The Incredible Lightness of Being

Alexandera Houchin woke up beneath a tree at four o’clock in the morning. She was a few miles from the summit of Rolling Pass, a howling 12,484-foot gap in southwest Colorado’s San Juan Mountains. The sky was dark, the stars obscured by clouds. The trail next to her wasn’t a trail as much as a waterfall, slippery streams of rainwater pouring over roots and rocks, cascading between mountains streaked red with iron and white with lingering snow. She’d only slept for three hours, curled under a tarp in a puffy coat and rain jacket, but she couldn’t rest any longer.

She got up and started biking.

Usually, Houchin liked the metronomic pace of riding uphill, because climbing inevitably led to descending. She would climb all the way to the moon if she could. But as she crested Rolling Pass and the sky lightened to reveal a sweep of wildflower-speckled meadows and luminescent lakes, the reward of swooping down alpine singletrack