The Open Range

30 September 2008

Riding east from Vernal, to your left is Dinosaur National Monument, rising over stretches of irrigated pasture. The formation sweeps gently up from the west, in scrubby and rocky slope, and the arc follows back down to the east. In the middle is a bowl-shaped swath, as if cut by a giant jagged pendulum, that opens a view to the successive ridge. Further east, the ridge tapers off into Blue Mountain and across the Colorado border.

This time of year, at about 5 o'clock begins the sweet hour of riding. Not too cold like the morning, nor too hot like about 3 o'clock. Your body is warmed and rhythmic from a days worth of riding, and enthused at the coming prospect of rest. The light becomes deeper and more saturated, from golden to pink to purple as the evening wears on. I rode this euphoria, past a grassy ridge with dozens of red sandstone fins directly on the dorsal spine, like a gargantuan loch ness monster submerging in a juniper sea.

As Colorado deepens, the high desert opens up into waves of grassier range, lined by the occasional red sandstone cliff. This is the land sung about in cowboy songs and Woody Guthrie anthems. As I looked for a place to camp, for the first time I felt a loathing for barbed wire and private ownership of public domain. But, as Woody says, them private property signs don't say nuthin' on the backside, and I eventually found a place to bed down.

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