Tag Archives: durango

21 Years Ago Today

By lytspeed Posted in Geek, Science, Space Leave a reply

It was a cold Tuesday morning at Fort Lewis College in Durango, CO. I had attended an early morning honors class synthesizing history, economics and science, and was heading back across campus to hang out in the music lounge between classes. Elsewhere in the world, Space Shuttle Challenger had embarked on STS-51-L, notable because civilian teacher Christa McAuliffe was on board. Chicago was still celebrating Da Bears‘ Superbowl XX win the preceding Sunday.

As I walked by the campus library, I noticed that the flag was at half mast. Odd, I thought. Something big must have happened. At that time, I was also part of the news staff at the campus radio station, KDUR, so I changed direction and headed for the practicum studio.

When I walked into the studio, the Teletype machine (those machines that make the clunking sounds behind the music at the beginning of news shows) was ringing almost non stop and continuously spitting out lines of text in all capitals. In the days of the Teletype, five bells indicated either a bulletin or an urgent follow-up to a prior bulletin, and were very rare. Even more rare was a ten bell flash; these were reserved for cataclysmic events, such as the assassination of President Kennedy. I learned later that the Teletype at the radio station had received one ten-bell flash, and all the subsequent updates were five-bell follow-ups. I entered in the midst of the follow-ups.

Only one person was manning the station at the time, and he was frantic. I asked what was going on, and he said, “The space shuttle blew up.” I started grabbing slips of the Teletype paper and organizing them by time stamp so I could see the sequence of events and hand the most significant ones to the deejay.

After things calmed down a bit, I started thinking about what angle I would take on my news story about the disaster. The basic facts had already been covered repeatedly by all the news outlets, and I wanted to do something different with my story. Having been a fan of the space program for most of my life, I thought back to prior space disasters, and wondered if there were any similarities to the Challenger disaster.

I found no significant similarities in the causes of prior disasters, namely Apollo 1 and Apollo 13, but I did find that the Apollo 1 disaster took place on almost the same day as the Challenger disaster. Apollo 1 burned on the launch pad during a January 27, 1967 test, nineteen years (almost to the day) prior.

Little did I know at the time that the space program would be derailed for nearly three years after the Challenger disaster. I fully expected that they would be back in full swing within a few months, as NASA had been after Apollo 1. In the three years following Apollo 1, NASA launched numerous missions, culminating in the ultimate goal of landing on the moon in July of 1969. After Challenger, shuttles would be grounded until the launch of Discovery on September 29, 1988 and mission STS-26. (After Challenger, NASA returned to the original Space Transportation System numbering scheme that they had used until the 1983 Columbia STS-9 launch.)

All of the astronauts on STS-51-L knew the risks inherent in space flight, including Christa McAuliffe, and they chose to fly anyway. I think that was noble, and I choose to remember them as heroes and explorers who died in the course of expanding human knowledge.

Liking the New Blog

By lytspeed Posted in Prompts, Writing Leave a reply

So far, I’m really liking the new blog format. I’ve been able to customize it some to get rid of the stuff I didn’t really want, I’ve been able to add other things, and I’m considering playing around with the default skin to incorporate the blog into my regular site design. First, though, I should probably see if I can import all my old blog entries into this one. There’s not much future in continuing the exercise if I can’t do that.

I’ve also been working on websites for a couple of other people, and I’m pleased to say that I’m really happy with the way they are turning out.

I did just notice that my timestamp is an hour off. I must have specified the wrong time zone somewhere …

We’re supposed to get another half a foot or so of snow tomorrow. We just dug out of the one-two punch of what has become known as the “Holiday Storms of ’06.” I don’t mind the snow, personally. It’s nice to have it again, frankly. I grew up with lots of snow in Durango, and it brings a smile to my face to see piles of snow taller than I am in my front yard. This is Denver, though, and snow never hangs around here for long. By this time next week, I suspect that all of the snow from tomorrow’s storm will be gone, and much of the snow still on the ground from the Holiday Storms will be gone, as well.

As one of my resolutions from a few days ago, I pledged to write every day. Although I haven’t been writing in this blog every day, I have been keeping true to my self-assigned task. Just before New Year’s, I purchased a book at West Side’s Book Annex in Denver. The book is A Writer’s Book of Days, by Judy Reeves (1999, New World Library, Novato, CA.) It consists of many essays about writing and the lifestyle changes that come with a commitment to heed the muse, as well as writing prompts for each day of the year. I’ve been dutifully using the prompts for the first four days of the year, and I’m surprised to see what has come out. So far, I have an essay, a self-reflective journal entry, a prose poem, and a piece of humor written in the style of the old Zork text adventures. Where the hell did that come from?

At this point, none of the above are suitable for publication, and I probably won’t even develop most of what I write in these exercises. But it is nice to feel the juices flowing again; it’s been a while.

Well, I’m off to do my homework.

Brother Falls after 20 years

By lytspeed Posted in Family, Signs o' the Times, Writing 7 Replies

I mentioned yesterday that I had taken a business trip to Phoenix.  I drove, and on the way back I stopped in the town where I grew up, Durango, Colorado.  I’ll be going there again next month for my twenty year high school reunion.

One of the things I wanted to do while in Durango was visit my favorite spot on Earth, a pair of waterfalls in La Plata Canyon.  I don’t know if these falls have a real name, but I refer to them as Brother Falls.  (If they do have a real name, I don’t want to know it.)  They are located up on the mountainside, away from the road, and that’s about as detailed as I want to get.  Perhaps I’m selfish, but this spot is sacred enough to me that I don’t want to give away its specific location.  There are other, more spectacular views in the San Juan mountains; let people visit those.  But I claim this spot as my own, however deluded that may be.

That said, I would like to recreate an event that happened twenty years ago, and take you with me on that little journey.  The photos below are from a month ago, but not much has changed except that the spring runoff was heavier then than it was this year.

(Please allow all photos to load completely.  All photos © Stace Johnson, 2003)

Heading up the deer trail.  It’s steeper than it looks!

Twenty years ago, just before I graduated high school, my brother and I found a couple of waterfalls while hiking on a family picnic.  He was twenty-seven and I was seventeen.  He had driven up from Phoenix to attend my graduation, and I was fortunate to have the time to spend with him.  We hiked the steep deer trails up the mountainside and, through the trees, saw a small waterfall.

If you look carefully, you can see the lower waterfall in the distance,
between the aspen trunks.

We continued up the deer trail, hoping it would curve back toward the falls.  It did, and crossed over the tailings of an abandoned mine.  My brother, being older and somewhat wiser than me, convinced me that we shouldn’t get too close to the mine, so we moved on.  Unfortunately, the deer trail switched back again, and didn’t seem to be heading the direction we wanted to go.


Two shots of the abandoned mine.  The flash washed out some of the detail in the second photo,
and probably angered some woodland creature inside the mine.

We left the trail and started working our way across to the falls, only to find that there was another, larger waterfall above the first.  We rested on a large rock at the top of the lower falls, watching the water flow beneath us.  A snow bank hung in the shadows, under the trees across from us.  Water disappeared under one side of the bank and emerged from the other, then cascaded over the lip of the lower falls.

The upper waterfall of Brother Falls.

The rock shelf between the falls.
Shot is looking up the mountain from the top of the lower falls.

The runoff was strong that year, and my brother and I just sat, not talking, enjoying the sound of the falls crashing above and below us, smelling the mix of evergreens and water.  I don’t remember ever feeling more centered than at that moment.

The lower falls.

After a while, we squeezed ourselves through the brush to the base of the upper waterfall.  It roared at us, challenging us to climb the slippery cliff next to it.  We took the challenge and climbed up the cliff face, occasionally putting a hand or foot into the water to get enough purchase to move upward.  (I didn’t say we were wise, just that he was somewhat wiser than me.)

Looking up from the base of the upper falls, just prior to climbing the small cliff
to the right.  The first time I did this, there was a LOT more water.

Looking down from the top of the upper falls.

We did make it to the top, and were rewarded with a beautiful, misty vista.  The canyon glowed with sunlight reflected from the aspen leaves.

La Plata Canyon as viewed from atop Brother Falls.

We rested there again until we heard our father’s voice calling from the aspens, wondering if we were okay.  We cut across the cliff top until we found a way down, and were soon following the switchbacks of the deer trail past the old mine again.  We met our father, out of breath and a bit worried, on the trail and told him about the waterfalls while he rested.  Then we all hiked back to the road at the bottom of the canyon, thinking the trail wasn’t nearly as steep as it had seemed going up.  I felt as if I had been in the presence of a deity for those couple of hours.

The La Plata River, looking up La Plata Canyon.

Thirteen years later, my brother passed away due to complications of lymphoma.  He ran a high risk of contracting lymphoma because he also had Sjögren’s Syndrome, an autoimmune disorder with symptoms similar to both lupus and rheumatoid arthritis.  Before he died, we discussed how he wanted his affairs to be handled.  He was adamant that he wanted to be cremated, and that he wanted his ashes spread in the mountains.  I could think of no better place to put his spirit to rest than Brother Falls in La Plata Canyon.

Now you know why I consider this spot to be sacred, and why I don’t want to know the actual name of these falls.  I always considered the spot to be powerful and replenishing, and I consider it even more sacred now that my brother’s spirit resides there.

A small riverside meadow in La Plata Canyon.

Rules of Climbing

By lytspeed Posted in Computers, Writing Leave a reply

It’s been a busy week. The only really productive things I did included helping Kim hang a shell decoration from the ceiling in the stairwell and reformat a computer’s hard drive for a friend.

Hanging the shell decoration was bad enough. The ceiling in my stairwell is about 40 feet high — or at least that’s how it seemed while I was on the upper steps of the swaying aluminum ladder. I felt like the main character in my story “Sphere of Falling,” but without the magical protection that he had.

My fear of heights goes back half my life, to an afternoon of top-rope climbing on X Rock, north of Durango, Colorado. On the upper portion of the rock face, there’s a section with no hand or foot holds other than a large crack. This crack works great for hand jambs, but you have to have confidence in the hold and in yourself for the hold to work. My right hand was recovering from a nasty break, so I didn’t have the confidence that I needed. (Lesson Number I: Don’t climb with a bad hand.)

My hand slipped out of the hold as I was reaching further up the joint with my left hand, and I fell backwards. Normally, this would not have been a big deal because I was climbing roped. Unfortunately, the guy belaying me was paying more attention to his rolling papers than my rope, so I dropped about fifteen feet before he caught me. (Lesson Number II: Don’t climb with stoners.)

Occasionally, when I get high up on a rock face or ladder, that memory kicks in and my legs turn to rubber. Such was the case today on the ladder. Fortunately, my taller, lighter son was able to help me out and finish the job while I held the ladder. Thanks, kiddo.

At least I got the computer working without any problems.