In the 1954 movie Brigadoon the actors Gene Kelly and Van Johnson are on a hunting trip to Scotland when they come upon a village which appears out of the Scottish mist every 100 years. The villagers remain unchanged, undisturbed, not exposed to the Sturgis Motorcycle Rally, Ultimate Fighting, and heavy metal concerts. For My Life’s Editor, myself, and two friends, it took a forty-five-minute Uber trip from the Denver airport to come upon Brigadoon, known these days as the People’s Republic of Boulder, CO.
Like Brigadoon, Boulder is stuck in time. Citizens are peaceful, wait for the walk light at intersections, and recycle for the good of mother earth. Cars don’t speed. Skateboards don’t clack angrily down sidewalks. No highrises block the view of the Flatiron Mountains looking benignly down on the town. Folks waiting in line at Whole Foods say, “After you,” their arms laden with brownie mix and eight varieties of hummus. Like Brigadoon, Boulder may arise out of the mist, but it is the mist from 29 recreational cannabis dispensaries.
We were visiting Boulder to explore the concept of vertical. We know flat, Florida being a big sand bar protecting the rest of the United States from communist Cuba. Florida height is associated with condominiums, not geology. We looked forward to the vertical hiking experience, sucking in fresh Colorado air as we walked up a trail.
I did not grow up hiking. Army bases were not about hiking. On Saturday, at the parade ground, there was a lot of marching, no hiking. A day spent clumping along with a backpack and an M-1 rifle slung over your shoulder is not a hike. The idea of gathering the kids for a weekend tromp in the woods did not occur to my father. That would have interfered with his religious practice at the Cathedral of the Holy Links, with eighteen stations of angst. I did hoof it on occasion with my Boy Scout troop, but that mostly involved starting fires, throwing cow pies, and learning to play poker. Only in my later years did the notion of an arduous walk in the woods enter my mind.
It is important to travel with obliging folks, team-players, as were our friends. It would be a shame if, as you sat in front of your granola, spoon in hand, reverently gazing at the Flatirons, your breakfast companion grumped he did like strawberry preserves. Or, if you are an early-morning person, ready to share, your fellow traveler came to breakfast and retired behind a cell phone, looking at an Instagram post of a talking frog. Our friends, fellow St Petersburgians, were brought up right. Like us, they are members of the Silent Generation cohort. They eat everything on their plates, write thank-you notes when an email or a text won’t do justice, and greet the day with enthusiasm.
On the advice of our son the IT maven, our Boulder host, the first hike was on a Chautauqua Park trail. He advised us “You can’t get lost, and the trails are really pretty.” The first part of his statement crowds into alternate fact territory. The clue that things might not be so easy-peasy was when we gathered around the map board at the trailhead. A curvy hard track – Bluebell Road – ran upwards in the open for a distance, but took on a Medusa thing at the tree line, with trails squiggling out like a bowl of linguini: “Wood’s Quarry,” “Bluebell Trail,” “Enchanted Mesa Trail,” etc. We picked the Flatirons Loop, 2.9 miles, advertised as “an intermediate, doable local favorite.” We liked “doable.”
With a jaunty stride, we started up Bluebell Road. We admired wildflowers sprinkled like fairy dust. We admired magpies flapping off like black-and-white checkered race flags. Half an hour on, the Floridians began to pant, and we commenced to stop more frequently, groping for the water bottles in our back packs. Where the hell was that tree line? People passed us, howdying as they breezed on – young folks, grannies, kids in flip-flops. Every group had a dog. Like nose rings or tattoos, dogs are personal accessories in Boulder. No excursion is complete without a canine.
When we staggered up to the Flatiron Loop jumping-off point, we collapsed in the shade of a pine. No mutiny talk as yet. We squinted from the trail map image on our cell phones to the arrow-shaped signs nailed to a big post. We were clearly somewhere in the Grand Tetons. An athletic couple dressed in the latest REI gear came striding alongside. Appraising us, but preserving our dignity by not sneering, they suggested the shorter Bluebell Mesa trail was our speed. All we had to do was keep taking left turns at each fork. We thanked them profusely. If they were ever in St Pete, look us up, we said. Thereafter, following Yogi’s advice, when we came to a fork in the road, we took it. We made it back home and agreed we had done ourselves proud. We rubbed our feet and cracked open a bottle of Sauvignon Blanc. We sat back, sipped, looked at the Flatirons and said, “Baby, we own you.”
The Jenny Craig Weight Loss Center in Boulder went bust in 2023. This makes sense. No market for the product. The only chunksters are tourists; everyone runs, bikes or hikes. Even the dogs have a lean and hungry look. After seeing off our much-enjoyed hiking companions , My Life’s Editor and I drove to see a hardbody Mecca. The hardest bodies of all bike up to Gold Hill, the first permanent mining camp in Colorado (8300 feet, est. 1859, pop. 239). Gold Hill shambles along Main Street off Lick Skillet Road, the steepest county road in the US. We drove up the dusty dirt road past bikers as they pumped, calf muscles rippling, leaning over their handlebars into the slope.
At the Gold Hill General Store and Pub there was an assemblage of hard bodies at rest. They wore cool biking gear: tight padded pants, jerseys with Italian names, and aerodynamic road bike helmets with louvers. They clacked across the wooden floor to order soymilk lattes, talked about climbs they had made in Europe. The bartender had six gold ear piercings in one ear. She was from Michigan. John Prine was playing in the background. Two Aussie sheep dogs hung out under a bar stool.
Back in town, we ran into a demonstration on Pearl Street commemorating the Stonewall Uprising. They chanted, “Fight, fight, fight! Queer comfort is a right!”
Just another day in the Peoples Republic of Boulder, CO.
Marshall Craig 