I think of Odysseus and Penelope, it is not the warrior-traveler who commands my respect and admiration. His heroism was often the result of circumstance and even more often the result of foolhardiness and bravado. He shows little evidence of profound knowledge or wisdom. Are we to believe that Penelope really did nothing for twenty years but weave or that she learned nothing while waiting for the return of the conquering hero? I think it more likely that her time was filled with an exploration of a vastly more significant place—her home—and that her thoughts, not occupied by repeated immediate threats to life and limb, were occupied with far richer responses than fleeing or fighting. Her journey, as yet unrecorded, was probably at least equal to that of her better-known husband, and the lessons we might learn from her odyssey are perhaps more significant.
“Lime Creek odyssey” might appear to be something of an oxymoron. Like British cuisine and military intelligence, a Lime Creek odyssey seems to make little sense. The physical setting is too small. Within the perspective of an earlier time, however, the title makes a good deal of sense. An odyssey need not involve a long journey, simply a profound one. A place need not be exotic in order to serve as a springboard for discovery. In fact, I wonder if long journeys serve us as well as explorations of our own homes. Perhaps it is best to explore the meaning of place at our doorstep.
Lime Creek is both a place and an emblem. For me it is a distillation of the character of a region I know as home and within which I live. It is neither far away, nor separate from me. We live here, together.
The creek is not particularly long or broad. Its main stem travels roughly twelve miles from its headwaters (a few miles southwest of Silverton, deep in the heart of the San Juan Mountains of southwestern Colorado) to its terminus at the confluence with Cascade Creek. Its width ranges from a few feet at its beginnings to the twenty-five-foot or so width of its widest shallow riffles. Yet of all the streams I have sat beside, walked along, or waded through, I find it the most powerful in experience and memory.
It begins in the glacial cirques of high peaks and never leaves the mountains, but the terrain and climatic zones it travels through are quite varied. It can be a calm meander through a lush mountain meadow or a tumultuous roaring torrent through a narrow, rock-walled gorge. Its banks can be stark with the limited but beautiful life of the tundra, or they can be verdant with the complexity of a mountain forest nourished by rich moist soil. In short, Lime Creek is everything a mountain stream should be.
In the San Juans there are more remote streams that are just as varied and beautiful. There are less accessible streams that lend credence to the illusion that a personally discovered stream belongs to you and you alone. A highway follows the course of the Lime Creek valley and a dirt road meanders beside the stream where the deep gorges give way to gentler terrain. In an area so dominated by wilderness, it must seem strange that this relatively accessible creek should become an emblem of place.
The history of man in the San Juans is long and complex. Utes hunted here and lived among the peaks long before Europeans arrived. The Spanish came from the south and other Europeans came from the east during the period of preliminary exploration that ended rather abruptly with the Civil War. After the war, prospectors and miners, road builders and railroaders came to extract the gold and silver found in the rocky veins of the heavily mineralized mountains. They carried it away on the backs of mules, in horse-drawn wagons, and railroad gondola cars. As towns were established, civilization soon followed.
To ignore the presence of man here would be naive, but there is wilderness here too—land that shows little evidence that man exists. The San Juans, like many other wild places, straddle the border between wilderness and human habitation. Lime Creek, wild yet well explored, is a manifestation of this truth. It is not my private stream, no matter how compelling the illusion may be. The creek helps me to remember that even apparently undiscovered, remote streams do not become mine alone upon discovery.
Beyond Lime Creek’s varied terrain and habitat, beyond its existence as a wild yet known place, Lime Creek embraces all that the San Juans are for me because it is a place where I have spent a great deal of time. I have waded the streambed, walked the woods, and climbed many of the peaks surrounding the valley. From here the creek leaves the mountains to join the ever-increasing flows that eventually become the Pacific Ocean. Here in the San Juans, however, it is a headwater, a source—a good place for the discovery of one’s own roots and meaning.
It seems appropriate for me to wander this little valley while others, more heroic, journey to Nepal, the Arctic, the tropical rain forest. This personal odyssey of place, this exploration of a mountain stream, is also a journey in the discovery of self, and a search for an appropriate definition of man’s place in the broader reality of nature. I stay at home, like Penelope, believing that one’s home is the proper place for such an odyssey.
OF MEATBALLS, SWISS CHEESE, AND SPONGES
1
Much of the time I spent with Lime Creek, especially when I first explored the drainage, was in the high ground above the valley floor. My early memories of the area are dominated by mountains. Two peaks, in particular, stand out, one because I have been on its summit so often, and the other, though I have climbed it only once, because that experience was quite special. The two mountains sit facing each other across the Lime Creek canyon, their flanks defining a gorge that has come to be one of my favorites in the Lime Creek drainage. The peak climbed often is Engineer Mountain. The peak climbed only once is North Twilight Peak. Together these two peaks frame Lime Creek through the middle of her course; they frame the course of my experience of the creek as well.
Engineer Mountain sits alone, unlike most others in the San Juans. Not part of a larger group of mountains, its ridges don’t lead directly to other peaks. Its sphinxlike posture comes from this isolation and from its distinctive shape, which is unmistakable and easily identified. The mountain is long and narrow with a high, massive cone-shaped summit that is connected by a long spinelike ridge to a second, lower summit. From either of these summits or the ridge connecting them, the mountain falls away to the valley floor. Engineer sits between the summits of the West Needles (the mountain massif that includes North Twilight Peak) and the high mountain group that lies between the towns of Silverton and Rico. From the top of this relatively isolated peak, you can look out on a stunning panorama, including a broad green-floored and red sandstone-walled glacial valley that extends southward toward Durango. Most locals contemplate a trip to the summit, and many make the climb. Many times I have climbed this mountain with neighbors, with friends and with first-time visitors to the San Juan Mountains who want a look at the lay of the land.
A climb up Engineer is not particularly difficult in relation to the scale of difficulty used by experienced climbers, but it is quite difficult when viewed in terms of the scale of difficulty used by hikers. When approached by the usual, most beautiful route on the northeast ridge, it is a very difficult, exposed hike. A trip to the summit often involves a mixture of sloping meadows, deep woods, loose rock, rock chimneys, and steep snow; yet, if attempted in the company of someone who knows the route, it is a climb that a hiker without any climbing experience but with a little courage and pluck can make. As a result, strange collections of people often group together to work their way up the ridge to the summit. Experienced climbers, who often seek more difficult ascents, will accompany hikers who have never been on a mountain before. All go for the same reason: the beauty of the mountain and the anticipated beauty of the climb.
I have had the good fortune to find time to go up Engineer nearly every year since the San Juans became my home just over a decade ago. Some years I have made the trip several times. Most often I have spent the day on the mountain in the company of nonclimbers, and my most memorable experiences there are filled with the wide eyes and wider smiles of these companions. The mountain always fills me with wonder and profound pleasure; my companions often do too.
Several years ago I made the trip with two friends and a new acquaintance. We were an odd assortment. Two of us lived in the mountains; the other two were then living in the flatlands. We were a writer and a photographer, a therapist and a musician. Two of us had been up the mountain many times, often together;