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I've lived here in Colorado for most of my life. Except for a four years in college in Arkansas and a short time in New York, I've known no other home but Colorado. When I was younger, we used to go up to the mountains frequently. We would hike, camp, fish and do all of that outdoorsy stuff that gives Colorado any significance. For some reason, the mountains of Colorado have always just had this sort of unique feeling — almost like a certain odour or aura — that only exists there. It can't really be described in words.

Some friends of mine got it in their head to make a trip up to the mountains with everyone. What was supposed to be everyone ended up only being three people — a number that didn't include myself. I pretty much figured that I wouldn't be able to get off of work in time to make it up to the mountains.

As luck would have it, the triple-digit heat here in Denver caused our work place to shut down all of the electrical equipment. This pretty much meant that we were free to go. That being the case, I decided to head up to the mountains.

I went home to pack. I then took the bus all the way up to Nederland, Colorado. Nederland holds a special place in my heart. My aunt used to live up there in a quaint, rustic cabin with a beautiful pond out in front. The whole town itself is just a beautiful place to see.

My original plan was to hike down the highway to the campground where my friends were at. A local hippie woman stopped and asked if I was trying to get a ride. I turned down the offer which I realise now that I shouldn't have done. I misjudged the distance to the campsite.What would have been a ten-minute drive down the highway turned into over an hour-long expedition. Eventually, I got picked up by a man named Spencer. Spencer was from Scotland. About ten years ago, he came to visit Colorado and fell in love with the place and moved to the other side of the pond. Regardless, what would have been another half hour of hiking turned into a four-minute drive.

I arrived at the campsite where we pretty much devoted the rest of the evening to good conversation and firemaking. Little did we know that the next day would be quite eventful.

Indeed, the next morning, we drove up through Nederland to the place that we were going hiking. However, the road was closed due to an accident, so we had to wait until the road opened up again. Since we were right there, I convinced everyone to take a little side trip into Ward.

Really, the only thing that the town of Ward is known for is for being a hippie town. Let me explain: Boulder, Colorado is known as being a liberal stronghold. People in Boulder think that people in Ward are completely out in left field. This town is a place for social misfits and outcasts that just don't fit in. The best way to describe Ward would be to call it a junkyard. Indeed, there were abandoned, rusting vehicles everywhere.

The others were worried that they were going to be attacked and killed in this creepy mountain town. I kept reassuring them that they're hippies, and hippies don't kill people; they love them and give them flowers. Apparently, there was confusion between rednecks and hippies. Rednecks listen to country/bluegrass music; hippies listen to Jimi Hendrix, DMB or Phish. Hippies are dumb because of drug abuse; rednecks are dumb because of inbreeding. The two groups are fundamentally different, and I couldn't understand why anyone would get the two confused.

After a bit of driving around Ward, we drove up and hit the trail. We took the Brainard Lake trail up to a lake that was apparently fed by a glacier. The scenery was enchanting. Again, it was that aura that just exists in the mountains of Colorado that makes it magical.

The whole way up the trail, we were cracking hippie jokes. Mostly, our source was the South Park episode where Cartman tries to kill all of the hippies in town that decide to start a hippie-jam-music festival. I must interject here that I really don't have a problem with hippies. In fact, I kind of like them. The others joked that I fit in too well up there. Indeed, I'm rather partial to the hippie crowd. The Lord knows that my taste in women is indeed the save-the-planet/cure-the-disease flower child. Combine that with the sweet, adorable church-girl stereotype, and I'm set.

We then started to make the trek back to our campsite, but we needed some supplies first. We stopped at a trailhead where the others had previously discovered a cache of chopped firewood. We “commandeered” the firewood. While there, we came across a bus that had been completely stripped. It reminded me of Into the Wild. I couldn't help but see the similiarity in that we were both two vagrants by choice going off into the wild country without the means to do it. We stopped in Nederland to pick up supplies. I got to the checkout counter and discovered that behind the counter was none other than the same Spencer that gave me the lift down the highway and thus helping my ordeal. It was an incredible coincidence.

We went back to our campsite and chilled. The campground was crowded as it was a summer weekend. We eventually let another family share our campsite. However, the campground ranger didn't take to kindly to that. Since all we were doing in the morning was packing and taking off, we decided to pack early. Despite the fact that temperatures in the city were reaching a hundred degrees, it got really cold up in the mountains. We decided to just skip the last night and spare the cold.

We made our way back to my old hometown of Broomfield, Colorado where I picked up my car and headed home after the best weekend that I'd had in a long time.