As long as we live in this area, I have no doubt we’ll continue to find yet more things to see, do, and immerse ourselves in overall.
I never take for granted that we can leave at any time and be somewhere strikingly gorgeous. And often have it to ourselves. Especially this time of the year. It is a time to enjoy stringing hikes together interspersed with hiking when the relatively well-known areas seem vacant.
We love the winters on the Colorado Plateau – cold, but bt not brutally so. And as much as I love snow-based outdoor activity, the hiking out here in winter means warmer clothes vs. different techniques as ski tours and overnight ones in particular. It is simply cold weather walking. With a low snowpack in the La Sals and the Abajos, it is not the time for ski touring in any case. (Which is disconcerting for the coming year; but that’s another story)
Instead, we enjoy our home area with both the invigorating cold and the surprisingly warm sunshine in the red rock alcoves.
And, as always, enjoying traveling the paths of where people went before.
We see towers not very far from our modern road.
And I don’t think their placements at the natural break in the canyon makes a coincidence.
Be it protection, a view scape, or communication with neighbors across the way; the towers go above the canyon. And often command a view to dwellings below.
We delight in connecting the landscape from these vantage points and seeing where we walked previously.
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And we see the influence of people traveling from further afield.
A bluff in the distance might reveal something unexpected on a winter’s day stroll.
And we’ll always continue to delight in what those places in the distance might reveal.
