river » 39° North Photography

This past weekend, while on my way home from a hike, I found myself driving along the South Platte River. I spotted a couple of kayakers making their way down the very swollen river, so I thought I should probably stop and take some pictures.

Kayaking has piqued my interest for as long as I can remember, and every time I see kayakers on a river, that old longing starts up again. Not that I need another expensive, time-consuming hobby, but, mark my words, one of these days I’m going to do it.

This is just one of many reasons why I want to move to the Buena Vista, Colorado area:

Waterton Canyon is formed by the South Platte River as it makes its way through the Front Range and foothills of the Rockies down to the plains southwest of Denver. The wide, flat trail through the canyon, which was a railroad grade in a previous incarnation, is the eastern terminus of the Colorado Trail. From here, one could walk the 473-mile trail all the way to Durango if one were so inclined. In spring and fall, hikers and bikers are quite likely to see the resident herd of Rocky Mountain bighorn sheep grazing on the steep slopes of the canyon.

My favorite part, however, is the rocks, like this lovely example of gneiss.

One of the things I liked about my time in Baghdad was that we lived and worked in a hotel and had a bird’s-eye view of day-to-day life in Baghdad. We could see people driving to work and going to worship at the mosque across Firdos Square. We could see fishing boats on the Tigris River and people filling up at the petrol station and selling cigarettes from little carts on the sidewalks. We could watch kids playing soccer in a dirt field along the river and men playing tennis on the clay courts at the sports club. It was nice to have a glimpse into everyday life in Baghdad, something that you rarely saw on the news. Once I moved up north to Kirkuk, we lived at ground level and the only “real life” stuff I saw was from an armored vehicle zooming by at 80mph during my regular trips “outside the wire.”