1972 - Buffalo Creek, Colorado

The following is a memory from my childhood.
1972 - Buffalo Creek, Colorado.

Wood smoke hung in the loft air like a ghost, the same ghost that had haunted the cabin since the 1920s. Old man Jenkins at the general store down the road liked to tell anyone who'd listen that our summer place was built by some Hollywood outfit. "They'd come up here to shoot pictures in Buffalo Creek," he'd say, tapping his cigarette against the counter. True or not, I believed it completely at twelve.

We didn't make it to Colorado every summer, but when we did, everything felt like slipping into a familiar dream. My bed, if you could call that iron-framed torture device a bed, sat tucked under the sloped ceiling of the open loft. Each night I'd burrow deeper under the pile of scratchy wool blankets and faded quilts, until morning came and Id lay there watching dust particles dance in the sunbeam from my tiny window, postponing the inevitable until someone hollered, "Breakfast!"

Then came the mad dash, flinging off covers, my naked skin prickling in the mountain chill, yanking on jeans and whatever t-shirt wasn't too dirty. Downstairs meant the smell of real food, not the cereal we ate at home. Cast iron pans sizzled with potatoes and bacon, pancakes stacked like poker chips, eggs with yolks the color of sunset. After washing dishes, I'd stuff my backpack with treasures, pocketknife, compass, sandwich wrapped in wax paper, my small spiral notebook, and disappear into the wilderness for hours. Looking back now, it's strange how nobody worried about a kid wandering those mountains alone, as if the pines themselves had promised to keep watch.

The mountains had always been my kingdom. At twelve, I was a conqueror of wilderness, the kind of boy who'd return triumphant with a garter snake coiled around one wrist or pockets bulging with interesting rocks. I'd dam streams with stones and sticks, scale pines until their tops swayed beneath me, and leap between boulders that adults would circle cautiously. Nobody today would recognize this version of me. This summer, confident in my knowledge of the familiar trails, I pushed beyond my usual territory. The abandoned quartz mine appeared like a secret I'd been meant to find. A pre-war dump truck sat frozen in its final parking spot, rust blooming across its hood like a slow-motion sunset. Scattered around were piles of crushed stone, aquarium gravel, I figured, dyed in unnatural shades of crimson, cobalt and emerald that sparkled when kicked.

I picked my way through this forgotten industrial site, climbing higher toward whatever waited above. The Colorado sun beat down, turning the air hot and thick against my skin. Without thinking twice, I stopped and unlaced my sneakers, then peeled away my t-shirt, jeans, and underwear. Each item went neatly folded into my backpack. Shoes back on bare feet, I continued upward, a wild creature in his natural habitat, just doing what explorers do.

Nakedness in the wilderness felt right; perfect. The silence wrapped around me like a second skin, while pine-scented air filled my lungs with each breath. I'd press my palm against a granite boulder, its surface polished by millennia, and imagine its journey, carried by some ancient glacier, deposited here long before humans walked these mountains. My fingers would trace the constellations of mica, the galaxies of quartz, the continents of lichen spreading across its face. "Where were you before?" I'd whisper, as if the stone might answer. The towering pines received similar confidences. I'd circle their massive trunks, neck craned to follow their reach toward the sky, wondering if anyone else had ever truly seen this particular tree, had noticed the amber tears of sap frozen mid-drip, or the precise pathways of ants along its furrowed bark. These silent sentinels had weathered centuries of blizzards and droughts, had stood unmoved as empires rose and fell. And here was I, a bare-skinned boy, briefly joining their timeless communion, a fleeting visitor in their enduring world.

The trail flattened as I crested the rise. There, impossibly, sat a white camping trailer, an old International wagon parked beside it like a faithful dog. The sight stopped me cold, human intrusion where only wilderness should exist. I hung back, not wanting to announce myself. Then he appeared from behind the trailer, a man about my father's age in a plaid bathrobe that hung loose and open. The mountain breeze caught the fabric, spreading it wide from his body, as he moved across the hard-packed earth on bare feet.

I'd glimpsed plenty of naked men before, family members, swimmers at the Y on men's night, but this was different. He had no idea I was watching. Something electric ran through me, a mixture of shame and fascination I couldn't name. I knew I should leave, yet remained rooted, my breath shallow, heat rising beneath my skin. The forbidden nature of this moment, my maleness responding to his, held me there until he finally disappeared back into his trailer, releasing me from my trance.

Somehow, his presence shattered the spell. The mountains had been mine alone, a sanctuary of pine-whispered secrets and ancient stone wisdom. Now human footprints marked my sacred ground.

I tried returning to those places the next day, and the day after. I stripped down and pressed my palms against rough bark, waiting for that familiar communion. Nothing came. Two years earlier, I'd lost my sexual innocients to adult male. But this was different, not the loss of childhood innocence, but the slow dissolution of magic. It was like Jackie Paper abandoning Puff, how dragons slip away when we stop believing. I still hike naked sometimes, feeling sunlight and wind against bare skin. But I can't hear the mountains speak anymore. The boy who knew their language has gone silent too.

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