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Vail is a different kind of Colorado town. Or maybe it’s the trend toward which the state has been evolving for awhile. I mean, there’s still the mountains and the improbably blue skies, organic diapers and walnut barley muffins. The local coffee-slash-book store still brews only free trade coffee from Politicallycorrectistan, and you can find the works of Maya Angelou in the Classic Books section. But if you look a little more closely, there next to Mother Earth News in the magazine rack is…really…the Financial Times. It’s then that you look around the coffee shop and see more earnest looking types than you used to, people who look like they have something more to do than just drink coffee.

You see eyes like those in Philadelphia and Dallas – the eyes of the businessmen and women trying to see around the next enterprising corner. Conversations are quiet and sincere, possibly revolving more around the raising of capital than shooshing through powder. Vail is becoming more than a ski resort town. Business names infer the infusion of software expertise, electrical engineering, and the global economy. And if the preponderance of the challenger’s political signs over the incumbent’s means anything at all, Vail is on the verge of another boom.

I’m passing through, however, and have embarked upon a much-ballyhooed fly fishing weekend. How many shades of green and brown comprise a Colorado autumn? Deep green of Aspens, dusty green of sagebrush-in-training for the dusty brown of tumbleweed. Copper plumes of rock spew from the openings of long defunct mines. Dead, pale grass merges with the soft yellow of maple leaves, all accentuated with the stark white of the frequent stand of birches. Rolling in an old pick-up through the towns of Rifle, No Name, and Buford. I’m in search of the right section of the White River that will reveal shin-deep water swirling around rocks and boulders smoothed by its relentless passing. A place to set up camp and a fire to cook a slab of trout or a bit of pork I’ve brought if my skills fail me, as they very often do.

No matter, though. I love Colorado and how its inhabitants and wildness welcome visitors. It’s going to be a cold night – in the 20’s – and I’m depending on a new sleeping bag, but first the rod will be strung and the ugly waders pulled on, and my eternal optimism shall be brought to bear upon the little pool beyond that riffle of water over there…

This entry was posted on October 21, 2012 at 8:28 pm and is filed under Travel with tags colorado fly fishing, rifle colorado, vail colorado, white river colorado. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.