Colorado Trail Planning: Walking with Purpose

Sunday evening I was sprawled across the sidewalk in front of the Ace Hardware in Leadville, filthy, stinky, and awaiting my ride back from the weekend foray. Somewhere between coma and dozing I was startled when someone spoke.

A scraggly, weather beaten fellow wearing a massive external frame pack, adorned with all sorts of dangling odds n’ ends, stood a few feet away. Having ventured all the way across the parking lot, he apologized for waking me as I tried to pretend I had not just been drooling everywhere.

“Well, I saw that you have a backpack on, and I have a backpack on, so I thought I should come check on ya,” he explained, stuttering heavily, “is there anything you need? Anything I can do? I’m hitching down to Denver,” he offered.

I thanked him for the concern but explained my bases were covered and gave him a few snack bars. Watching his form recede across the parking lot and out onto the road, I drew a deep and satisfying amusement at we humans and our notions of comradeship.

Elaborating on this understanding, one of my readers called in with a suggestion that, rather than flat donations to the Family & Intercultural Resource Center, it would be more engaging to offer the option of making pledges. This way, your donation is directly tied to the hike, and that adds an extra degree of accountability for me.

So, check out the good we could do with your contribution, decide an amount, either per mile or lump sum, and shoot an email with your Pledge to ItinerantHughes@gmail.com. Then all you have to do is start saving the money and watch for updates here as I work on knocking out the miles (486 in total)!

It’ll be fun and will help people who really need it. So go ahead, Pledge now and you’ll get a postcard from Durango in about a month!

Thanks A Bunch!