It was a great weekend in Western Colorado. Sunshine. Crisp air. Small towns. Big mountains. Public lands. No rangers. Narrow roads. Few guardrails. No cops.
In the first minutes of our trip on I-70, a state patrol pulled over someone in front of us. After we turned off at Minturn, we saw no law enforcement for the next three days. None.
Frivolously, like many other Coloradans out this weekend, we drove gawking and forest-bathing through the spectacle of aspen turning color. We camped outside Leadville, then again up near Independence Pass; hiking, biking, then looping back high over two rugged, remote 4×4 passes to return. We reveled in our freedom and sense of security without contemplating it much.
Did we fear being out? There was talk of bears, signs about bears, bear sign. We know bear-country etiquette. In all my years sleeping in tents across the rural West, I’ve only ever been fearful of other people. So, when I woke at 1:30 a.m. the first night to loud rummaging nearby, I was more concerned when I discerned it to be the contract workers doing USFS work returning to their tent next door–clearly drunk, slamming truck doors, loudly swearing, one ranting belligerently to no one. It was a relief when ten minutes later, the three passed out in the wall tent yards away without my saying a word. The disturbance of the peace was brief, and impersonal. The campground host had mentioned them to me earlier in passing. By seven a.m. I was having coffee as the three of them piled back into the pickup, quietly heading back to work. In the pre-dawn light, I felt a warm kinship. They reminded me of folks I worked with on construction sites and my old neighbors, rough on the outside, unpretentious hard-working and kind. They made me grateful.
I was less understanding of those in the camp on the other side of us who seemed to feel the need to tell fireside stories about their lives at full barroom volume. They ignored norms, the posted signage, as well as a couple kindly hints from me. I thought they were high schoolers, but my wife noted that one drove a new black Porsche SUV. She recited some of their talk about work, dating and dealmaking from which she picked up that they were young professionals from Denver. Neither party’s behavior rose to the need for law enforcement. Both were rude. Such is the nature of getting along. Sometimes one just abides and moves on the next day. It was interesting that I found myself immensely more forgiving of the behavior of the un-showered construction workers over the self-centered city-folk.
The thousands of people we encountered in the high country were mostly well-behaved, mutually respecting laws, signage and norms of behavior for living around others whether driving, recreating or camping. Even with more people out there than ever before, tourists from many countries, people from across a diverse state and “locals,” my impression of the weekend was that people peacefully coexisted while recreating their own way.
Noon on Saturday we rounded a curve near Twin Lakes. I had a flashback to the trooper from the day before. As we approached, an old cruiser at the bottom of a hill, sure enough had a light bar. I looked down to check my speed, but when I looked back up, it was clear that the old car was manned by a uniformed dummy. Welcome to Twin Lakes, a rural concentration of vendors, parked cars haphazardly lining the road and pedestrians. The dummy was a creative reminder to be aware and behave. I happened to know that neither Lake County, which provided the car, nor Twin Lakes could afford much real enforcement, but I got the message and behaved accordingly, as did others. I slowed down.
Though far from the law, it was hard to miss the abundant forms of thin blue line stickers and paraphernalia. The Twin Lakes dummy was not exactly enforcing the thin blue line between chaos and civil society. Were the stickers an indication that citizens were prepared to do so? I had an uncle who was a beat cop in New York City who said the 1981 movie Fort Apache, The Bronx was his reality there. Officers surrounded by hostiles in his precinct, reminiscent of the Old West. His stories didn’t make me nostalgic for the city or that version of “the west.” I’ve thought about him a lot these past two years. He was the one who explained the original Thin Blue Line idea to me – that police, and their presence, in fact, their aggressive enforcement provided the thin blue line that separated our civil society from violent chaos. As a kid, that sounded grandiose. That was long before I understood the racial overtones of that thinking as I do now. Even then, I knew the police can’t be everywhere, and it was a mutual agreement to norms that allowed us to interact peacefully more than a threat of enforcement. I chose to be trusting. I still do.
Ours is an unsettled time. All weekend, I fell into a sneaking need to identify friends or foes which I hadn’t felt in prior years. It was small things; incivilities at camp, the ubiquitous use of cultural identifiers, many prompting what others might perceive as microaggressions. Perhaps my Toyota 4Runner and Patagonia clothes were cultural identifiers which separated me from some folks. What was I projecting? A large motorhome parked in the tent area instead of with the other RVs had a generator cycling on and off all night. There was something hostile in the way it hoisted a disproportionately large American flag with a light on it all night long in the otherwise dark campground. A decade ago, a rare American flag at a camp would have been a sign of benign patriotism usually from a retired Vet. Now it seems to be wielded as a tribal symbol —its’ own “wedge issue.”
Desecrated, modified versions of the flag with blue or other colored lines are now merchandized everywhere. Though I am apparently not in that tribe, I think I perceive their meaning. A neighbor across the road from us in our upscale neighborhood flies a thin blue line flag just below the American flag. In the culture “wars” in which protesters clash over whether the country is a nation of laws or has racist or unjust practices to remediate, practically everyone seems to feel slighted. Those with the thin blue line apparently support the police, or the law. Except like on January 6th when they didn’t. Images from Black Lives Matter, Proud Boys, Defund the Police, Make America Great Again taken together seem to highlight an erosion of much that used to bind us. Symbols have been hi-jacked and take on different meanings, and people seem to feel the need to show allegiances or act-out—even on a beautiful fall day. There was a truck with a ranching flatbed that coal-rolled tourists down the main street in Leadville 3-4 times in the hour we were there. Maybe this wasn’t intentional. A decade ago, I would have just thought to myself, what an old truck, the muffler needs repairs. Now I ask myself if exhaust fumes constitute political speech.
This weekend, we shared Western Colorado with thousands of people. It was for the first time in 30 years of doing so that I was aware that there were no police, only us citizens out there. Non-sequitur fact: the months of 2021 set a record for firearm sales, up 34% from the previous record set in 2016. Mostly, folks we encountered were considerate and “law abiding.” We locked the car although roadside break-ins are few in rural Colorado.
I’m not sure I saw any laws broken that would have prompted a response from law enforcement. And yet, I couldn’t escape the sense of something broken. Perhaps it was the social fabric, the norms. As with camping, there are norms for encountering others on a two-track 4WD road. One nearest a safe wide-spot yields, allowing the other to pass. Mirrors are often tucked in. In passing, both acknowledge each other with a raised finger—the kind one—keeping both hands on the wheel, and in passing give eye contact to confirm everything is ok. Fewer people adhered to the last two norms this weekend than I EVER remember, which slightly heightened my sense that someone just might just NOT stop if we needed help 30 miles from nowhere. Would they check on our tribal allegiance first? Mostly, I still think they would stop anyhow. This weekend on back 4X roads it was about 50/50 on those who acknowledged passing, irrespective of their apparent cultural allegiance. There were a lot of newer $50,000 Toyotas out there too, with all the overland gear whose drivers seemed completely oblivious to being among other people. Are we becoming strident in our sense of self-reliance? I think it is strange when we can’t look each other in the face when we pass–drivers side to drivers side—and slowly just a few feet apart while rock crawling around each other. What a strange time when we will drive miles to look at leaves but can’t look at each other.
When I first came to Colorado I lived near Hotchkiss, which also had a cruiser (with the big single light on top) at the bottom of the hill with a mannequin. I was a city kid picking fruit with a Mexican crew and I never felt unwelcome anywhere I went. I thought I found Mayberry. I went on to move to Lake City, where the schools, groceries and most provisions were 60 miles away in Gunnison over exposed curvy, deer-infested roads without shoulders. It was common to only see one or two cars on that drive. People in that community (and I don’t use the word lightly) were sharply divided over many earthly matters, and congregated separately. There were old hippies escaping society, people escaping another life of drugs, marriage or law-breaking. People there were intensely private. There were hard-partying workers, transplanted Texans and Californians and religious fundamentalists there to create their own heaven on earth – and yet, ALWAYS people waved or nodded in passing (except in February when everyone was depressed), and to a person they would stop to check if someone else appeared to have trouble, EVERY ONE of them would stop to check on the well-being of the another if there were reason to suspect an issue. We were clear that as different as we were, there would come a time when we would need someone else and we wouldn’t have a choice who that was or what circle from which they came.
Back then, we understood that the thin blue line that separates us from chaos wasn’t the law, or some dummy in a decommissioned cruiser, or even the police, especially not our our tribe—what separates us from chaos is what we choose to see that binds us, our common humanity.
