TWO HAPPY CAMPERS

Coffee Pot Road, White River National Forest, Colorado //

My alarm sounds at 6 a.m.  I’m not a morning person and would much rather stay in bed, but I don’t dare complain.  One, because the early call to rise is for a great reason, and two, because I can count on one hand how many times I’ve had to wake up to an alarm in the last year.

It takes us about an hour to finish packing up the truck; an endeavor we devoted all of yesterday to.  As we’re wrapping up and I’m feeling the packing fatigue set in, I count in my head how many times we’ve moved out of our travel trailer and into our truck camper in the last three months.  Five times.  This year, thanks to the itch to mix things up and try something different, we decided not to tow our travel trailer around with us and instead leave it on our property.  We come and go every few weeks, which has left me feeling as though we’re never really settled wherever we are.  

Once we feel confident we have everything we need for our month of travel around Colorado, we wave goodbye to our property and point the truck towards Glenwood Springs.  An hour later, we pull into a small dirt parking lot alongside a long, narrow field on the edge of the Roaring Fork River.  We’re fifteen minutes early for our appointment, but as soon as we point our heads towards the sky, we can see our ride is on the way down to get us.  One after the other, a handful of paragliders take flight from the top of Red Mountain and begin their graceful descent to the valley floor.  

Mark, a lover of just about any type of flight, has wanted to try out paragliding for years.  While his pilot resume has always been in aircraft with motors, he’s long been drawn to the idea of wind-powered sports.  Last week, when he said he was going to book a tandem flight with Adventure Paragliding in Glenwood, I asked him to sign me up too.  And so here we were, about to be driven to the top of a mountain where we would willingly run off the edge and trust a nylon wing to return us safely to the ground.

At the top of the mountain, we were each paired with a pilot.  Preparing for flight was a simple task.  It was obvious these guys are well-seasoned from the three flights per day that they do practically year-round.  Taking off was exactly as they described.  After counting down from three, I began a fast-paced walk forward towards the edge of the cliff. The wing took flight and pulled us backwards momentarily, and then it was time to run.  Only a few hurried paces forward, and our feet were off the ground.  Soon after, the rising hot air from a thermal propelled us skyward a couple of hundred feet, and then our gentle descent began.  As we soared alongside the ridgeline, the tree tops rushed by beneath our feet.  I felt the vulnerability of being a wingless biped when I thought about what might happen if we got too close to the trees while simultaneously experiencing the indescribable freedom of being a bird.  

The flight only lasted 15 minutes, and before we knew it, we were back on the ground and headed out to find lunch.  I had expected both Mark and myself to be on a high the rest of the day.  Instead, we sat across from each other at a table while waiting for our food and agreed that it was a super cool experience but wasn’t as invigorating as we’d expected.  Mutual exasperation hung heavy in the air between us.

After lunch, we set out to find camp with one goal in mind: get up in elevation and out of the sweltering heat.  Coffee Pot Road in White River National Forest took us from 6400’ at the valley floor to 9800’ where we found a nice little campsite surrounded by pines and aspens.  Instead of being stoked on this morning’s adventure (as I had expected we would be), we sat in our chairs and tried to further dissect this summer’s ongoing dilemma.  You might call it a mid-life crisis or perhaps it’s depression; we have no idea, but for whatever reason, we’ve lost our stoke.  We are well aware that we live an incredible life.  We are fortunate beyond measure and wildly privileged.  But for some reason, there’s a void in our life that has us feeling lost, rudderless, and confused.  After over five years of living on the road full-time, we’ve found ourselves all-consumed by the inevitable question: “What’s next?”

And so for the next few hours, we sit in our chairs and ponder ideas.  Some ideas feel crazy, some feel way too domestic, and others fall somewhere in the middle.  What idea actually sticks is anybody’s guess.  For now, all we can do is keep the conversation going, keep the ideas flowing, and trust that somewhere out there is something uniquely us.  Hopefully, there, in that idea, will be the flame that reignites our stoke.