The Struggle toward safety

So I conferred with the loving wife. Sold it like a hard sell timeshare salesman. After eye rolling, she gave me permission to pull the trigger. Bought the place from a flakey guy in Texas. Closed in Alamosa and began to implement my grand plan: Scouting for routes. Finding a way down to the river that sets this otherwise worthless patch of desert apart. Hazards abounded. 100 ft drop-offs, snakes, the river at high water. Learned how to tie climbing knots. Bought climbing gears and anchors. Purchased pipe to construct rails and an expensive Bosch SDS-Plus drill to place anchors in the rocks. I was making my mark. Staking my claim. Trying to tame a wild and potentially dangerous piece of land. All I needed was google, gumption and a whole lot of money.

A Fall Trip to The Gorge

Listening to the sound of the lower rapid-more amplified this morning than it was last night.  Was it the rain that came through-late monsoon moisture from the pacific.

Strange, but the river was not loud enough last night.  I ran my river sound machine on my kindle.  The worse kind of sound machine is a packrat scurrying over galvanized tin roofing and Ikea bags.  I had enough of that soundtrack fromprevious  night this summer.  We are getting closer to keeping that brazen rat out of the boat shed.

Wow.  So still.  A lovely dawn.  The kids still sacked out beside me.  All I hear are the rapids, the early birds and my own breath.  Am trying to make myself stop working myself and the kids to death when we are here.  So much has been accomplished in a year's time

Ladder access, a zipline, a boat shed, two jobsite lockboxes and some missteps.  Scrapped the rock structure on top.  Too hard.  Scrapped the Airstream on top (Too easy for thieving tweakers to steal from us).  Changed our route down at least three times.  Have climbing anchors strung with aircraft wire to show our previous routes.  Decided we wanted to be as close to the river as possible-balancing relative safety with the thrill of being in the belly of the Gorge along the Rio Grande's shimmering flanks.  So maybe today I will focus on enjoying the place I've been killing myself to get to.  Old habits die hard but die they must.