That same summer, my parents graciously gave me some money to attend the Aspen Writers’ Conference, for which I also received some scholarship money. So in August, I packed up my bike and left Jessie in the care of Richard and the other lodgelings, as the employees were called, and drove over to Aspen, which was an absolutely spectacular drive. I had signed up for a famous writer’s fiction workshop and while I was picking up my registration materials, I fell into conversation with an interesting woman with a British accent. Juliet was in the same workshop as I was and soon we were joined by another very cool woman, Caryn, who was also in the workshop.

 

You know how sometimes you meet someone and on first meeting, you feel an instant rapport? Caryn, Juliet, and I had that happy experience and it wasn’t long before we became fast friends. I loved their work in workshop, which was a very good one, even though the famous writer ended up not liking the work I brought, which is never very fun. Oddly—though I was completely unaware of this until the day the conflict exploded—two factions developed during the workshop. I had friends on both sides, so when it came out into the open, I was taken completely by surprise. And of course, once it came to light, I ended up on one of the sides, the one that included Caryn and Juliet. (Attempting not to take sides in an intense conflict, in my opinion, is usually, unfortunately, unrealistic; the statement “I don’t want to take sides” is usually said to the person whose side an individual doesn’t want to take.)

 

It made the rest of the conference a little weird, although I was glad that I was able to eventually work something out with a really nice woman who ended up on the other side. And the bizarre thing is, I can’t even remember what the conflict was about! But writers are often very sensitive. And opinionated as well. In fact, the more writers’ conferences I attended, the more impressed I became with editors’, agents’ and publishers’ ability to work with writers. We’re not always easy.

 

 

 

 

Before we knew it, the season was over. We had managed to save up enough money during the summer by being careful—didn’t hurt that I spent most of my free time in the wilderness—that we were able to pay back our loan and even save up some money. Before leaving the area, though, we went on a camping trip in southern Utah, in Canyonlands with Ted, Elizabeth, Ted’s brother Reed, and some other lodge employees. Ted and Elizabeth had a special place that they liked to backpack to and camp, which was located amongst some amazing mushroom-shaped sandstone formations.

 

For anyone who hasn’t been to Canyonlands, if you like that colorful, sci fi terrain at all, you absolutely need to go there before you die. You absolutely must! It is one of the most spectacular, haunting landscapes on the planet. The area is composed of towering sandstone formations striped in cake-like layers of white and vermilion, which are then carved into fantastic shapes by the desert winds. Reed was like having a puppy along; while the rest of us were hiking along one layer of sandstone, he would be scrambling down to the bottom of the formation and then charging up to the top. Reed wore a cowboy hat that had a rattlesnake skin for a band, the head mounted on the front with the snake’s mouth open and fangs bared. Whenever Reed spotted a porcupine waddling along a trail, he would swat it with his hat so that it now bristled with porcupine quills. He was reputed to be able to catch fish in mountain streams with his bare hands. It was Reed who called us all up to the top of a sandstone ridge where the wind had carved a perfect circular concavity into the rock, eight feet or so in diameter, about four feet deep, its sides etched into a frozen whorl, the bottom lined with clean, sparkling sand. And, because we happened upon a rare monsoon in our timing for our trip, six inches of clear rainwater made the sand all the more beautiful. In fact, rain was cascading in sheets and waterfalls off the sandstone cliffs around us.

 

Also, Elizabeth and Ted had discovered some Anasazi ruins one time while they were backpacking in this part of the park, so we hiked to them and explored ancient rooms and granaries (where some tiny corn cobs, sandals, and pottery remained). Actually, it was more than a hike. It involved shimmying along a narrow crack between two giant rock formations, then up a chimney. Once we got through the chimney, we had to do some fairly spine-tingling free-climbing to get to the ruins. How they ever discovered it is beyond me. Ted said that Elizabeth got a bee in her bonnet one day and unerringly pursued this unlikely route. He liked to say that it was the shaman in her, which she claimed was completely ridiculous.

 

At any rate, the time we spent in this place was an utterly enchanting experience.

 

On the other hand, there were some not-so-pleasant aspects: Mainly, it was wet, cold, and windy because of the monsoon. When we would take refuge from the rain underneath a sandstone overhang in order to eat a meal, the wind would come blasting through, filling our mouths with fine, gritty sand and stinging our eyes. My sleeping bag wasn’t quite beefy enough to keep me warm during the night, so I was cold while I slept and woke up cold, too. I didn’t really have enough clothing that would keep me warm when it got wet, either. There was no place to dry anything out, since it was rainy the entire time we were camping. Little by little, my core body temperature was dropping each day.

 

Just when I thought I might actually succumb to hypothermia, and I was having visions of the rest of the company dragging my blue corpse out on a makeshift travois, we decided to leave a day early. The rain wasn’t letting up, which made it hard to hike. But despite the physical discomfort, it truly was a magical place to spend a few days, and I’ll always be glad I went.

 

It is true, however, that because we camped out for seven months while building our house, my enthusiasm for backpacking never really rebounded after that. So we haven’t been back. Except to ride our mountain bikes on the infamous Slickrock Trail several years later.

 

But that’s another story.