Summer Road Trip 2020 Part 2: Breckenridge to Mesa Verde
I stood alone in the desert quiet at dusk staring at the awesome vast chasm in front of me, the confluence of the Green River and what was once known as the Grand River, now called the Colorado River. Deep feelings welled as I stared at one of the most dramatic viewpoints on earth. Approximately 130 years ago, Major John Wesley Powell led a dangerous expedition, barely supported by the national government, down the Colorado River, and passed the point I now stared at far below me. The Colorado River was dammed at Hoover Dam in the 1930’s and then later in 1956, very controversially, at Glen Canyon dam, and those reservoirs laid the foundation for the rapid modern growth of California, Arizona, Nevada, Utah, and Colorado.
The area I stood at was protected as Canyonlands national park in 1964 by Lyndon Baines Johnson at the urging of his Secretary of the Interior, Stewart Udall, a great Utahan. Johnson accomplished this a matter of days after signing into law the Wilderness Act. Our country right now stands a long way from such far-sighted federal protection of natural capital. In the years since, relatively few new national parks have been established; the current political powers have strenuously attempted to parochially roll back protections in favor of dying industries; and many Americans lack sufficient open land upon which to recreate and refresh their spirits. The current pandemic brings that realization home. Thankfully, local, state, and even personal conservation efforts have helped pick up the slack for the federal government.
Before Utah, we had spent several days at our family’s mountain home in Breckenridge, Colorado. My parents began coming there several decades ago, and we are always blessed to enjoy its clean mountain living. Clean living in Breck wasn’t always so. From 1859 (the Pike’s Peak Gold Rush) to around 1910, the native Ute tribe was forced from its home on the Blue River and replaced with placer and dredge miners hungrily seeking gold. 31,000 kg of gold was removed from the area and the resulting rubble piles still line the Blue River and its surrounding gulches. After decades spent as an almost abandoned mining and saloon town, Breck was reborn when the ski business arrived in the 1960’s. The town has done a marvelous job reinventing itself as one of the nation’s premier ski resorts, and its Main Street of restored Victorian buildings is complemented by a re-landscaped Blue River flowing through the heart of the town. When we were there, the cool mountain weather was enjoyed by people strolling, biking, hiking, and boating while attempting to comply with the Colorado state COVID mandate to don masks. Breckenridge serves as a fine example of what can happen when people wake up, stop destroying natural capital, and set to work to deploy financial capital to construct a shared future for the community.
From Breckenridge we headed due west on I-70, along the upper Colorado River, and into Utah to the town of Moab. We immediately recognized that going from 70 degree days in the mountains to 100 degree days in the desert would be challenging. Leaving I-70 for a backroad into Moab, we were stunned at the beauty of the Colorado River cutting through red sandstone mesas, creating myriad forms of pillars and buttes along the recreation area administered by the Bureau of Land Management. The BLM, part of the Department of Interior, was established to manage federal land (taken, of course, from natives) that settlers passed over as they homesteaded westward. Much of this land was rugged and non-farmable, but it also lay in some of the continent’s most beautiful and fragile ecological areas. Moab is surrounded by such lands, and the BLM has a major presence in the area.
We were dazzled by our visits to Arches National Park, Canyonlands, and Dead Horse State Park, and we thrilled at trips in inflatable kayaks, rides on mountain bikes, and our four night campsite beside the river. Nevertheless, the heat took a toll, and everyone agreed that we would change our plan and skip the Grand Canyon in favor of heading back to the mountains of Colorado to see next the ancient ruins of the Puebloan cliff dwelling civilization at Mesa Verde. And while the pandemic prevented us from entering the structures, seeing them in person was dramatic enough. Humans have occupied these lands for millennia, and it is good to be reminded that the pursuits that we all have - to live, eat, sleep, clean, enjoy, work, grow, raise children, care for others - are shared with human ancestors who did these things for centuries at Mesa Verde. Their descendants - the Hopi, Navajo, Pueblo - now populate vast areas of the desert Southwest, our fellow Americans whose ties to the continent trace much farther back than our own.
As a family, we have gotten much better at traveling by camper. While many hold romantic notions of this travel, it isn’t at all easy to unload and load the “wagon”, as homesteading settlers also had to do, at each stop. But we have pulled together and everyone does their various jobs without too much complaint. For our children, this experience of putting aside one’s ego and working as a team should be helpful throughout their lives. At least, I hope it will.
In closing this chapter of our trip, I note that our nation is blessed to have helpful people everywhere. National Park rangers and service personnel, gas station attendants, grocers and store personnel, waiters, vehicle mechanics, park attendants, janitors, and many more have all positively impacted us on our journey. In the same way that humans helped Lewis & Clark, the Powell expedition, and so many others along the way who crossed an extraordinarily rugged landscape to discover, to survive, and ultimately to live, so too we are helped. We head to our next destinations - Telluride, Santa Fe, West Texas, and then home, full of gratitude for all of the assistance and kindness we have received along the way.
In 2020, during a time of pandemic and protest, I can personally attest that the helping American spirit and heart still beats strong.
Leonard Golub, CFA
Fiduciary Financial Advisor