When miners, farmers, railroad workers came into these mountains, after crossing the great plains, they did not look kindly on these snow-covered peaks. Mountains represented obstacles, cold, unpredictable danger. The "purple mountains majesty" was largely a creation of English romanticism...a shift in aesthetic sensibility in the late 18th and 19th centuries...these "wild places" became part of an upper-class and, then, middle-class value system.
"Over the course of the 18th century (whilst on the Grand Tour), 'the English' detoured specifically to visit the glaciers (whilst on their way to Italy) and spoke in hused tones of the towering cataracts and vast unpeopled reaches of the mountains."
from the art in history blog.
But then there is the other side, the art of looking from the inside out. Sawatch to the west, Mosquito Range to the east, Sangre de Cristo to the south, Las Garitas to the southwest. and we...just sunk down in the Dry Union formation. Makes you realize how una directional we can be.
But for me a lot has to do with exploration. On Wednesday, I went looking for a trail off the road to Monarch Pass. Kept checking the map, going back and forth, and finally I realized it had to be at the same location as a Dept of Transportation (DOT) facility. So I figured out where to park, set off on a trail, which ran into another trail and, then, just by accident, I saw out of my left eye a sign...:"235"...the trail I was looking for...a few days before...maybe a week before...a skier had come down the trail...otherwise the trail had not been visited for some time.
Thinking the trail was a steep climb of .5 mile (800 meters), I set off on snow shoes security linked to my high hiking boots. Kept on going on and on. And on. And very steep, and then getting steeper...until I saw the banks of snow that form along a ridge line and I realized we'd come to the lake...rather we'd come 200 meters above the surface of the lake.
The trail is just somewhat shy of 1.8 miles (120 meters)...plowing through the powder on the way down...so much fun.
But for me it is about exploring...oh...I could get all the way to Cottonwood Pass if I leave early in the morning and pack some energy bars. Or...just where does this lead...and "that's why the east side of the valley is so different. It was not glaciated which wears the small stuff done and gone and only leaves the hardest of surfaces.
So there is that process of "going into the mountains"...leaving the flat lands behind (if there ever were just flat lands this side of Russia)...and exploring the contours of Nature of the contours of one's own mind.
