Streams Running Clear

Just a bit ago, on the heels of a generous winter, I was stopped by a mountain stream deep in Colorado’s Maroon Bells-Snowmass Wilderness. The banks were ten feet apart, give or take, and ragged, as if the earth’s flesh were cut with dull scissors by an impatient three-year-old. The stream was well-mannered, humming and whistling and composed of crystal-clear water, filtered from alpine sediment three thousand vertical feet above it. Drinking-glass clear. As for its smell, perfumed by the roots of wildflowers: fairy trumpets and orange paintbrushes.

I was about six miles from my car, alone and trying to move fast and light, in running shoes, small water bottle, no extra clothes, and so on. With storm clouds rumbling and lightning flashing to the west—my direction of travel—I was vulnerable, naked in terms of actual gear. Which was the point. I was running an eighteen-mile loop that circled a single pine-studded mountain. Up until this point, my pace had been unimpeded, fast and flowy