Recovery has been a while but out I am gently allowing my body to regain some of it's strength and endurance. I can tell you one thing, loosing a lot of blood really affects one. Muscles don't work so well when you are short on blood. There was a lot of resting, eating good foods and moving slowly. I am amazed at how much I lost in my conditioning I have been doing over the last 8 months. I decided to head out for a short 5 mile prairie walk, thinking it would be fairly flat and fairly easy. Well, that is not what happened.
First let me tell you a bit about this place I picked for my first walk. Cathy Fromme Prairie Natural Area, known as a jewel of the high plains, is an excellent and rare example of how the Colorado Front Range looked before it was settled. The rolling terrain, wetlands, and grasslands support a variety of plants and animals. The shortgrass prairie landscape, consisting of prairie dog colonies that attract a healthy raptor population – golden eagles, ferruginous hawks, rough-legged hawks, red-tailed hawks, and Swainson's hawks – also supports a variety of other wildlife. Horned lizards, ground-nesting songbirds, butterflies, rabbits, coyotes and rattlesnakes can also commonly be seen.
As I entered the park their were many warning signs and directions on safe travel through the prairie. The signs primarily focused on rattlesnakes. Now, I don't know about you but for me rattlesnakes mean run, run as fast as you can in any direction they are not facing and don't stop until you are in the next county. As I contemplated the intelligence of walking among rattlesnakes I saw the second sign. "If your are bit please follow these directions. 1. Lay down, don't move. 2. call 911." I stopped right there. My mind shouted, 'If I am bit please lay down! Not on your life, that dude may want to finish me off if I just lay there and hand myself over to him.' Anxiety grew about the intelligence of this decision to walk in a prairie full of rattlesnakes after losing so much blood.
I calmed myself by reading about the prairie and it's history. It was telling me that this land had not been plowed or changed in anyway since before the area was settled. It has been preserved. The thought of walking on ancient land that had not been altered by man since the beginning of time excited me. I don't know what I thought I would see but the feel of the ancient land sounded beautiful to me. I imagined the swaying grasslands, an occasional flower, made all the more special by it's scarcity, sun beating on me as it did when the settlers walked west and the mountains, The Rockies. They reached for the sky leaving me as a dot in the middle of this big open grassland. The pull of being in the midst of such untouched beauty dragged me onto the trail. I settled for the middle of the trail hoping for more room to jump if I saw a rattlesnake. The kind thing the city did for all of us hikers, and I want to inform you here that most of the other people were on bikes - maybe they knew something I didn't, was to pave the trail and mow, very short, the grass on the sides. It helped.
I cautiously walked out into the fields, eyes surveying every inch, at the ready. Soon the majesty of the area took over and I no longer paid any attention to the possibility of snakes. The trail wove up, down and around and the sun grew hotter and hotter. Turning back towards a settlement the trail wove up.
Then back toward the valley with the mountains framing the future.
Thanks for staying around and sharing my life experiences and my prep for this great 500 mile walk next year.
Buen Camino
b
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