Lonesome Dove

And the pursuit of wide open spaces

The epic journey of a couple of Texas Rangers and their cowhands navigating the challenges of the Great Plains to drive a herd of 3,000 cattle from the Texas-Mexico border to the unsettled, unknown, unpopulated promised land of Montana. That’s how I’d sum up the book Lonesome Dove in a sentence. I’ve never been into westerns as a genre, in movies or literature or music, but this book hit deep and has me craving the frontier of the Wild West like I never have before.

Times have changed since that era and there isn’t much land left that a human hasn’t been on at some point, so I’ll settle for personal exploration. Something about the solitude of wide open spaces, the excitement of the unexplored, the potential for great risk or great payoff is calling my name right now. We’ve wiped out most of the bison and I can’t just steal a bunch of Mexican cattle and run them all the way north to Montana these days, but the search for greener pastures in Lonesome Dove and each character’s unique motivations for taking part in the journey have inspired me.

The entire Wasatch is feeling small, crowded, boring. Been there done that. I’m linking more biking with running now. Cycling into places where parking would be tricky, dumping the bike in the bush, changing into running shoes, and taking off from there. That’s scratching a little bit of the itch, but I think it’s time to check out some completely new ranges, places I don’t have the time and energy to bike to (even though that would be sweet).

Who can guess this range/peak? This is what I want more of.

I’ve been poring over maps recently, flipping my normal habit of seeking out heatmaps in new places to guide my routebuilding, and instead focusing on areas with as few heatmaps or beta as possible. I’m in a phase where I’d gladly trade beautiful convenient popular peaks for faraway exposed scree hills that haven’t seen a human footprint since whatever mine used to be there went dormant 80 years ago. Where there isn’t a town or person or car in sight. Where a rattlesnake bite might be fatal, but the thrill of discovery will certainly make me feel alive.

I’ll report back soon.

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