and undoubtedly the best, pro or am.
Why can’t I teach myself to attain this level of relaxation on my own?
Aspen is ridiculous. Glitz and hype and money, a little suburb of Beverly Hills 1,000 miles from the Pacific Ocean.
But it’s just a short drive from the Maroon Bells, a vast tract of perfect, roadless wilderness. It’s only 15 miles as the crow flies to Crested Butte. To reach Crested Butte via asphalt, however, is 300 miles. Hiking around Maroon Lake, I find it hard to ignore such beauty, and even harder to lose control of my emotions in the face of it.
My second night in Aspen I take the local bus to the Woody Creek Tavern, Hunter S. Thompson’s old hangout, and have some killer tamales and plenty of margaritas and beer. I talk the ear off Ric Rock, the bartender. He talks back.
“I think this administration is like Nazi fucking Germany,” Ric says at one point.
“What was the only show the Beatles didn’t sell out on their first U.S. tour?” I ask him later. I had to tell him Red Rocks was the answer.
I take a break from my barstool and climbed the ridge above Woody Creek (which is the tavern and a trailer park surrounded by the holdings of large property owners, surrounded by mountainous wildlands) and smoke some weed. An inactive bulldozer sits on the side of a big hole it apparently had previously dug.
I go back down. Ric knows nothing of the project. I give him a copy of a book I wrote as a tip. He is quite concerned about me driving.
“I’m not driving anywhere,” I slur. “I got a ride coming.”
My ride is Jon Barnes, the owner of the Ultimate Taxi. I smoke more weed. He has a computer monitor on the dash, where he plays a roller coaster simulator and almost makes me puke. Then he puts on a light show, jams out on an odd wind-instrument synthesizer, gives me 3-D glasses, and drops me off at the Limelight Lodge just before my bladder bursts. I show good judgment and go to bed.
The next morning I tour the chic Sky Hotel, which has about the smallest $500 rooms I’ve ever seen, and then drive several hours to Steamboat Springs. I wander around the mostly deserted ski village and drink beers with locals and second homeowners.
I feel my temper rise on the trail the following afternoon. I am hiking to Strawberry Park Hot Springs, a funky mountain facility that’s reachable by car but I’d chosen the back way: three miles through the forest by boot. My aggravation started earlier, some combination of needing to go to the bathroom while in a semi-annoying conversation. Next thing I know, I’m hot and sweaty on the trail, and my mood is sour.
It culminates with me cursing nothing in particular after I felt the manager of the hot springs blew me off. I climb the hill and pokedaround a caboose that’d been converted into a kitchenette.
I am still mad, for no good reason. Must get control. I go into the springs for a soak. My anger melts away in the 100-degree water. The surrounding forest, the babbling creek, the sun…why was I mad?
And why do I require a soak or a massage or some other external stimulus to soothe the wrath within?
On my hike out, I feel much better. Cloud cover eases the heat, lizards and butterflies and wildflowers keep me company, and I make it back to my car around 5 p.m.
The next day, I have lunch with Blair, a sales guy for Steamboat Resorts. I tell him of my plans: to spend the night at the Home Ranch, an ultra-luxury guest ranch 30 miles north of town in Clark, then head to State Bridge, a legendary biker and hippie party spot an hour south of Steamboat.
He finds it pretty amusing that I am planning on going from an $800-a-night cabin to a $50-a-night cabin.
“This may be the first time someone has stayed at these two particular places on consecutive nights,” I note.
He agrees. “I’m sure of it.”