Backpacking in the foothills of Colorado

"It sure is beautiful for the first day of you-know-what," hollered Chuck.

He was standing lanky in the rough, boisterous breeze, squinting in the new, white sunlight of morning. His long, wiry gray hair fluttered in the wind and his rickety, lean frame crooked forward in a sort of happy, nervous readiness. I was bringing Jordan's Ghost into the Key West Bight Marina fuel dock. I'd cut the engine so that the round, heavy body of the boat glided with slow, steady power towards the wooden pylons that lined the finger pier. The boat slid against the pier and both creaked then shivered in soft, complimentary sympathy. I had already walked up onto the bow and stepped onto the dock with a line in hand.

"Morning, Chuck!" I called, tying off the bow-line first and then jumping back onto the boat to grab hold of the stern line. In a moment Jordan's Ghost was sidled alongside the pier snuggly.

Chuck stood with his feet shoulder width apart.

"I know everybody's worried about you-know-what," he said, speaking anxiously in his fading Jersey accent and gesticulating jerkily with his bony hands, "but it's certainly a beautiful day for sailing. I hope that's not a sign. Is that what you're doing? You going sailing today?"

"Maybe. It's a little breezy, really. I just need some water at the moment."

I began hauling various water containers from deep in Jordan's Ghost's belly, then lining them up on the pier by the hose while Chuck looked idly on. A blue, plastic jerry can, a clear flexible jug, and a couple of big, gallon-sized glass bottles made their way into the queue one at a time.

This was the morning of June 1st, and you-know-what is hurricane season. It's a sort of elephant in the room among sailors, especially seeing as most of the sailors that are still in Key West are bobbing precariously in wide-open anchorages begging to be thrashed by tropical cyclones.

I talked to a pretty diverse collection of folks about surviving hurricane season, and I got plenty of different answers. Some people left for the season. Some stayed. Some bulked up their anchoring gear, and others scouted hurricane holes carved out in deep, mangrove lined creeks. Most didn't do much of anything, except, perhaps, cross their fingers.

My strategy? Take a vacation. The day before I paddled onshore to climb aboard a bus headed for Colorado, Allen Taube, the captain of the gorgeous Reef Chief and a friendly neighbor, had motored his dinghy over to Jordan's Ghost to offer me a job crewing on a huge, thirty-passenger yacht. I explained that I was traveling for a few weeks, and went on to ask whether leaving my vessel tenuously clinging to the ocean-floor by a twisted nylon rope was a ridiculously bad idea.

"Well," he said, chewing on his words and crossing his arms across his broad chest, "it is what it is. When you get back, it'll either be here or it won't."

Indeed.

After a few days' haze of bumbling, jittering, interesting folk-packed bus riding, I was standing in the crisp, arid, sunny air of the Denver Greyhound station.

Colorado may as well be another planet compared to Key West.

Key West is a small town at heart. Just inside its flaky, sun-burnt carapace of tourists, vacationers and pedicabs, the little four-mile island is piled full of familiar faces and filled to the brim with a disgruntled -- but nonetheless functional -- southern hospitality. I have friends in Key West, neighbors and acquaintances. I smile at people on the sidewalk and they smile back. "Catching up" with a perfect stranger is second nature, as if everyone is my friend whether I know it or not.

Looking out over the Colorado foothills

Denver is seething with busy people. Glass clad skyscrapers crowd in on the downtown area, casting massive shadows and reflecting sunlight to create a perpetual, house of mirrors variety of dusk. There are people everywhere and of every type. The social scene -- at least the one I find myself in -- is a shocking polar opposite of what I've grown accustomed to. Loud, crowded get-togethers, sprawling, architecturally stunning corporate offices glittering with top-of-the-line equipment, miles of parks paved in soft, lush sod, and an intimidating, impersonal sort of city that seems all but impenetrable.

Key West and Denver aren't just opposites in terms of architecture, ideology, people and culture. The natural landscapes are intensely different as well. The Keys are flat, tangled in marshy, swampy mangrove islands and smeared thick with a primordial goo of irreversibly married plant and animal life. Flora and fauna intermix both above and below the waves in a way that baffles the casual onlooker and only further perplexes the ardent observer. Sea grass flats that break the surface of the crystalline water writhe with a multitude of wormy legs, spines, gossamer shells and wildly colored, spongy masses. Birds share trees with crabs -- both of which snap and hiss at each other --- and the undersea life is perpetually hunting and consuming itself in a raw, unapologetic display of brutal natural competition.

The Colorado foothills, on the other hand, seem almost bereft of animal life. The craggy, wide open spaces are heavily shaded with tall, conical firs that burst up from brown, pine-needle carpeted forest floors. Hills crest randomly in every direction, and hard, rocky peaks push up from underneath the soft earth into magnificent boulder-scapes that breath a lonely, forlorn air and an almost alien dignity. Rivulets of melt-water, lightly dazzled with flaking fool's gold dust, stream between each foothill. Icy and smooth, they run gently, inexorably downhill in soft, mirror bevels and babbling torrents of pint-sized whitewater. The views are stunning. Each boulder strewn peak offers a breathtaking panorama of dark, fertile, forest-green hills dissolving into the purple mountain-scape that juts over the horizon. Golden eagles soar effortlessly a mile above, piercing the quiet air periodically with their intense, iconic screech that seems to foreshadow a high-noon shootout.

A few more weeks of hiking and camping and I'll be headed back to the soggy, oppressive heat of Florida. To the sharks, the incredible reefs, the quiet, relaxing getaways to solitary islands, and the raucous, piercing honks of great blue herons disturbed out of slumbering mangrove thickets.

Once back in Florida, it'll be time to start building plans for the end of the summer, cross my fingers, and try my best not to worry about the rest of you-know-what.