Learning Curve
Photo by Steve Wood © Genesis+Art
Wahatoya Trail
La Veta, Colorado
Trail blazing has an obvious impact on a mountainside. The intrepid pioneer clears a way through wild, ungoverned brush and timber to get from point A to point B, even if initially the blazer is not entirely certain about the ultimate destination. If that destination is reached and becomes news, others follow. Based on the incidence of hikers, a pathway emerges, clear and durable. The trail itself asks of those who traverse it only a bit of maintenance now and then.
Such is true of Wahatoya Trail, which begins at about 9,700 ft elevation on the north slope of south-central Colorado’s West Spanish Peak. The narrow path winds around to the east and south, crossing the “saddle” that extends from the West Peak at 13,600 ft to the East Peak at 12,600 ft. Thus, Trail #1304 follows ridges and ravines around the massive western mountain, with idyllic, needle-strewn stretches, as well as rather more steep climbs here and there. It crosses rambunctious tumbles of boulders and erratic beams of fallen tree trunks hurtled down the mountain by water and rock caught in the momentum of snowmelt and natural springs originating thousands of feet above.
There are less dramatic slides of talus, rimmed on each side by groves of slender, limber, still living aspens that lay over, forming triangles with the dark incline. These trunks have been forced into an unnatural pose by the weight of an abundant snowfall; striving then to stand upright again as warmer seasons allow. Nature itself weighs on the aspens in the struggle for life.
We’re accustomed to paths revealed through forest. But across these hard relentless talus fields, a path is clearly visible in the otherwise jumbled, random scatter of rock. It’s been trodden into the rubble by an uncountable number of footsteps. The sinuous smoothing effect has been shaped not strictly by purpose, but by mere consequence; the sheer repetition of one boot after another, marching ahead with intention, but entirely unintentional in regard to its reshaping of the earth’s surface.
Over the passage of time, an unnatural passage has been worn into the coarse instability of the mountain slide and comes to serve as a guide to the next walker. It seems impossible that mere footsteps could carve such a route into the weighty stones. But with repetition, human treads train the talus into a welcoming curve that fits both the contour of the mountainside and the aim of the hiker. The innocent curve in the landscape invites more human traffic. Even if our intention is to “leave no trace,” we always do.
However casually we present ourselves, we do exact an inexorable cost of the mountain. Yet, if we are awake, alert, we might in some small way repay that cost, rewarding the mountain with an awareness that accompanies our trek through the wild. We might learn to ponder the intricate, interwoven threads of the natural world and our role and place in it. We might learn that the mountain yields to us this topological convenience, in return for respect and restraint on our part.
We might even learn that along other paths, literal and analogous, across other parts of the world, where our discordant imprint on the earth is entirely intentional, the consequences of our presence are also entirely ours to amend, even if only one step at a time.
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