For as long as I can remember—ever since reading Jack London's Call of the Wild as a child—I've longed to live in the mountains. I even began planning from about the age of 13 to run away from home and hitchhike or ride my bike up to the Blue Ridge Mountains—which I could see from our house, even though they were 100 miles away—build a shelter and live there like a hermit; there would be no one to pick on me and no adults to tell me what to do and how bad I was. Of course, at that young age, I was ill-prepared for the hardships I now know I would have had to overcome if I were to survive. I didn't care about any of that; I just wanted out of that house.
(I actually did start to run away, twice: one night, about age 14, with a backpack full of clothes, books, and a jar or two of honey we had in the basement; I didn't get very far, though, as I turned back at the edge of the woods near our property and went back to bed. The next attempt was around age 16, when I did, with the aid of a fellow classmate, sneak out in the middle of the night and went to his place for the night before catching a bus to Washington, D.C.; that was the plan, anyway, but that's another story.)
When I left the east coast in September of 1984, my destination was California. Having been no farther than Chickasha, Oklahoma as a child, I needed to see what was beyond that western horizon.
My first stop, however, was Houston, Texas. My mom had moved there earlier that year and was living with my oldest brother. I was going to disappear, change my name (Scott Wolffe was the name I'd picked) and start rebuilding my life from scratch, which meant I would likely not see her again and wanted to say goodbye.
My clearest memory of that visit involved a landscape painting I'd done the year before. I'd done quite a few "paint-by-numbers" paintings, but this one was different: it was "paint-by-shape," where you use a stencil to layout the main parts and freelance the finishing touches. It was the best painting I'd done up to that point and I'd brought it with me on this trip. I remember opening the trunk of my car, showing her the painting, and her saying, "Oh, Timmy! Thank you so much!" I hadn't really painted it for her, but what could I say? So I gave it to her, thinking I could always reproduce it later (which I eventually did, though the original was far better).
I stayed for a couple of days then hit the road again. I'd planned to drive all the way to California, but the lure of the Rocky Mountains—real mountains!—was too strong to pass up, so I decided to first swing north and check out Denver, Colorado, which I was only familiar with through John Denver's music. Little did I know that that decision would the most profoundly-life-altering one I would ever make.
Somewhere in northern Texas, I got pulled over in a small by a police officer and given a ticket for speeding; the choices I was given were either spend a night in jail or pay the fine. I had a very limited amount of funds, but I had no desire to sit in some small-town jail cell in bum-fuck-Texas so I paid the fine, which left me with a little over half of my funds to get the rest of the way. I had no idea what I was going to do, but I had little choice but to keep pushing ahead. Perhaps I could find a temporary job in Denver that would provide the funds necessary to complete my journey West.
On my way out of Texas, I picked up a hitchhiker who was also headed to Denver. I remember he was very good-looking and I wanted so badly to hit on him, but something held me back; who's to say he wasn't some homophobic nut who would slit my throat over such a move, so I kept that to myself. We did talk about my plans, however, and my desire to live in the mountains. It turned out that he knew someone who lived in Sedalia, Colorado, right on the edge of the Rocky Mountain National Forest. His friend wasn't staying there at the time and I might be able to occupy to house through the winter, which would give me the perfect place to work on my Ephemeris. We made it to Sedalia in the dead of night but could not find the house, so we decided to continue north to Denver, where I dropped him off and never saw him again.
So here I was, alone in Denver with no friends and no place to stay. I spent several days driving up and down Speer Boulevard, sleeping in my car at reststops. I knew I didn't have enough money left to make it to California, so I found an Army Surplus store on South Broadway, bought some camping supplies and headed back down to Sedalia with the intent of camping out in the forest. I had it all worked out in my head: I would build a lean-to as a temporary shelter, then find a nice spot to build a cabin in which to live out the winter. I didn't have much food, but I was prepared to hunt deer and whatnot. I didn't have a gun or a bow, but I had a really good hunting knife, a hatchet and a folding saw. In my mind, I was all set!
It was a scary road at times heading up into the Rockies but I finally made it over the first big hump. Somewhere north of Deckers, I found an tree-covered island in the middle of the Platte river, and there I set up camp. I made a leanto out of branches and some reflective material I'd bought at the Surplus store, built a fire and settled in for what I thought would be a fairly long stay.
The first two days were fantastic, despite getting stuck for an hour or so at the top of a climb on a very steep hill, which was terrifying. On the third day, however, things changed dramatically. I'd never actually spent much time camping outdoors, and none whatsoever in the mountains, so I was not at all prepared for the reality with which I was about to be confronted.
I remember the day starting out absolutely gorgeous, but then clouds began forming. With the river being down in a narrow valley, I had little warning and did not realize how quickly conditions can change from one minute to the next. It started out as a light rain, which I thought would be bearable, but then my neighbor-campers warned me that it would likely get worse. Not long after, it got much worse, becoming, not a light rain, but a torrential downpour. I began to panic, but managed to get my camping supplies from the island to my car before the river got too hard to cross.
I was all ready to go...then my very-heavy car (a 1974 Chevy Malibu) got stuck in the mud that had begun forming all around the parking area. This time I really paniced; I just knew that I was going to either drown in the downpour, or freeze in the winter, 'cause there was no way in hell I'd manage to walk out of there. I had no idea where I really was, other than south of Denver, north of Deckers and west of Sedalia. "So, this is it," I remember thinking, but then my car broke free of the mud and I managed to get out of the valley and back over the hills to some paved road and drove back to Denver.
I remember being disappointed at not being able to stay in the mountains, but I was more relieved that I didn't die, so I just chalked it all up to experience and began searching for a place to stay. All I had for the first few weeks was my car, so it became my home for a while. Unfortunately, even that didn't last too long...
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