Banking Toward the Valley

I don’t know why, but the Tour de France makes me fantasize about skiing.

It doesn’t make sense. As I write, Cadel Evans is no doubt sitting up in the saddle sipping champagne as he wafts down the Champs-Élysées, the nominative winner. The Tour is coming to its ceremonial close in Paris, the overall finish order having been determined at yesterday’s time trial in which Australian Evans surpassed his rival from Luxemburg, Andy Schleck, and claimed the yellow jersey.

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The Monastery of Pure Landscape

Years ago, I overheard some German motorists in the visitor center in Moab say: “Ya, zis is ze first time ve are traveling in pure landscape!”

Unnatural Gas, Or The Wrong Way to Denver

It wouldn’t have done to close my eyes while driving I-70 through Garfield County. But I was tempted, in order to shut out the hundreds of natural gas drill rigs and compressor fans and well heads and supply dumps and road cuts and rows of fracking-fluid semis and lumbering red Halliburton trucks in the right lane.

A Forest Glen in Downtown Ridgway

Here is a story from the current Shelter magazine:

“Little kids love this house. They call it the Hobbit House.”

Bob Mann sat at his kitchen table in Ridgway with the morning light, filtered through a million leaves, painting the windows behind him.

“Strangers once walked right up and peered in the windows as if they thought it was abandoned,” Mann said, delighted.