I went to Colorado pt 1

I had a strange experience. I took a trip to Denver, Colorado because I couldn't take my job anymore and I quit it. But I chose to go to Colorado specifically because it was a place I was interested in moving to. I saved up just about 1400 dollars and took my 2001 Toyota Corolla 1000 miles from the unabashed heat of the LA area to the mild, somewhat chilly at night land of Colorado. It was a bit of a misadventure.

First, I feel like I aged a few years just by taking this trip. This was the first time I really had to rely on myself. I felt the fear of death when I set up camp alone on the Vermillion Castle campground in Utah. It was a naive start that day as I drove through the I-70, graced by the illumination and comfort of the sun. Playing my music, pulling on my weed vape, smoking cigarettes, enjoying the majesty of the surrounding nature racing past me. In modern grandiosity, I saw great mountains and thought, oh how beautiful, what a paintbrush god has. It was immaterial brush, immaterial desert. But that first night, I learned to respect nature for what it really is: a beautiful, generous, yet powerful and punitive force.

I arrived at the campground at around 5 pm. I set up my tent and went exploring. Just forest. No one around for what seemed like maybe a few miles. I didn't go for too long a hike because I didn't want to get lost. So, I don't really know the scale of the place. But it seemed quite big and empty. I had a compass, and thank god I did and was paying enough attention to the directions I was going because I would have been lost without the compass. I managed to make it back to my camp. I learned a lesson there: pay basic attention, make basic accuracy. Pay a lot of attention, make a lot of accuracy. Anyway, what I did was navigate my way back to the road, several yards from my camp. So, as you can guess, I was paying basic attention. Good enough this time, as it turns out.

So I got out my stove and threw some food into the pot to heat it up, leftover dinner from home, and ate it up. I smoked and read this book I was reading and then decided it was time to sleep. I set up my bag in the tent and relaxed. The sun was starting to go down. Little critters started to stir and the wind started to blow. And a particular gust of wind got on my last nerve. It interacted with my tent in an unusual way. It sounded, looked and felt like someone lined the tarp hanging of the tent in an arc-like fashion. It just seemed to have such a human presence. I laid there kind of frozen for a second waiting for the psycho murderer to pounce, defensless and terrified. I thought to myself: fight or flight. And so I found my courage and opened the tent door and poked my head out. Nothing. Then, leaving my shoes, I ran to my car like a coward. First I flashed a light into the back seat and under the car to make sure there were no traps waiting for me. All clear. I went into my car and locked it. I had a stun gun in the jacket which I left in my car. I grabbed it and sat there, shaking. My mind went to some weird places. I found the horrifying scenarios that would explain why still nothing happened, even if something still would. Like maybe it's a team of psychos with masks and chanting who wanted to make me afraid first so that they could sacrifice me to their pagan gods or something. Yeah that's it. They're going to let me stew in my car with the fear they caused by their man who touched my tent. Then when I've calmed down, they'll begin their ceremony. With their evil, demon masks, they'll start banging on my car and make me come out to try and fight them off with a stun gun, nothing but a toy really, or they'll break the windows and pull me out. After that? Hey, your guess is as good as mine.

I knew deep down it was just the wind, but the fear would not go away. Forget this, I thought. I'll just power through the night and drive to Colorado. Fuck sleeping. When I get there, I'll just stay at a motel like a normal person. I debated leaving the tent. I listed off the property loss in my head. I'd lose a 30 dollar pair of shoes, a tent, a sleeping bag, an insulation matt, that book, a lighter and 3/4 a pack of cigarettes. Oh and some toilet paper. Okay, I can live with that, I figured. But no. There was nothing out there. Somehow, I still couldn't bring myself to go back to the tent or even to sleep in my car. But I turned on my headlights, brought my stun gun, and packed up my stuff. Then, I left and got back on the I-70, disappointed in myself.

There's more, but I'll tell the rest of this story another time. This is quite long already.