Steamboat Springs, CO

Yampa River Core Trail

Run Time: 64:10 + 2-minute kick

It took me a few minutes to find the trail. There is a lot of construction going on in this ski town. I thought I could cut across through a private road and a Trail Closed sign to the south end of the trail, then follow it from there, but a crew with heavy equipment was doing some digging. I doubled back past the hotel and through a condo complex to find the west leg of the trail, and it was all fine from there.

6770 feet in elevation. My last run of the 2-week road trip. I was cutting across from Vernal, the cultural Mecca of Eastern Utah, up and over the Rockies back to Denver to fly home the next day. You don’t actually get to go up and over the Rockies on I-70. There’s a long tunnel at the summit. And there is way too much traffic at 12,000 feet. Where the hell are all these people going on a late Friday morning? I did appreciate the sign warning of a downgrade the next 40 miles. That is a long downgrade.

The Yampa River Core Trail is paved — not my favorite. But for sections there was a side trail that had developed from the strayings of previous users, probably in winter when the cement is iced over. The solution to cement is to avoid it, and avoidance is usually just a side-step away.

The early fall foliage in Steamboat Springs was nice. The weather was warm. I better appreciate it now. Soon it will be frigid and I will be arguing with myself whether or not to face the weather or not. Also, I may not get back to Steamboat Springs. It is not on my normal route, and the chances that the one prospect in Vernal will start carrying our line is slim.

As I drove south to join the parade on I-70 the next morning, there were a couple of short traffic stops for road construction, and I was stopped behind a Subaru and an old Ford Ranger pickup. The driver in the Subaru was on the phone, taking the opportunity to engage in commerce or to medially socialize. There were two old guys in the Ranger, smoking, their windows open. I could not help but notice that these two old smokers were gazing out at the landscape, taking in the beauty of nature to a much greater extent than the Subarube.

It made me think of the many times I had noticed, back in the day when more people smoked, how much work smokers avoid by taking smoke breaks. We know that smoking is not wise, but there is some wisdom in using a bad habit to stop and smell the filtered roses. Not just taking in the amazing view of the Rocky Mountains on one side of the road and the prairie grasslands on the other, but to just stop and think about life and love and the losers who work nonstop with no breaks.

Maybe the few smokers left just stare at their phones nowadays, like everyone else. Those two geezers in the Ranger were likely anomalies. That Ranger was probably a stick-shift, and driving with your phone in view is bad enough with an automatic. They also had both windows down, a good tactic when you are smoking, but also they probably had no A/C. Windows down, arms resting on the door, elbows sticking out, cigarettes burning between index and middle fingers, pondering the great truths and meanings — Rangers in the true sense of the word. It made me nostalgic for the 1970s.

Have all those former smokers who have rehabilitated their lungs also sacrificed the brief moments of peace and reflection? Do they now just move from one indoor activity to the next? Is it not ironic that smoking is one of the few activities that now gets you outdoors not only every day, but multiple times a day?

Of course, we have gotten so unused to the presence of cigarette smoke that now we are hyperalert to any wayward molecules that pass our vicinity. What brought my attention to the Ranger was the faint odor of cigarette smoke that had entered the chamber of my rental car from sixty feet away, carried hither by the morning breeze. “Who the hell is smoking?” I said aloud indignantly, first suspecting the Subaru guy of hypocrisy before spotting Uncle Jesse and his twin brother. How many miles would it take to clear the chamber, and would I have to pass two cars on this two-lane desert highway to reachieve purity?

You get my subtle point, right? We could learn something from the smokers. Take breaks. Get outside. Gaze thoughtfully into the distance. Toss your butt on the ground and stub it out with your foot. Play it cool. Let the sanctimonious fools do all the work.