The voyage of discovery

The voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes but in having new eyes.

Boy, it’s like I just typed the last journal two weeks ago... O wait, it was two weeks ago.
I’m still at the same computer, in the same house in the same town in the same state. But very soon that will all change, within a few days I’m heading out of Crested Butte, Colorado with my backpack. Hopefully my thumb will bring me to the Mexican border. I’ve heard too many bad stories about hitching in Mexico, so from the border it’s going to be busses and rides to the Copper Canyon and on to Puerto Vallarta where mi barco Ketevara will be waiting. I’m so looking forward to Ed’s and my sailing adventure to Panama. We’re going to leave on the 14th and are sailing for 6 weeks, down the Pacific Coast. We’ll just see how far we’ll get.

But first: the story about the last three weeks, the September Session.

To be where I wanted to be I had to get to Crested Butte; the time had passed by long enough. So I packed my things and started the journey south.

It was a trip of 2121 KM which takes 24 hours of straight driving.
I left Friday morning at 7am with a full moon high in the sky and arrived Sunday at 3pm.

It went fantastic, 20 cars and trucks drove me past gorgeous vistas and numerous towns. It was the biggest hitch I’ve ever done and it was the easiest one. I knew where I was going and just wanted to get there. It was interesting to meet all those different people and talk with them. Three rides were from big truck drivers. They were so sweet to me, one bought me dinner and another let me sleep in the bunk bed that first night.

The border crossing was hilarious. The guy was really mad at his colleagues at the other crossing. They had given me a three month green flyer while I already had done that twice: questioning me about my account balance and wondering about how many ‘friends’ I had. “So what do you want to become when you grow up?” was one of his questions. “Ehhh. I’m kind of grown up and I kind of do what I want to be.” Jealous as a pig with the realization that his job was maybe not the best one.

In Salt Lake City I had two cops concerned. But they were very nice and used common sense for my case. Although I was walking alongside the interstate, the first one let me walk to the lift spot and didn’t even check my ID. The next one just checked on me 'cause passerby’s had called the highway patrol. He wished me good luck and apologized several times for bothering me!!???

Saturday it became dark during the ride to Grand Junction. Perfect! During my previous travels thru here I had made fantastic friends and without a doubt the Schaefer Fam. opened the door when I called from the gas station. Bill, Mary, Alice and Billy were as warm as before and I’m so happy I got stopped here and had the chance to visit with them ones again. A wonderful family with lots of harmony.

CRESTED BUTTE
So yeah, this is where I’ve been for three weeks now, and it’s going to be hard to leave. This town is absolutely wondrously resplendent. There is so much to do, see, marvel about and dream away with. I had a most fantastic time this October session and one day I would love to visit in the different seasons. I’m not done yet here.

A lot of things happened while I was doing nothing, it was miraculous that every day went by without boredom and things just appeared and made me participate in all that was going on.

One morning Stew came by the house. He had been crossbow hunting with his buddy Rafael and Rafael had shot his first Elk. Now it was a task to get the 800 lbs Bull down to the freezer.
Chris was too busy with work, so with growing disappointment he saw us drive down the road, Ally in the back. Rafael had stayed with the elk to cut the carcass in pieces for easy transportation. It was a five mile hike in, over a small path, and we brought a cart which was strenuous to push up the hilly sides. But we got there.

I kind of was taking it as it came, so when I saw that entire elk and the copious amount of meat I started to think about: ‘How the f*ck are we going to get that down?’
It was a gorgeous autumn day, the aspen where brilliantly golden and for the first time in the week I was there we had some clouds that made the sky a masters painting. It also meant that it was getting colder and the wind had this icy touch to it.
Rafael had been cutting meat in this weather the whole day; his fingers had been everything, from frozen blue to pumping red. We warmed him with some Jim Beam and started working with him: sawing the paws from the hind and front quarters, packing everything in garbage bags and making it ready to carry down the hill to the cart.

The first load: four quarters, a bag with good meat, a bag with hamburger meat and two crossbows. The guys darted back to get the head and the hide.
We loaded everything on the cart and started the hike down, but in the first bent it was already a disaster. The cart was way to heavy and the guys couldn’t hold it, everything tumbled over. Rafael was done: ‘Were going to sleep at camp!’ was his done-with-the-day attitude. Stew was looking at me and tried to make it sound as if we could make it down. It was already getting low in sunlight and we had a five mile hike before us.
‘Guys, I don’t care sleeping at camp, I’ve slept in way worse weather.’
Half of the bounty was hung in a tree with afford and the rest was taken to camp.

Now, don’t think too much about this ‘camp’. It was just a tarp wrapped around two backpacks. This was one of the places where the guys had spend the night in the last week. For already six days they had slept in the woods, getting up early to honk their bull whistles and lay low to spot one.
Stew made our chamber: a tarp low above the ground, a gully to catch the rain and the tarp we had used to cut the elk as a floor cover. Rafael made a roster of green aspen branches and I gathered wood for a fire.
We ate like Kings, the freshest meat on the market in the purest air earth can offer. How alive can you feel while ripping death between your teeth.
Ally was a lucky dog too; she had eaten the heart and marrow from this offering.
The wind blew thousands of decayed leaves around us, wild bursts of ‘approaching-storm’ gusts kept us awake. I was comfortable though, two guys, two sleeping bags and a dog to spoon me... I was kept safe well.

The morning came with snowflakes that made the ground white and beautiful. It was hell to get going (all of a sudden our nest had a lot to offer), but I got us going with some Jim Beam and tart pops.
Halfway down the hill... we walked into Chris.
While the sun was setting he had packed a backpack with goodies and tried to be a helping friend. Not knowing exactly where we where he had started the hike with a torch but lost track of the cart trail. He had slept with a fire under a tree for a few hours.
With three guys the cart went easygoing and we were back in no time.
A dark, threatening sky was blanketing Red Lady.

There was still another load to get from the hill, but that could wait; for Rafael it was time to celebrate his prize with a soak in the hot tub and a carton of Bud. We happily joint him. Thanks Mr. Elk.

This same day Chris took me up to The Hut. Ally was carrying her own backpack with water and food. The last time I hiked with an overnight pack was in New Zealand, five years ago, and I’ve never done it with someone else. Imagination that’s unrestricted by reality sometimes does come true. Now it’s case to multiply it.

The season is most eyes catching. I have never enjoyed going for hikes this much. Almost every day I was out and about, sometimes just to take Ally for a poop and talk to the guys building the houses in the street, sometimes to get in the fields and pick a bunch of wildflowers, sometimes I would take off for several hours to explore different mountain tops with my buddy.
One fine day Ally and I walked to the top of Mt Crested Butte, wow what a vista, what a valley. Those rains of golden aspen leaves against the stark blue sky...

One glorious Monday morning Chris had to go to Aspen for business, a town on the other side of the mountains. He went there by Chesna.
O boy, o boy, two months ago I saw the Maroon Bells with a grey cloud cover and wished that one day I could see those two peaks with blue skies and golden aspen. Who would have thought it was all this AND from above! It had snowed a few inches the weekend before (maybe even a foot on the fourteeners) so it could not have been more spectacular. Breathtaking...

The 23rd was my mum’s birthday, 59. The fifth time I was celebrating her day of birth in yet another country and the first time I had people on my side crazy enough to sing ‘Lang zal ze leven in de Gloria’ for her after we called her awake at three in the morning.
It was hilarious.
The 26th it was Chris’ birthday, 35. A pleasant Mexican dinner in town with friends and a clean house was the result.

Another big happening was VINOTOK.
This celebration is about the Equinox: the equality between the whole, the cycles of life, the prosperous harvest, the balance we should have in our living with, from and on mother earth. It is a fest to get rid of all your Grumps and throw them in the fire.

For 21 years it has been part of Crested Butte and luckily they had it going in full glory again this year. There is a huge bonfire and people have been very stupid with the flames in the previous years. Getting totally retarded and thinking they are super humans: jumping over the fire, throwing computers in the melting pile, picking up sticks and swaying them around. It’s a huge liability for the town if anything goes wrong.

Friday night there was a pig roast. Around a heart warming fire, town people dressed in which-like clothing, ate good food from the land and told each other stories. I’ve never heard someone tell a story like that, like the people did long time ago to entertain each other in the cold long nights of winter.
Chris got me talking to Angie, the lady who organized Vinotok this year. She could use my help as a flag maiden: ‘Sure!’
Half an hour later: “Chris, what does a flag maiden do?’ “Ahh, don’t worry, your like it, it’s precisely what you want.’

The next day at nine am we were doing a rehearsal at the theatre. There was not much else to it than singing a song and holding a flag.
The rest of the day I helped decorating a flat top truck where the performance would be and wrapped myself in layers of materials found in the closets of the theatre: tablecloths, skirts, blouses, scarf’s and safety pins.

It was absolutely great.
The group: twelve maiden for every month and twelve torch carriers to protect each maiden, Mother Earth (a very pregnant lady), the Green Man (who would be kissing all the girls of town), five flag maiden, a dragon, a knight, a grump and two story tellers.
This cheerful, dressed up and ready-to-get-everyone-going bunch went about to steal the drinks of town.

We entered twelve different restaurants, singing our harvest song. A story would be told and we would sing another song about: ‘dinking your brew and maybe we make love to you’. We would dance and sway with our cups and people would give us splashes of whatever they were drinking... Twelve establishments... twelve and a bit more different drinks in one and a half hour... They say the altitude helps too...

Don’t ask me how it became night all of a sudden, or how the play went. Don’t ask me if the procession to the four corners went safe or how the Grump got burned.
I do know that dancing around a huge fire in skirts and scarf’s makes you feel footloose and blithesome. I was definably being of promoting cheer, having and showing good spirits.

Chris did a ton of fire juggling, there were so many people and the fire melted down with the people that wandered to other places.
Never again will I have the FOMO feeling in this way: you were there, but missed it all. Everything needs to be experienced; among good people you can do so.

The people of The Butte
I would never want to be a cat in Crested Butte. This town is without doubt overruled by dogs. Only two times it occurred that I met someone without being introduced to their dog. It’s kind of a pain in the ass, because you have to learn two names at ones.
I met bountiful wonderful people, many thru Chris. His house has an open door and everyone wander in and out during the day.
And we have the most fantastic downstairs neighbors, Brandon and Laura. They are awesome to borrow sugar from, or the pup Railey, to go for a walk. We’ve been cooking table dinners for each other and it’s always possible to walk in and just sit down or play a game. You guys are the shits.
Shawn, Susanna, Kellen, Lynn (you crazy losbol), Angela, Travis, Angie, the lady who let me pick out records at the radio station, the two guys I went raft-drifting with, Craig and Penelope, Stew, Rafael, all the people who gave me hitching rides to and from town and so many more. I can’t wait to have more adventures with you and your dogs.

Everything that Crested Butte stands for makes me feel at home. It’s a whole package that suits me more than anywhere else I’ve ever been or whoever else I’ve ever met.

But than again: If this is the best of all possible worlds, what are the others?

See ya on the road!
Love Mathu