So what is this all about anyway?
Short answer: a place to read the ramblings of a fellow who is ETERNALLY GRATEFUL for the fact that he is fortunate enough to live in the Rocky Mountain West.
Absaroka Dreaming
LONGER ANSWER. My name is Charles Clayton. I grew up in a small town in Colorado called Fraser. It was cold and the winters were too long. Way too long. Well into the month of May too long. The town had a ski area and all its horrible trappings, but it also had real cowboys that worked on actual ranches, and loggers who cut trees for the sawmill at the edge of town, and plenty of stoned ski bums and/or drunken rednecks, many who were parents of my friends. Colorful characters to say the least.
My friends and I fished, hiked, rode our bikes, threw rocks at trains, played baseball on a gravel field, shot small animals with .22 rifles, built elaborate forts and snow caves, and roamed freely all day long and often well into the night, pausing only to come home long enough to grab a quick dinner and a sweatshirt, for summer nights at 8,550 feet elevation were always chilly, even in July.
Years later, during a decade of exile in Southern California, I stumbled across some life changing music and books, and began traveling around America, especially that glorious chunk between the Pacific Ocean and the Great Plains known as the American West. Eventually I began packing a cheap camera and writing things down in a journal, and later, crafting some of that raw material into essays and the occasional poem. This website is a collection of some of my snapshots and writings about the Rocky Mountain West and beyond. Hope you enjoy it.
If you like this, you may also enjoy my blog for the Mountain Gazette. It is called "Pagan Parenting" and can be viewed here.
I am also part of a monthly Taos Writer's Collaborative called Postmodern Petroglyphs which can be viewed here.
Like the rest of you, I love reading books, and you can view and comment on my reading list here.
Everything on this website is copyright 2012. Feel free to share and use my words and images for non-commercial purposes, but please be kind enough to link to this site.
