Colorado Outings

by James W. Steele

And if one will have it so, that is all there is to do in this world of mountains—sit still and be carried amid heights and pines and clouds, in a new air and an upper world that, save in respect of this railroad, has nothing in it of human things.

Will the reader kindly glance at the map and note this spiderish network of railways? When was it that the American engineer first discovered that his art was precisely the opposite of what it had been imagined to be—traditional—and that it was meant to make a locomotive climb where no sane and humane man would think of pushing the reluctant donkey, and amid heights and vastnesses where even the eagle was once, too, solitary? Before anyone knew it, except the capitalists, the idea had been absorbed by these unique brains, and the work was done. The result is one of the most singular that can be added to ordinary human experiences. Most travelers take it all for granted; it is there, and it works, and that is all. Utterly unknown to fame, the men who did these things have finished them and have gone away, but to them, nevertheless, is due, not one little railway line led on tall steel trestles across a few difficult places, but the most remarkable railway system of the world.

Queer experiences—small ones—occur at frequent intervals in the course of this elevated and tortuous tour. As one passes by he may see a cleft between the tawny walls that seems to him as narrow as a door—a gateway into a mass of peaks that appear to lie jumbled and unbroken and inaccessible for an unknown distance. But here as he looks back he may see dimly shining in the half light the two steel rails of another road; a branch, perhaps, but nevertheless leading somewhere into the heart of this unknown world, and occupying all the space between the opening walls with their narrow-gauge utilities. And then one wants to return to that place sometime, and take that disappearing line, and be trundled into this new kingdom to see what he may find there.

Map of Marshall Pass.

GUNNISON CITY SARGENT MARSHALL PASS PONCHA SALIDA SARGENT TO SALT LAKE BUXTON CHESTER SHAWANO MARSHALL PASS GRAY’S TO DENVER PONCHA MEARS SHIRLEY TO VILLA GROVE PONCHA PASS

Your train may stop at some little station like Mears, beyond Salida. Already you may have seen creeping up the mountain ahead of your train another like it. And here at Mears, looking out and upward from your window you again see this little train, this time directly above you two or three hundred feet, on another track, and snakily gliding away through a narrow gateway into the south. Reference to a map teaches you that this was not a happening, and that this narrow gateway, as unreal as a stage scene to the eye, and having a similar effect, is the opening of an extensive system covering Southern Colorado and extending into New Mexico.

Scores of times you see, away above or far below, another track. You may see only a section of it, cut off by rocks at each end, and manifestly having nothing to do with you and your travels. Then a person suggests that we were at that place half an hour ago, and asks if you think we have any connection with still another track, glimpses of which may be caught on the side of a mountain directly across, with a yawning chasm between that would make a crow dizzy if he looked down. And after awhile one is there also, looking across to where he once was, and in his heart not believing it.

All over this majestic mountain world, without a moment of weariness or hunger, without cold or heat or loss of rest, seeing all and realizing little; this is the material and artificial wonder of Colorado travel.

Mingled with these general sensations are the special wonders—the places and scenes that have been described in thousands of pages. In the case of most of them it was never of much avail to try to put them into words; with them all the camera reproduces in miniature scientifically exact, but failing utterly to convey any other meaning than that of prettiness, and there is not anything in Colorado that is merely pretty. When one says that the mountain torrent foams and tumbles among the rocks beside the track in the cañon for eight or ten miles, it is useless to say more. Then this camera comes; a wonderful and indispensable machine, it is true; and makes the white waterfall as big as one’s thumb nail—a foamy spot in a suggested colossal setting—and that is all. The restlessness, the tinkle, the indescribable sound of breaking foam, the overhanging shadow, the glimpse of the far blue sky above and far beyond, the sense that this is nature, careless utterly of you and all your tribe—all these things are left out. To be amid these scenes is to live in a new way during the fleeting time that one is there, and going away again it is to remember more vividly after ten or twenty years than you did the day after you saw them first.