Some trails are meant to be trekked alone. If you drive north of the town of Dolores for about 20 miles, you’ll find Hillside Drive, which lives up to its name. Forested mountainsides, the foothills of the southern San Juans, burgeon with oak and aspen. You can pull off to the side (where the narrow dirt track will let you) and step beneath copses of aspen with trunks you can’t fit your arms around. Up and down U valleys sweep trackless forests, ended only by the distant mountains toward which you’ll drive (once you get back in your vehicle, of course).

After a 17-mile ride down sometimes rutty and potholed but otherwise well-graded dirt road, you’ll reach your trailhead. The Highline Trail is part of a tangle of trails including Bear Creek and Grindstone. You’ll head left (north by northeast) and hike through some montane forest before you cross a meadow, enter another small forest, and turn south down the Highline Trail.

You’ll follow a mountain ridge that, at points due to its stony nature, may remind you of Hadrian’s Wall in England/Scotland. There’ll be wide patches of snow in a good year well into July and even August. The elevation, though pretty damned high to begin with, won’t change much beyond 300 feet. You’ll walk past krummholz stands so thick you could see how a bear could bed down in them. You might even spot a bear foraging for moths in the rock piles.

In the fall, you may hear a bull elk bugle. It’s the rut, so stay clear of him. But if it’s hunting season, he may stay away from you. The herd stays below the ridge, either east or west, and the elk blend in pretty well. You may see a raptor or two soaring overhead and the pip of a marmot or the squeak of a pica, avoiding the raptor or two prowling the sky. Other than that, there’ll be wildflowers and skunk cabbage. A coyote standing on a ridge. Fierce winds.

You’ll not encounter another human, though. At least I haven’t, and I’ve been up here a few times. It’s an out and back trail to Taylor Lake., 2.8 miles each way. At the end of the trail, you can connect up to a basin trail that leads over Sharkstooth Pass. Or go down to Taylor Lake and walk up a road to Cumberland Basin and hook up with the Colorado Trail. Didn’t think you were going to be able to hook up out here, didja?

This brings us back to the solitude of hiking alone. Though humans are social creatures, there are times when I need aloneness. People feed me. Solitude feeds me as well. In the world, in our stories, we need guides. A person may choose a mentor, a spouse, a parent, a teacher, a therapist, a religious leader. Luke had his Yoda.

In the wilderness, you may require a guide, someone to show you the way and keep you alive until you can keep yourself alive. Solitude is my guide sometimes. It never steers me awry. That voice inside, it never errs. I may refuse to listen to it. It may get drowned out by clamors within, by clamors without. I may hear it and not trust it, act opposite its direction. I may become so lost that I never hear it. It may be buried in layers of modernity and scientific understanding. I may place my trust in the rational. I may be conditioned not to listen to the voice within. I may forget how to listen. I may need to relearn how to contact it and hear its song. There may even be a voice inside that mimics the intuitive guidance. Or maybe I come to fear the silence and drown it out with internal or external noise.

And yet, if I spend time out here, alone, eventually, I can’t help but hear it. Then I choose whether to listen to what I hear. It’s why I come.

This mountainous earth is not a world of comparison between human beings. There is you, and there is the mountain. Sure, the mountain is taller and more massive than you. It was here long before you were and it’ll still stand long after you’re gone. But somehow you know that comparing yourself to a summit is apples and oranges. And if you do compare, the ego falls away, because how can it compare itself to things over ten thousand feet high, that make their own weather? Either way, you win with solitude.

So you may want to come alone. Without your expectations. No Gifts Please, the Invitation insists. Come by yourself and spend enough time for the chatters to fall away. The ones inside. Eventually, they will. They’re used by you to suppress memories, voices, emotions you’d rather not have rise to consciousness. Sooner or later, these, too, will slip away in the incessant winds up here.

What you hear then, what you’re left with, is nothing. But nothing is a purchase more than you expected. Nothing is peace. You may only experience it for a fleeting moment, but that moment is all.

To get there: Take highway 145 north from Dolores until you reach the signs for Hillside Drive just past the hamlet of Stoner. Take its full 17-mile length and park at the trailhead and road’s end. Follow the signs left(east) to Highline Trail. Then, just follow your feet.

Mike’s novel, The Dirt: The Journey of a Mystic Cowboy, is available in softcover or eBook formats through Amazon.

You can purchase the book through this website. Or go straight to amazon at https://www.amazon.com/s?k=the+dirt+journey+of+a+mystic+cowboy&crid=1S40Q4BXSUWJ6&sprefix=the+dirt%3A+journey+of+a+m%2Caps%2C180&ref=nb_sb_ss_i_1_23

Mike’s other titles, including The Crippy, The Mind Altar, and Canyon Calls, are available through this website or through Amazon at https://www.amazon.com/-/e/B002

Four of his short stories have recently been published online:

Lies, Ltd. has been published by The Mystery Tribune @ Lies, Ltd.: Literary Short Fiction by Michael C. Just (mysterytribune.com)

The Obligate Carnivore has been published by the Scarlet Leaf Review @ Category: MICHAEL JUST – SCARLET LEAF REVIEW

I See You, Too has been published by the 96th of October @ I See You, Too – 96th of October

Offload, a short story about a man who can heal any disease, is now live and can be read at The Worlds Within at Offload – The Worlds Within