Autumn Gold Rush

The Autumn gold rush has begun as the aspen trees begin to shed their green. Some groves have turned gold as shown in this photo from Ironton, CO, but there is still a green hue left in many areas.

Day After the Storm

After receiving about 8" of snow yesterday, the sun decided to burn through the fog and our precious mountains reappeared.

First Snow of the Season

The winter of 2005-2006 was moderate as far as snowfall, but the 2006-2007 winter season got an early start this year. On Friday the town of Ouray awoke to about 6 inches of fresh snow and an 8 hr. power outage. Fortunately, Exotic Earth Coffee Roasters was one of the only spots in town that remained open through the power outage (thanks to a stand-by generator), so I met all of the usual suspects there in the morning.

Hiking on Mt. Abrams

Ironton CO and US 550 as viewed from Mt. Abrams

Today I tried to summit Mt. Abrams (right) along with my brother and neighbor Gary. Abrams is the signature mountain of Ouray, framed by the Uncompaghre River valley. The trails proceeding up Abrams are not maintained. Unfortunately, we spent most of our day poking around at lower elevations attempting to find the trail up the west side of the mountain from Ironton. While we didn't reach the summit, we had a spectacular view of Ironton and the first hints of Autumn colors (above).

Introduction

"Purposeless Wandering" is an allusion to the concept of nondoing or wu-wei as expressed in the ancient Chinese wisdom literature, the Tao Te Ching. Just as non-doing does not mean doing nothing, so purposeless wandering does not mean going nowhere.


And so, this log is presented as a simple update on some of the wanderings in my life within the spectacular context of Ouray, Colorado. As you can see in the satellite view , this is some of the wildest and most undevelopped terrain in the U.S.