Wednesday Walk

Where are you from?

_{The Arkansas River rushes through Scout Wave 2.0, a new river surfing feature christened last October. I don't know how to surf rivers (not to mention oceans or sand dunes or even webs for that matter) and would probably drown if I fell into this thing. Tenderfoot Hill, known to locals as "S" Mountain thanks to that giant white "S" installed near the summit, stands in the background waiting patiently for me to fall in and die. Fun fact: S Mountain used to be covered in trees and shrubbery, but all the smelting activity from a hundred or so years ago literally smoked them all into the afterlife. Funner fact: Scout Wave 2.0 was so overwhelmed by high water during last spring's runoff that it morphed into something more akin to a drowning machine than a surfing wave. As far as I know, nobody actually drowned. Probably because I wasn't there to do so.}

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I've been renting a room in Salida, Colorado for three months now. It's the first place I've lived in years where I think I might be able to settle down and feel at home. I have an excellent job, everything I really need is within walking distance, I've got fast access to world-class mountains from a reasonably healthy altitude, and I'm starting to find it increasingly easy to do something I've always been bad at—making new friends.

The concept of home has been a nebulous theme for me ever since I left Brazil and moved to the US when I was 18. To this day, I have no idea what to say when someone asks me where I'm from. There just isn't any place that feels like home to me.

So when they ask, I might respond with something along the lines of "Well, I grew up in Brazil…"—which is true, because I did, and this approach is a useful way for me to avoid calling Brazil the place I'm from, because I'm not from there, I just grew up there.

But, it's also a problematic approach, because it usually triggers a followup question wherein I must provide an answer as to what in hell I was doing getting myself born and raised in the jungle in the first place. "Well, my parents were Christian missionaries…"—also true, and also problematic. The first domino has fallen, and now the second, and half an hour later here I am still answering questions.

It's much easier to just lie. "I'm from Chicago…"—which is not true, but I did live there for eight years, and I did move directly to Denver from Chicago almost ten years ago now, so the lie is white enough for me to still be able to fall asleep at night.

Salida, by the way, is the Spanish word for exit. For it is at this point on the map where the Arkansas ceases flowing south from its headwaters in Leadville and exits to the southeast, running down Bighorn Sheep Canyon toward the Front Range and Pueblo, leaving Colorado, crossing the Great Plains, and finally joining forces with the Mississippi.

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_{Looking northwest at old Denver & Rio Grande railroad tracks sitting in disuse along the Arkansas River. They've been decommissioned for decades now, but at one time they played a key role in moving freight and passengers across the entire state. Salida was an important hub on this line, and in times past you would have seen a train depot, a luxury hotel, and an engine roundhouse from this position. The slopes of S Mountain are to the right.}

_{Do a 180, and there's the view southeast toward Bighorn Sheep Canyon. That bright thing in the sky is either the moon or a UFO. Not sure which, though; I didn't really pay it any attention. I've been trying to avoid looking at bright things in the sky ever since my cousin went blind from staring at the sun last summer. What a dangerous world we live in.}

_{A bit farther down the tracks now. We're approaching the old D&RG engine backshop (which you can see better in this Salida Museum photo) and a pair of less-old bins used by Calco for limestone processing (source).}

_{Closeup photo from as close as I could get without trespassing and getting killed by a mob of teenagers wielding spray paint cans and crack pipes:}

_{Now looking back toward Tenderfoot. I'll live to drown another day, thank you very much.}