Mary Alice of the Rockies

Mary Alice of the Rockies

It was a beautiful Saturday morning in July when Amy pulled her rental car into the parking lot of a place named Alice, Colorado.  Once a teeming community known for gold mining, the burg was now virtually a ghost town with such a sparse population that the U.S. Census Bureau didn’t even consider it a separate entity.  You would never have known that today, however, because the lot was packed.  Luckily, there was one space left in the very back, so she parked there, grabbed her backpack, heavy with water bottles, sunblock, and energy bars, and opened the door.  

After tugging on a pair of hiking boots, she walked to the port-a-potties and ducked inside for a pee.  Next, she stuffed a five-dollar-bill into one of the designated envelopes, and after dropping it into the collection box, returned to her car to affix a parking permit onto the windshield.  Then, with a shaky breath, she crossed the road and headed up a rocky path where a plethora of people walked alone, or in couples, or as families with children, or even as dog owners who would never consider going on a trip without their faithful pups.  Even though she had read that the site was popular, it was startling to process the number of tourists milling around.  After all, she’d only learned of the attraction because her father had asked her to go there as a favor to him.  He’d been on his deathbed, so of course she agreed, then put it off for so long that it became a revolving New Year’s Resolution.  

A person lost the desire to eat when dying, or at least that’s how it seemed to Amy as she listened to her father struggle for breath as if he were snorkeling through quicksand.  Patrick Casey had always been a hardy man, gifted with an appetite for dishes that dripped with golden butter, hid under fluffy clouds of sour cream, or luxuriated in oceans of milk gravy.  In the last few weeks, however, his priority had changed from coddling his taste buds to inhaling oxygen. His perpetually round gut had melted away as the flesh on his face shriveled like a baked apple left too long in the oven.   As Amy’s gaze trailed down the shrunken arms, thin and shaky as limbs on a newborn foal, to the skeletal hands that clutched and released the bedding with each painful gasp, she thought how ironic it was that her father’s lavish diet had wrought virtually no damage whatsoever.  Even though his cholesterol levels intimated good health and his strong heart rat-a-tatted like the drum in a jazz band, however, he was dying.  The congenital pulmonary fibrosis that he’d gotten the same way he might have inherited baldness, was turning his lungs to stone, as if a diabolical villain were pouring cement into his lungs.

Letting go of life is hard work, and the chore left Patrick with little energy to do anything else.   Thus, Amy was surprised when he released the blanket and, raising his hand, motioned her closer.  She bent toward him, her strawberry-blonde color a muted version of his former dark red hair, and whispered, “You all right, Dad?”  She realized the question was ludicrous under the circumstances but didn’t know what else to say.   As a child, she’d been delighted that she’d inherited many of her father’s traits but mourned the fact that it didn’t include eye color.  He had heterochromia, with one green eye, the other blue, while hers were just a boring light gray.  Now, his hair was a jarring white and his gaze rheumy, revealing the battle that was sucking him dry.  She leaned in even closer to hear, and he uttered an odd request.    

After her sister arrived to take the night shift, Amy hurried home, only stopping long enough to pick up a fried chicken sandwich from KFC.  She had become the single mother of two young children when her husband had walked out to live with a hippie-wanna-be who had been born two decades too late.  Raising the kids alone had been difficult, so when her youngest finally went away to college, Amy sold the house along with most of the furnishings and moved in with her parents.  She’d still been there when her mother had died the year before and would probably remain there after her father was gone.  After eating her take-out, she walked purposefully into her parents’ bedroom, took her mother’s jewelry box down from the chest of drawers, and upended it, dumping the contents onto the bed.  Stained black and decorated with beautiful oriental geisha holding variegated shades of orchids, the box was a foot wide and played the aria of Madam Butterfly when she raised the lid.  Although it had once overflowed with glittering beads and burnished metal, there wasn’t much in it now. The good necklaces, lapel pins, rings, earrings, and watches had been divided among the females in the family, and all that remained were a few pieces of costume jewelry that nobody wanted.   

Amy swept the clutter aside, sat down on the bed, and used her fingers to search the floor of the box for a hidden door, or panel, or anything that suggested the presence of a secret compartment.  Unsuccessful, she thought about giving up, then noticed that the raised section which held the music box seemed unusually large.  She started pushing and tapping on it, and suddenly, one of the sides popped open exposing an indentation which held a small rock.  Realizing this must have been what her father wanted, she took it out and began examining it.  Approximately the size of a marble, and consisting of black and white granules mushed together, the stone didn’t look particularly special.  Why, then had her parents treated it as if it were pirate’s booty?  After pondering the matter for a few seconds, she acknowledged that their decisions weren’t any of her business, dropped the rock into her purse, showered, and went to bed. 

When Amy got to the hospital in the morning, she was surprised to find her father awake waiting for her.  She sat down in the bedside chair, removed the rock from her purse, and held it out to him.  Although his breathy stutter had worsened overnight, he grasped the prize with shaking fingers, blinked his approval, and handed it back.  “Go to Alice,” he gasped, “and return it to Mary.”    He had died that night.

To be fair, at first Amy had legitimate reasons for not doing as her father asked. There were legal and personal matters to take care of in the days and weeks that followed his death.  It was harder to justify why it went undone for as long as it did, however.  As the years passed, she gathered anecdotal data from family members. It seemed that her parents had taken an extended trip out West when they first got married and came back telling some unbelievable tale about climbing a glacier in Colorado.  When the relatives scoffed, they had displayed a small ugly rock as proof.  Because her mother and father were honest people, no one accused them of intentionally lying.  Instead, everyone assumed they were just mistaken. 

As time passed, Amy’s guilt over her failure to fulfill the promise grew unbearably heavy.  Thus, she finally went on the internet one Christmas Eve to try to untangle the confusion about where her parents had gone that summer and what they had actually seen.  She was surprised to find the answer within a few quick swipes of her mouse.  Using the keywords glacier, Alice, and Mary, she was relieved (shocked?) to discover that her mom and dad had been right all along.   There actually was a glacier in Colorado that was located close to a defunct mining town named Alice.   It was called St. Mary’s Glacier and was located in the Arapaho National Forest, just a scenic hour’s drive from Denver. According to various websites she read, the town sat at the trail head of a path that led to a clean clear body of glacial run-off water known as St. Mary’s Lake. Farther up the mountainside was a snowpack known as St. Mary’s Glacier.  She didn’t see any explanation about the rock, however, and made a New Year’s Resolution to find out.

Four years later, Amy finally got around to actually carrying it out.  After doing more research, she spent the next few months reserving Greyhound tickets to Denver, arranging for a rental car, figuring out a route to the park, purchasing things she would need to make the trek, and attempting to get in shape for what the websites said was a glorious hike.  Then one early morning in mid-July, she took an Uber to the Greyhound bus terminal in Louisville, Kentucky and twenty-some hours later was driving up I-70 through the beautiful Arapaho National Forest. From there she would exit onto River Falls Road which would take her to Alice, Colorado.  With the GPS pulled up on her phone and the rock growing ever more insistent in her purse, Amy began to feel an excitement that gave her such a sense of lightness, even the heavy traffic could not squelch it.

She had done a lot of reading about the region and wanted to peek around while passing Idaho Springs to view the various attractions that had been dedicated to the long dead mining mogul, Charlie Taylor.   Although his fame hadn’t spread worldwide, he had been a man of great importance in the area, with successes celebrated all over the town: buildings that he built, mine shafts that he dug, and, most curiously, a huge water wheel he had constructed to process the gold that was mined from Ute Creek.  One place the man had not fashioned, however, was Bridal Veil Falls, a breathtaking waterfall that plunged past layers of rocks before crashing into the sparkling water of Clear Creek 600 feet (0.18 km) below. 

She also noted the breathtaking landscape where clumps of trees divided the brittle layers of the mountains like whipping cream separating layers on a wedding cake.  At the lowest level dainty leaves of white-barked aspens floated in the air as if sprites were tossing handfuls of enchanted confetti.  Then, as the pavement climbed higher, Rocky Mountain Maples took over, their gold-chartreuse leaves bursting across the landscape like a supernova.  Finally, at the highest levels, where the air thinned like the smoke of a dying fire, pine and fir trees raised their heads seeking oxygen as they stood at attention like faithful soldiers in uniforms of crushed emeralds.        

Although her original intention had been to climb all the way to the summit, by the time Amy got to St. Mary’s Lake, which was about halfway, she began having second thoughts.   Most websites described the first part of the trail as an easy venture up a gentle incline with some rocks to navigate around.  This had led her to anticipate a relaxing walk under a brilliant cerulean sky surrounded by a thick meadow of lush grass sprinkled with a multicolored rainbow of wildflowers.  She quickly found her perception had only been half right.  The landscape was indeed beautiful, but the trail was rougher than she’d expected. She'd already turned her ankle twice and feared a fall might cause her to break a leg since her bone structure was very petite. Another problem was that the body of water sat at an elevation of over 10,000 feet (ca. 3 km) and she had to keep slowing down to catch her breath.  Thus, instead of continuing on, she decided to stop at the water, which was clear enough to see small fish darting around on the bottom. Gasping for air, she pulled a cobalt and black checked picnic blanket from her backpack, unfurled it, and spread it on the ground.    

Amy spent a few minutes envying the more adventurous hikers. They had no difficulty crossing the footbridge, crossed a trickling steam, and ascended the slope to the long strip of snow that formed the glacier.  Although she'd miss the panoramic view at its summit, she could enjoy watching people snowboard and ski down the side of the mountain.  The sun’s rays were strong enough to burn in practically no time, but occasional frigid blasts of wind acted as reminders that the environment demanded respect. Even though the snowpack as dangerous as the ice structures in the Arctic, it was unforgiving. Those who insisted on playing around on the ice or wandering off the trail could be seriously injured, lost, or buried under an avalanche. 

Remembering her father’s request, Amy reached into her purse and extracted the stone.  Under the sun’s pulsating light, it was shot full of fiery flashes that came from crystals which were embedded among the other minerals.  Even though she now understood why her mother had considered the bauble a treasure, she still couldn't comprehend what it had to do with the glacier.  Why was she here?

As a fit looking middle-aged man walked walking by on his way down the mountain, he happened to see what she was holding.  He stopped, tilted his head, and said, “You know you can’t keep that, right?”

Though his tone was accusatory, Amy was excited for the chance to speak with someone who could help her out.  “You know something about this rock?” she queried. 

“Sure, it’s diorite.  There’s a lot of it around Alice.”  He held out his hand and Amy placed the rock in his palm.  “Look at that lady dance,” he said, admiring the stone's shimmer.  “You know,” he went on, “this material is exceptionally hard. It’s even been used as black granite.” 

“You mean like in kitchen counter-tops?” Amy, who had never been any kind of rockhound, asked with growing interest. 

“No, more like for ornamental entrances to ancient buildings.”  He held the stone up to study it more closely. “European cobblestone streets and the steps of St. Paul’s Cathedral in London were also made of diorite, but it isn’t used as much today,” he finished, returning it.   “Well, I got stuff to do, but I just want to admonish that when you go,” he said, pointing to the stone, “that stays here. The park adheres to Leave No Trace principles which means you don’t leave anything behind or take anything away, not even a plain…little…rock. The park should look the same when you depart as it did when you arrived.  Enjoy,” the man called over his shoulder as he walked away.

Amy watched his silhouette grow smaller until he was out of sight.  Then turning back to the rock in her hand, she smiled finally sure what her father had sent her to do.  Being someone who read the newspaper from front to back every single day, Patrick Casey was always up on the latest news including changes in ideas about the environment.  On the day her parents were here, they’d probably been sitting together, maybe in the same spot where she was now.  When her father noticed the flirtatious rock preening in the sunshine, he would have picked it up and handed it to his wife as a memento that would never degrade.  Then years later, as scientists pointed out that even the smallest impact on the environment could cause irrevocable change, he’d begun to feel guilty and promised himself to correct the mistake.   

He’d sent Amy to do just that, but it was up to her to figure out how.  She couldn’t just lay the stone down where someone would see it and pick it up to carry away.  And even though the glacier would be a perfect hiding place, she’d never be able to climb there.  That left only one option.  Struggling to get up from the hard ground, she stretched the stiffness out of her joints, limped to the edge of the lake, pulled her arm up over her head, and threw it, hard.

That night as she lay in her room at the Holiday Inn, Amy felt better than she had in years.  In one fell swoop, she’d corrected her parents’ misstep and fulfilled the only New Year’s Resolution she’d ever made.  The next day she’d board a Greyhound for home, then would start fixing up the house and put it on the market.  It was time for her to break out of the holding pattern she’d been trapped in for so long and build memories of her own.