Impressions from Colorado

I recently went on a skiing trip to Colorado, a trip that I can say had two highlights: skiing, and the drive home.

Skiing sort of speaks for itself and you could do worse than simply to say that it costs a lot of money and it is money well spent if you get up on the mountain and can manage to enjoy it. We had lots of mountain weather variety (snow, sun, wind) and lots of friends around to ski with, which at one or two points congealed into a borderline-transcendental experience. I had a lot of fun doing dangerous things (never a good combination) like flying through the woods on narrow paths, which I have promised myself I will not do again with such indiscretion. For someone who is neither a speed nor adrenaline junkie, skiing really brought both out in me.

I suppose you could say that I like to be the driver when leaving home and the passenger when returning. Most people will say that the drive home is a drag and a chore, which the act of driving itself can be, but there are few things I like better than the chance to meditate on the events of the vacation during a drive home. This trip afforded lots of time, ample back-seat room, appropriate homebound weather (rolling storms in the distance, a variety of overcast tones), good music (thank you, Brian Eno, Great Lake Swimmers, and Junior Boys) and good reading material (The Crossing). (It cannot be denied that I surely know what I like, and I have expended much thought and energy refining the process of achieving it.)

I have been especially struck lately by the way McCarthy's novels of the Southwest, filled with so much desolation and violence, only increase my affection for the land. The Crossing is my new favorite of his stories (not bad for a book I couldn't finish the first time I tried), although it would be hard not to admit that Blood Meridian contains a much stronger and tightly cohesive vision. More importantly, though, the protagonist in The Crossing contains a more closely observed moral character. I cannot relate to the Kid in Blood Meridian in the slightest, but I am with Billy every page of The Crossing. I believe I will reread it again and again in the future.