The heat inside the bed of my pickup, under the camper shell, has become unbearable; it manages to accomplish that which a painfully full bladder, wet blankets, and cramped limbs could not--- I get out of bed. Relieving myself (of three cans of root beer) along the side of the road, I breathe deeply of the fresh, cool air. Ah, the Colorado mountains! No finer place exists in the whole world. I scratch thoughtfully with my left hand, and stretch the kinks out of my right arm by raising it high over my head. I swap hands, and stretch the left arm. It has taken me 23 hours to drive to the site I was now on, and much of that time had been spent enduring: rain-slick roads; blinding headlights; Denny's version of pancakes; drunk drivers; big rigs at times homicidal and at other times suicidal; road hazards such as pot holes, shredded tires, and Highway Patrol cars; and inclines almost too steep for my pickup to limp, lumber, and lurch up. It was indeed fine to be finished with the drive. I let go of my balls and turn back to my pickup.

Heaving the case of beans out of the driver's seat, I shove the box into the bed of the pickup, slam the gate, and wedge myself into the vehicle. My final destination was a mere 6.5 miles away.

Wellington Lake reposes 8,185 feet (give or take) above mean sea level. My usual abode being the desert, the lake is almost painful in its contrast to what I am accustomed to. In the Mojave there is heat blasted, sun-seared rock, sand, and gravel; here, cool wind sighs like a caress over the ground covered with pine needles, and passes through the trees with the gentle, firm kiss of a lover. Where the Mojave has no shade other than one's hat brim, here I find dark pools of shade under aspen, Ponderosa, and juniper bushes. In the desert, I dream of cool evenings and oozing seeps from which to sip; here at the lake, I dream of dappled sunlight flirting among the tree limbs, of water splashing off the canoe paddle, of afternoon naps after a bitter cold swim.

I arrive at the gate to Wellington Lake around nine in the morning. My watch says it's an hour earlier (California time), but the need to set the time an hour ahead does not impress itself upon me. What's an hour, in the scheme of things? I'm here for a month--- right up to the end of September.

Candy, who greets me at the lake's office, takes my money and asks me where I'll be camped. I say I dunno, but I'll be up on the fire road. That satisfies her; if she needs to find me, Della or Toby can hunt me down. Given they are used to the high altitude, and I am staggering around in an asthmatic daze, the hunt would be a short one.

On up the fire road I go, looking this place over, that place over, stopping now and then to get the sense of the land, I chose site number F44. I really can't say why this site and not some other. Perhaps it is the fact that my nearest camping neighbor is around 60 yards away. Or maybe it's because the nearest latrine is only a two-minute walk away. Or perhaps the dozen trees at this spot, desiring the carbon I exhale, called myself to them. Then again, maybe there was no reason worth the consideration.

I park. I get out of my tired mechanical beast. Pulling my hat down to eye level in the hopes of preventing the wind from carrying it off, I make major improvements to the primitive campsite. That is, I kick a rock out of the way. I kick a piece of bark in the other direction. Three or four more kicks, moving dirt, twigs, and pinecones hither and yon, I call an end to the construction project. I contemplate where to set up the tarp.

But then, what's the hurry? All that work on site improvement has raised deep within me a powerful thirst. I unfold my chair, fish for a can of cola from the icebox, and relax. I try to stare at the girls and women down at the lake, but my eyesight, not being what it used to be (in fact, it never has been), I cannot make them out. I do make out the people in general.

A great many people. A horde of people. They have brought their dogs, children, campers, recreational vehicles, trailers, mini busses, rowboats, motor boats, canoes, rubber dinghies, power generators, and mobile homes. A goddamned mob of hedonists. The children and dogs bark and scream (in that order). The boat engines cough and spit and hack at the water. A gasoline generator down the road a bit sounds like a thirteen-year-old girl screeching. (Then again, maybe it is a thirteen-year-old girl.) The human mob has brought with it all of its bad habits; into the wilderness has come microwave ovens, toaster ovens, electric refrigerators, ice machines, television sets, electric blankets, and 75 watt flood lamps. A few uncaring bastards assault the forest with the loud blaring of their radios, disturbing the quiet and peace that others have come here for.

Sitting here in my folding chair, sipping my cool can of cola, I cannot really blame these hedonists. If I could afford such luxuries, perhaps I would buy them myself. Or perhaps I would not. Virtue untested is not virtue; it's smug ignorance of self. Give me a million dollars (please!) and see if I still travel the wilderness on foot or in my ancient pickup, all the while believing that a clean change of socks is the height of indulgence. Nah, I don't blame the horde a bit.

Well, time to put up the tarp. Laying out the big one lengthwise along the road, I drag it in the spot where I believe it will do the most good. It's September, and rain can be expected. Being one human who prefers nature the way I find it, I do not attempt to make the trees move where I need them in order to hang my tarp; I tie the tarp as best I can upon the trees. I make do. In no more than fifteen minutes, the tarp hanging is completed. Dry work, this... I take another pull of the cola.

Now I think: Do I need to put up the tent? What do I need a tent for, since I've got the tarp over my head? Well, insects of course. Blood-sucking bastards who boil in over the lake in the evening, seeking warm, red, pulsing, tasty blood. My blood. I get the tent out of the pickup and assemble it under the tarp.

My blankets, damp with the water I had intended to wash in (if the bottle it had been in had not broken), I drape over juniper bushes in the sun to dry.

The wind picks up in a gush, clutching the tarp with a firm grip, shaking it insanely, and then letting it go. It is merely testing my tarp erecting skills. I don't mind. It's time for a bath in the lake.

If given the choice, certainly I prefer a bath in water around 117 degrees. (Fahrenheit that is. I prefer it much cooler in centigrade.) Today's bath will be, must be, shall soon be, 55 degrees. I brace my resolve, take off my shoes, pick up a towel, and walk to the edge of the lake in my socks. With only the slightest hesitation, I leap in, head under, and silently wail under water while the cold bites into my fat, fleshy body. To my mind, one must engage in any and all activities with all the guts they have; entering the water in stages, growing accustomed to the coldness a minute or two at a time, seems too dainty, too unmanly, too... "prissy" to me. Timidity frustrates me; that goes for when I see it in myself as well as in others.

I break my head out of the water, spewing cold water from my nose and mouth as I exhale. Penis and balls shrivel to nothing in the icy water, which makes me glad I'm wearing swimming shorts. I dunk my head under again and scrub my hair and scalp with my hands, getting myself free of the dirt and grime of two days on the road. By the gods, it feels good!

Staggering out of the lake, the wind raises bumps on my body. I shiver. Thirty feet away, some asshole is playing John Denver on a stereo, while a few feet farther, wee tots scream, cry, wail, scold, and curse at each other. The Rocky Mountain high is shattered by Johnny's singing Rocky Mountain High at 920 decibels over a bullhorn. I dry my hair with my towel, put my shirt on, and wonder how the hell people could give not the slightest, infinitesimal thought and consideration for the other people sharing the forest with them. John Denver breaks out with I'm Sorry, but at 1,000 decibels, I don't believe it. I am urged to get my pistol, my ear phones, and walk over there and at gunpoint, order the bastard to keep the noise to himself.

Bath over, dirt clinging to the wet socks on my feet, I head back to camp. What to do next? Well, that's an easy question to answer. Given how brutally tiring my day has been so far, I conclude that a nap is next in order. Getting into my tent, I zip the screen flaps down to let the breeze flow through, wrap a towel around my head, stretch out on my now dry bed roll, and attempt to sleep.

Sleep? Of course not. It's too damned noisy here. I lay face up, eyes open under the towel, and think about women instead. Okay, I'll be honest: I think about girls instead. Girls just entering college; young, firm, healthy, bouncy, juicy girls. Giggling, blushing, wide-eyed, flirtatious girls. Goddess, how I wish I had one! Or two. I think of long, flowing, sand colored hair; green eyes; perfect bow-shaped lips; flat tummy; strong legs. With a sigh or two, without warning, I'm suddenly asleep.

Dreaming. I find myself walking down the cement sidewalks of a massive campus. Lecture halls rear up around me, tall and majestic like cinder cones and Navajo sandstone cliffs. A guide walks next to me, and a few dozen other people follow us. Taking a turn to the left, we walk up to and into a gigantic building. The entryway leads to an elevator and we all walk inside. The elevator is as spacious as a mansion's living room. A picture of the building's financier hangs crookedly by a single nail. As the elevator lifts, the walls appear to sink downward. Up one story we go, and then the doors part open.

The hallway we face is grandly massive: far vaster than the halls of Valhalla; longer, wider, and deeper than the Grand Canyon. A path leads down this hallway, with smaller paths branching off toward a hundred thousand colossal doorways. Our guide leads us to the first door along the path, and pulls the massive doors open.

Inside is a religion. Millions of people sit on pews performing the rites and rituals of the religion. Somehow the priest at the front of the hundred square mile sized church is visible to all adherents. I am, of course, horrified. However, two from our group happily enter the crowd, and we leave them there.

On to the next vast door along the main path we, our guide, myself, and about twenty others proceed down. The door opens, and again there are a few million people sitting on pews, at times kneeling, at times standing, at times singing. More from our group leave us to enter this church, and again we continue down the massive hallway outside.

Again and again we stop at various churches. Each one is stuffed with anywhere from fifty million to fifty thousand people who all worship the same way: each one filled with people who move as one mind; sing with one voice; breath in synch with each other; think the same thoughts (the few thoughts that they have) right on queue. At various churches we look over, people leave our group until it is finally down to just the guide and I.

The guide gives me a friendly grin and says, "Hard to please, eh?" I deny the suggestion. "Why no, not really. In fact, I'm rather easily pleased."

"Well," the guide said to me, "You have passed by the Protestants. You have passed by the Catholics, Anglicans, Mormons, Muslims, Spirit Guiders, atheists, Heathens, Wiccans, fifteen thousand other brands of Christianity, fifty-three types of Paganism, forty-four flavors of Native American spirituality, seventeen different crime syndicates that call themselves 'religions' just for tax-exemption status...... we're running out of religions here."

"It seems to me," I tell the guide, "that any religion that has more than two dozen or so adherents is manifestly false. A vast horde that worships together is positive proof that their religion is not founded upon reverence and contemplation of the Sacred: it is positive proof that their religion is based upon the herd instinct. It is a rejection, a repudiation of the Divine, replaced with group conformity and fear of the unknown." I was just getting started. "Any religion that advertises itself and which actively seeks out new converts and adherents has, by that blasphemous act, demonstrated itself to be unworthy of consideration. The numinous applies only to individuals, not to groups."

I could have continued on like this for a good two or three hours, but the guide raised its hand to silence me. "I think I understand," the guide said. It thought for a moment, and then beckoned me to follow. As we passed by a few dozen more doors, each unexplored, I continued my oratory: I couldn't help myself.

"Anyone who claims to be a guru, or who claims to speak the word of a god, has, by that claim, proven himself or herself to be a fraud. One cannot be lead to a reverence of the spiritual by any other person; one can only find the Sacred by one's own efforts. The path to take should differ, must differ, does differ for each and every human being. There are no signposts, holy writs, 'learned elders,' priests, spirit mediums, self-professed 'psychics,' godmen, popes, pontiffs, prophets, church leaders, wizards, and witch doctors who can lead the way. They are all, without exception, liars, thieves, or fools." I caught my second wind, and was about to discourse upon how belief contrary to the facts I was speaking have lead to holocaust, genocide, and horror, when the guide and I came to a another door.

At first glance, the door appeared to be much like all of the others we had passed. Then I noticed that the doorknob appeared to be tarnished: as if very few hands had grasped and turned it. Unlike all the other doors that the group I had been in had examined, the guide did not open it for me. The guide stood aside and motioned for me to open the door.

The door's hinges squeaked with the resonance of little use as I opened it. I looked inside.

Inside there were no pews. No priest stood muttering from holy writs. No wailing, pretentious sacerdotalist stood within waving her arms skyward pleadingly. No censers spewed choking clouds of cloying incense. No vast throng of sinners, saints, self-perjurers, hypocrites crowded together in cowering fear of divine retribution, divine banality, divine beneficence.

Rather, a space the size of the North American Continent spread out before me. There were deserts and gardens. There were plains of grass and plains of forests. Mountains rose up a hundred miles away, while oceans heaved and relaxed, heave and relaxed, a hundred miles farther along. Fish swam in lakes and streams. Beaver chewed bark, eagles fell upon hares, pumas lazed in shadow among sandstone. Over there, cactus flowered, thunder spoke, rain fell. Over here, sun baked alkali playa, field mice slept in burrows, crows called to each other. A mite that way, horses ate dark green grass, squirrels chattered over seeds, clear creeks strolled among the hills, to finally meet in a valley stream.

Spread among this vast space was two dozen or so people. Some walked, individually or in pairs, among the trees, at peace with themselves and each other. A few others, two hundred miles away, played in the ocean's surf. Around a campfire six hundred miles off in the distance, eight people sang bawdy songs.

Turning towards the guide, I smiled. "This is my religion," I told it. The guide nodded silently, the light of mirth in its eyes. I thanked the guide for its time, and stepped through the door.

With the closing of the door behind me, I snap out of sleep with a violent jerk of my body. The sound of a squalling child pierced the air, waking me from my dream. Over head, one crow was barking, emulating the hedonists' dogs. Down the road, children screamed and argued, emulating their parents. I ponder my dream, wondering where the hell it came from.

I'm hungry. It's four o'clock in the afternoon: lunchtime.

What to do for lunch. I contemplate setting out a can of beans in the sun to warm. Perhaps I'll open up the hood of my pickup, and place a can of beans down there among the exhaust manifold to heat. Sure, I have a gasoline stove: hell, it might even work, but I doubt it. Setting up the stove sounds like far too much effort. Opening the can and fishing out the beans with a spoon is all the labor I feel like doing at the moment.

My urge to emulate the hedonists around here surfaces. Why don't I go to Bailey, enter a restaurant, and have someone else cook the food, wash the dishes? I like the idea.

Driving to and from Bailey demonstrates a paradox within the space-time continuum. In the daytime, going to or from Wellington Lake to Bailey, one drives 12.8 miles. But at night time? Ah, at nighttime the drive requires 16.6 miles. As far as I know, no one knows why. For the past twelve years I have occasionally driven these roads, and the phenomena never fails. The fact that I'm nearly blind in the dark and perhaps, just perhaps, In miss the correct turns, thus taking the longer route at night, hardly merits consideration.

Crow's Foot Restaurant used to, once upon a time, serve pizza. Very good pizza. Alas, no more. "The pizza cook quit three years ago," I'm told. "We ain't found 'nother." Perhaps in a year or two another cook, who can "do" pizza, will be discovered up here in the mountains of Colorado. There's no hurry, really. The remaining food is quite satisfactory.

The waitress..... Oh, good Goddess, the waitress. How to describe Steph? Can words convey such perfection? She is, of course, around half my age. Short blonde hair, sky blue tank top, black slacks that fit so well that I swoon. My heart does a back flip, and I yelp silently in my head. Her smile makes me gasp a bit, but I recover quickly. She asks me what I want, so I must commit the sin of omission: I do not tell her. Instead, I ask for something from the menu. She is the epitome of every young man's aching dream; she is the raw stuff of which causes old men such as I, contemplating their youth, to heave a sad sigh and wish they were young again. While she laughs at my floppy hat, my indifferent shave, my sunburned nose, and my blue eyes, she sets down a glass and carafe of iced tea in front of me. All the while I ache to run my hands, gently and firmly, over her, up her, down her, around her.

She is, naturally, unaware of my agony, as I have had decades of experience hiding burning, searing desire. I close my eyes and shudder. I try to think about other things besides smooth, warm, silky thighs. I try not to think about soft, warm, sweet lips, clear eyes, the swell of hips, and the roundness of her haunches. I attempt to banish from my soul the thought of her humid loins, her female smell, her languid mouth. What with her wandering loose just a few feet away, this attempt fails miserably. I'm miserable with want and lust. If she were being auctioned off, I would bid my soul.

Food arrives. It is exactly what I asked for, but not at all what I want.

Since it is still daylight, the drive back to the lake is only 12.8 miles. I make the drive in 35 minutes, going slowly so that my pickup does not kick up too much dust from the dirt roads.

The wind has picked up again. It screams through the trees and down the mountain as if its soul were being flayed. I fear for my tarp, but so far my shelter is holding fast against the onslaught.

The trip to the latrine takes two minutes. When I first started out, I grabbed my shovel and a roll of toilet paper without thinking. I am so used to digging my own "facilities" in the desert, that my mind barely comprehends the fact that someone else has dug a pit and installed a tank to do the job for me. Now here I stand before the latrine, shovel-less and paperless, contemplating the door.

Or, where the door once was. The door is missing. A canvas sheet has been nailed over the doorway. Upon the canvas has been spray painted the word "KNOCK." Under that word, "Open ---->" has been painted. I knock and open. Knocking is for the most part a waste of knuckle, as the canvas sheet falls short of the ground by 16 inches. If the edifice had been occupied, I'd have seen shoes. Or toes.

I marvel at how much easier it is for one to "do one's business" here at Wellington Lake when compared to the same business in the Mojave Desert. I do not have to unfold my shovel. I do not have to dig through gravel, sand, and rocks. More important, I need not take great pains to position, aim, straddle, situate, locate, test, and relocate myself. I need not draw the wad of paper from my pocket, unfold it in the wind, and use it: paper is hanging conveniently on the wall. When done, I need not carefully place the paper in the hole I would have dug, and filled in the hole with dirt. In the Mojave Desert, going potty is a chore; here at the lake, it's a pleasure!

On the walk back to camp I stop and pick some leaves from a bush. The name of the bush has long ago fled the echoing recesses of my mind; all that remains is the color, shape, and texture of the memory that tells me the leaves make a damn fine tea. At camp, I place the leaves in my pickup on the dashboard, in the sun. In a day or two they will be dry, and I will place them in a cup and pour boiling water on top of them. Three or four minutes later, I will fork out the leaves and toss drop them on the ground. I will add a very small bit of sugar, stir, and drink deeply.

By all that is holy, I am looking forward to tomorrow! Sunday I hope the hedonist horde will exile itself back to the asphalt highways, the drywall offices, the smog-choked sidewalks, the grubby neighborhoods. With luck, I will be mostly left alone up here for a few days.

Night comes quickly. The sun and moon leap below the mountain's edge together, like lovers with a mutual suicide pack. The wind becomes cold. The stars seem to spring into the sky with no dusk transition. It has been a rough, very rough, very brutal, tiring day, and it is time to sleep.

Three in the morning, a child screams bloody murder. A nightmare has wrapped itself around his hypnogogic brain, and squeezed tightly. The scream rouses me from a bent and twisted sleep (for indeed, the ground is very rough and inclined under my blanket). Unzipping the tent's door, I crawl out wearing nothing but a tee-shirt, stand, stumble five feet, and urinate. Staring down at me, watching intently, is Orion. He is laying on his back. Perhaps his shoulders are soaking up the heat of Sirius.

When I get back under my blanket, I lay awake listening to the howling wind. It is very dark, and very loud outside. The wind dies down to a whisper. Then slowly, the sound of the wind rushing through the trees builds, and a thunderous roar sweeps down from the mountain. In a moment or two before the wind hits, I mentally brace myself for the impact. When the blast of wind hits, it is harder, stronger, and louder than I have anticipated. I shiver with fear and dread, even though I know that fear is not justified. An atavistic terror flashes through my body when the fist of the wind pounds upon my tarp, upon my tent, and upon my quivering soul. Then in an instant the wind is back to a ghostly whisper. Between pounces, I fall once again sleep.