Loose Leaf Notes

What is Wilderness? An area untrammeled by man, where man himself is a visitor who does not remain. ~ Wilderness Act 1964, seen on a sign at Maroon Bells.
Driving up to Maroon Bells Recreation Park, past a sign for “Marmot Crossing,” past a man rollerblading with ski poles, I’m thinking: There’s only so much sightseeing you can do before your already filled-up senses become overloaded.
Aspen is so picture perfect that it almost has a “Stepford Wives” surreal feel to it. And the Maroon Bells – a series of maroon rocked mountain peaks just outside Aspen – is the Mabry Mill of Central Colorado.
Mabry Mill – an old water powered grist mill on the Blue Ridge Parkway in Virginia – is the most photographed tourist site in my part of the country. The Maroon Bells is as equally photographed. So much so that in the 1980s an advertising company used an image of it to illustrate the mountain beauty of Utah!
Hikers and hunters and a large group of school kids on a field trip filled the parking lot. As we headed down the path to the best view of the Bells, the first thing we saw was a Native American man in full Pow Wow dance regalia coming towards us. He didn’t make eye contact when he passed, and because we figured he was engaged in a spiritual ceremony, we didn’t invade his space by asking if we could take his picture – but we wanted to.
Further up the path, we came upon a woman breaking down her photography equipment. She was a freelance journalist for the Snowmass Sun working on an in-depth story, she told us. “We’re not letting anyone photograph the Native American man (1/2 Piute from Nevada and ½ Kiowa from Oklahoma), not even the school children, she said, before moving on.
“Hey, when someone asks me where I’m from, should I give them the short answer (Virginia) or the long answer (originally from Boston, Massachusetts)?” I asked my husband, Joe. In this case, I used the long answer. We had asked two guys passing by who happened to be from Beacon Hill in Boston to snap a picture of us. One of the guys and I argued a bit.
“Put down that notebook,” he insisted. “It ruins the composition of the picture.”
“No, No. I’m blogging this,” I answered. “The notebook fits, and the caption below will probably read: Look who has her notebook under the Maroon Bells,” I added.
After a while, we walked back towards parking lot along the Maroon Lake, which is so clear that Joe spotted a cutthroat trout swimming in it. Remembering the struggle I went through earlier that morning (see yesterday’s post), I realized that I was smiling and said to Joe, “I’m managing to have some fun, after all. I guess my appetite for beauty has come back!”