05/22/2023
Would you like me to tell you about the place that's depicted in this photo?
Tree Line - Very Remote
North Park
Flat Top Wilderness Area of Colorado
1 of 3 of my favorite places on Earth.
When I was growing up, it was a family tradition to spend 2 weeks there, with my cousins, every summer. It looks just like that and in every way was magical and full of adventure for us kids. It takes all day on horseback to reach this location, which is situated right at Alpine elevation or tree line. Hence, the lack of trees and only rock mountains hovering the lake. The lake is the clearest, most crystal blue waters I've ever seen and I've traveled and dove all over the world. It's almost as if filled with diamonds and sapphires, then sprinkled with magic fairy dust on top. I can stand on the waters edge and see the rocky bottom and native cut throat swimming 15-20 feet below with a clarity that is astounding. Tempted on warm day, I remove my socks and shoes, roll up my jeans and slowly inch my toes into the clear Alpine water. It doesn't look like it should be that cold, but I'm pretty sure I never encountered it being above 40-50°. I could only take a minute, maybe two if I didn't care about my feet or toes.
I don't recall the year, but I had to be 14 or 15 years old because I recall my cousin Jill and I were starting to be boy crazy and didn't want to go that summer. We would rather stay in town, hang with our friends and meet boys. That wasn't in our future for the next two weeks tho and if designed by God himself, it turned out to be the most beautiful and memorable vacation I've ever had in my life. I have spent many years trying to recreate that same or similar experience and the feeling I came away with, to no avail. There have been close 2nds, but the adventure Jill and I embarked on after finding a canoe and paddles, is forever revered. We paddled those crystal waters for hours on end. We had stolen a 6 pack of beer and a pack of ci******es and lost ourselves in story. We shared feelings, ambitions for our future, the type of man we wanted to marry, all the while we're catching a fairly decent sunburn. We'd been circling the island for over an hour and we both noticed about the same time, it didn't seem to be in the same place as the last time we circled around. Sure enough, it's a floating island. The closer we got we noticed a labyrinth of roots below, just shy of tethered. It was kinda creepy, but it got our blood flowing and heart pounding as we both suggested at the same time, "let's check out the island". We made our way to it's banks, but an unforseen challenge was getting the canoe up onto the bank far enough so we could get out and not get wet. The island, nor the bank was stable. All attempts to run the canoe up the bank, would dip below water level as we approached the front to exit the canoe. After our 4th or 5th attempt, we said screw it we're going to get wet. And we did. We didn't expect the island to move so drastically under our weight. We had to spread about 10 ft apart to keep the bank from dipping into the frigid water. We were actually too scared to venture to the middle. The bushes and trees and ground cover was so thick, we didn't know what could be lurking and were not curious to discover in the least. We stayed to the bank and made our way around the island, to the place where we thought we left the canoe. We continued on a bit further, but doubled back to the landing when we realized the canoe was gone and nowhere in sight. We were scared and thought for sure this would be the end of us. Nobody knew we found a canoe and paddled out to a moving island and got stranded there. Would they think to look there? We determined, probably not. Our parents would be saying, "nobody would be that stupid and have that kind of bad luck" and then sealed with, "They wouldn't be out there". And with that, we both knew if we didn't want to die there, we better find something to use as paddles so we can navigate this island to shore. We both found fallen timber that we used, instead of paddles, worked more effectively to push off the bottom of the lake. And that was the gift from God that we were in fairly shallow waters to start. We got enough momentum to move at a snails pace to coast over the areas when we couldnt reach the bottom. Checking depth every so often, we made every effort to leverage the bottom below. Almost 2.5 hours to make it back to the point of beginning. We couldn't wait to get any closer so we frantically swam the last 20-30 feet, not unlike Roadrunner in the cartoon would run. We swam like that. And the rest history. I lived to tell the story, and sadly not everyone is so lucky to have a childhood with family vacations that are adventurous, mysterious and fantastic. These are my most cherished memories and I wouldn't trade those experiences for anything.
