My Colorado

A Map of Memories


By Kellen Zale


I have too many maps of Colorado. There is the topographical map that I can run my fingers across and instantly drop from the frigid peak of Mt. Elbert to the sun-baked Arkansas River valley. The Colorado page from a Rand McNally atlas, towns circled where I stopped on my first cross-country drive: Limon, Colorado Springs, Montrose. An antique map from 1905; rail lines that once led to silver mines around Leadville are now just grassy embankments near a high and lonely town. A U.S. Geological Survey of Oh-Be-Joyful quadrant near Aspen and Crested Butte, sediment layers marked in Technicolor turquoise and fuchsia. The waterproof trail map, creased but never torn after years stuffed into backpacks, marking trails hiked and to-be-hiked in the Maroon Bells, West Elks and Collegiate Peaks.

I do not have these maps because I need them to get from one place to another. I have the maps because they tell a story. Each line marking a road or trail, each name memorializing a town or river, is a memory and a history unto itself.

Tincup, its weathered and muddy buildings the defeated traces of a long-ago mining town where I learned to fly-fish in alpine marshes that reflected the still snowy June peaks. Above Lake Irwin, abandoning the trail to reach the ridgeline, where infinite mountain ranges fade from deep purple to hazy blue. Far below, a graveyard, headstones dating from 1890 to 2003, all worn equally smooth by wind and snow.

In Crawford, a fruit stand with late summer peaches near a clapboard house. Just outside town, the abrupt disappearance of earth and, 2,000 feet below, the emerald froth of the Gunnison River. Off Highway 9, between Alma and Breckenridge, a sunrise over the Continental Divide, feet frozen inside a sleeping bag in mid-August.

A map makes a storyteller out of anyone; the number of translations is infinite. For me, Five Mile Creek is a solitary hike at summer's end, the sky stainless blue, a black bear foraging above treeline. For you, it is something else, a memory of another season, a place waiting to be discovered.

Perhaps I do not have too many maps of Colorado. Perhaps each map is a different edition, an appendix or a footnote to the map of Colorado that cannot be put on paper: the Colorado of memories.

Your Turn

Do you have a special memory or humorous story about living in Colorado? EnCompass is looking for original essays that capture the uniqueness of our state. Payment is $60 upon publication. Entries must be typed, double-spaced and 350-450 words. Please include a daytime phone number. Entries will not be returned. Mail to: EnCompass, Attn: My Colorado, 4100 E. Arkansas Ave., Denver, CO 80222, or email: editor@colorado.aaa.com. A response to a submission may take six to eight weeks.