Learning to fly by Matt Crossman

LEARNING TO FLY

GEAR UP FOR: Paragliding on the beach GET OUT TO: Oregon Coast WITH SIDE EXCURSIONS TO: Explore Cape Lookout

State Park; see cheese made and eat samples at Tillamook Cheese Factory; visit nearby Cannon Beach and Seaside PERFECT FOR: Daredevils and risk takers with a competitive spirit, general lust-for-lifers and bucket-listers

Y PARAGLIDING INSTRUCTOR WAS

a philosophizing German named Maren Ludwig. As she prepared to send me careening down a beach along the Pacific Ocean, she told me the glider was my dance partner and I should move with it, and as I look back on it now I bet if she had ever seen me dance she would have unstrapped me from the paraglider’s harness and told me to try 130

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something that involved a level of coordination I could handle, like standing or sitting or breathing. Alas, she didn’t know what she didn’t know. We faced each other as Ludwig held the paraglider’s lines to help get the glider aloft. Air filled the glider, pulled the lines tight, and lifted it into the sky. That upward motion tugged at my core, by which I mean my groin, by which I mean: What kind of dance is this? Ludwig told me to waltz a few steps backward, pirouette 180 degrees, and do a lizard run down the dune. Well ... she didn’t say lizard run. But that’s what I call it. When I was in college and my friends and I had spent a long evening, um, studying at the library, we sometimes would “lizard run” on the way home. To lizard run, you first find an empty parking lot. Then you throw your arms far out behind you, bend over at the waist, and run. Why we called that a lizard run is lost to history, but that’s exactly COWB OYS & I NDI ANS

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what the instructors told me to do to take off when paragliding. The main difference between paragliding and lizard running is that I was sober when I was paragliding—whoops, I mean, hadn’t been studying at the library. The lizard run in college revealed the perils of youthful freedom manifesting themselves in a dark parking lot. The lizard run on the beach in Oregon revealed what I imagine running on the moon would be like while someone was simultaneously giving me an atomic wedgie and pulling my arms clean out of their sockets. As I lizard ran down the beach I felt, um, how to put it ... epically stupid. Ludwig had told me not to fight the glider because I would lose. She told me I should go where it took me instead of trying to force it to go where I wanted to. I followed her instructions, and as a result I ran like I was in a hurricane. I started to wonder if I was being catfished when I realized my feet were no longer on the ground. I soared, and so did my confidence. I caught enough air that my fellow paragliding students behind me applauded. I can’t remember the last time anyone who isn’t one of my daughters cheered for me for anything. I was light, I was free, I was flying, I was — WHAM! — face down on the beach. The consequence of not fighting the glider was that when it turned down and to the left and slammed to the ground, so did I.

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AINFUL AS THAT FIRST ATTEMPT AT FLYING

was, in a way, it was exactly what I had signed up for. I spent a weekend in May in pursuit of speed and adrenaline alongside a group of action-sport athletes, adventurists, and fellow journalists at a camp on the coast of Oregon that had been transformed into a “pop-up five-star campground” and dubbed Hotel Tacoma (after the pickup) for the Toyota-conceived occasion. I ate a lot, they drank a lot, and we all crashed a lot. We all wanted to be the Road Runner. But we performed like Wile E. Coyote. Or I did, at least. I took it as a sign of the weekend’s awesomeness that there were three ambulances onsite at all times. Nobody ever needed them — except for me when I sliced my finger open shooting a bow and arrow. I could have used them at the beach, too. Like an unattended baby rolling off of a bed, I kept landing on my ribs. One of my many crashes was impressive enough that a fellow newbie using my phone to record me seemed genuinely thrilled to have captured it. He was so excited for me to see it that he didn’t notice I couldn’t catch my breath. We did far more lizard running than paragliding, but we kept trying and lauding each other’s attempts, hapless though they might have been. Louie Vito’s raspy voice was the loudest in cheering everyone on. He is an Olympic snowboarder, and he was genuinely happy whenever anyone got airborne. But he also told Ludwig he wanted to beat my air. Let me say that more explicitly: The professional snowboarder, who spends his entire 132

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life trying to fly high, was openly jealous of how much higher I got than he did. Full disclosure: It wasn’t very high. But that’s not the point. The point is I got higher than the Olympian, and that drove him a little crazy. His burning and publicly declared desire to out-air me turned the paragliding lesson into a discussion about the meaning of success, of what we should strive for, and what we should be content with. As Ludwig walked backward on the sand, holding Vito’s paraglider lines, she told him being jealous was no way to live his life. Vito strutted across the dunes, the cocky walk of an athlete who doesn’t care how high he jumps, as long as it’s higher than everybody else. She told him he shouldn’t compare himself to others; he should try to be the best Louie Vito he could be without regard to anybody else’s accomplishments. His eyes rolled so far into the back of his head they popped back up in the front. He told Ludwig that he wanted to win in snowboarding and Monopoly and eating contests and he’d race you to the bathroom and he dang sure wasn’t going to let anybody get higher than he did. Important note: He didn’t wish I went lower. He wished he went higher. Wait — I did mention that I got more air than he did, right? Ludwig pressed her point until she had him completely strapped in and it was his turn to lizard run again. He waltzed, he pirouetted, he ran — alas, as hard as he tried, he couldn’t touch my air that time or on any other attempt.

MORNING,

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managed to roll out of bed, pack my things, and make it to breakfast, all of which took twice as long as normal because every step sent searing pain across my ribs and back. My inner thigh looked like it had been hit with a whip. But that precious sensation of floating, of defying gravity, of feeling untethered, made it worth it. I told Vito about my pain, and he 134

seemed to think it was worth it, too, because he told everybody who would listen that I got higher than he did. I let him do so without interruption. They all laughed as I recounted how badly I broke myself. It’s funny how funny pain is when it’s somebody else’s. But even I had to laugh at the cartoon physics that played in my head as I imagined what I must have looked like gliding through the sky then plummeting like Wile E. Coyote to earth. — Matt Crossman

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really true or not, but tonight, under the influence of mountain air, starry skies, and the Old West lore of the “fallen angels,” miners, trappers, and cowboys who built and frequented the place back in the day, it’s true enough.

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Champagne and rosé I had for dinner and the whiskey after that, the altitude of 8,600 feet, the time change, or all of these elements combined, the next morning I can’t sleep past 4:30. So I get up, slip on my Ugg boots, and walk to the dining cabin to make myself a double espresso. Or I try to. I would make a quad, even, but I can’t figure out how. My greatest challenge might not be hiking a nearby mountain or fly-fishing for the first time, but mastering the coffee machine. I spread out my yoga mat next to the centuries-old Turkish rug on the floor of Dolores and for the next hour salute the sun until it finally comes up. I have coffee, the real kind. I eat some of the best granola ever while sitting on the deck of Dolores, while watching a family

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The Urban Cowboy fire pit ($1,695) can travel with you and provide a handy place to cook or warm your hands. COWBOYCAULDRON.COM 138

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a buzzing, raucous spot, and the town grew to 300 inhabitants. But as the mines emptied, so did the cabins. By 1918, Dunton was a ghost town. Today, Dunton’s once again booming, but in a different way. The Pony Express building is now the spa, and the town’s saloon is now a dining hall with an inviting open kitchen. There’s also a library filled with books for guests to borrow, on topics ranging from art history to popular fiction. The rest of the cabins are scattered around the property’s acreage, looking — on the outside at least — very much the way they did when they were first built. While it still feels rustic here, it’s also quite refined, as I find out the first night of my stay when I go to a Champagne reception near a tepee, where hors d’oeuvres include speck and soppressata

from nearby James Ranch. Dinner, which follows in the main cabin, once a dance hall, is imaginative and local. A yellow and red beet salad with mandarin segments and herbed goat cheese from Jumpin’ Good Goat Dairy from nearby Buena Vista, paired with a 2015 Sutcliffe Vineyards rosé from nearby McElmo Canyon; a crispy duck breast with blueberry gastrique for the main; and a light ricotta cheesecake with a brownie crust and salted caramel for dessert. Before I go back to Dolores, I pop into the saloon for a nightcap, taking a seat at the bar, where, carved into the wood with a pocket knife in large letters, it reads “Butch Cassidy + Sundance.” The story goes that the pair stopped in for a drink after they robbed their first bank in Telluride, in 1889, where Sundance was living at the time. No one knows if it’s

of geese on the bank on the other side. The mom eats and feeds the babies while the dad keeps watch. They eventually make their way along the side of the river, tiptoeing carefully along the edge so the babies don’t fall in. There’s a hike right behind the main cabin, an easy two-hour loop up the mountain with trails marked “Fall” or “Winter.” I try winter, but there’s been so much rain and snow lately that the trail is either completely covered with water or muddy, so I go back. I see two deer on my way down. When they notice me, they disappear, swiftly leaping to safety among the trees without making a sound. There’s another trail nearby, the 1.25mile Geyser Spring trail, just down West Dolores Road, in the San Juan National Forest. It’s easy, mostly flat, and leads to a sulphur geyser, which your nose will guide you to as much as the trail. The rottenegg smell intensifies as I get closer, and in this way it’s not unlike Old Faithful at Yellowstone National Park, but it’s very much unlike it because this geyser is tiny, about the size of a hot tub, which, with a temperature of 82 degrees, it sort of is.

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This afternoon I’ve signed up for flyfishing. I have never fly-fished, but I have cat-fished with my grandfather using a bamboo pole baited with a piece of chicken skin, and waited for hours while iridescent dragonflies lit upon the water’s surface. Fly-fishing is a whole different deal. Part of the adventure is apparently the donning of the outfit itself. After several tries and try-ons, I’m in waders up to nearly my shoulders and clunky rubber boots that swallow up my feet and legs. And so, with my own personal guide at my side, on an S-curve of the Dolores just down from my cabin, I stand in the mud on the riverbank and learn how to flick the rod just so in order to release the fly so it’s airborne before its delicate fall into the river. There’s been so much snow and rain this year, the river’s full and muddy. The water is brown rather than clear and my guide tells me that the fish can’t see the lures, so we probably won’t catch anything, anyway. When he suggests we cut this adventure short an hour later, I can’t get out of my waders fast enough. Besides, I don’t want to be late for my appointment at the Pony Express spa for an hour-anda-half lavender massage. That evening, I have dinner in Dolores, because as much as I like the main cabin and the outlaw bar, I don’t want to get 140

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out of my robe. You can pretty much do anything you want here — take naps, read, go on walks, ride, fish, or whatever else — and there’s someone to help you do it. I thought it would be nice to have a little light dinner so I ask for a bowl of soup. Here’s what I got instead: corn soup with roasted chanterelle mushrooms, topped with roasted corn kernels and ricotta with thyme and chile oil. Housemade focaccia with a drizzle of olive oil on the side for dunking. A chunky heirloom tomato and feta salad with green olives and a light lemony vinaigrette. Plus, a dessert that my description cannot do justice to, so I’m just going to say that maple caramel sauce, some ice cream, and an apple cake were involved. Oh, and I ate it all.

WEEK

BEFORE

arrived, Jared Leto was here. So were Natalie Portman and her husband, Benjamin Millepied. Penelope Cruz and her sister before that. Celebrities come here for the same reasons we all do: for privacy and tranquility, with a little adventure on the side. Day hikes. Fly-fishing. Mountain biking. Skiing in the winter. Horseback riding in not winter. All followed by soaks in the property’s natural hot springs, six pools of reddish waters laced with iron,

manganese, and lithium. But there’s something more about Dunton’s appeal, and it’s hard to pinpoint exactly, but it has to do with the unique spirit of the place itself, the West itself, the tamed/untamed wilderness itself. It’s something that you can’t replicate, because what makes Dunton special is where it happens to be in the world — in the shadows of these three magnificent mountains and adjacent to a national forest that goes on for miles — and the unique combination of its Old West heritage and New West elegance. It manages to be so comfortable that when you first walk into your cabin, like I did in Dolores, you feel like you already belong here, and the place is completely yours, whether you’re lounging on your comfy bed waiting for your second dessert to be delivered (not that I would know anything about that), taking a walk in the forest among the fluttering aspen, or throwing one back at the bar in the spirit of Butch and Sundance. From where I sit on my riverfront deck with coffee in hand and ducks in view, the West has never been so welcoming. —Ellise Pierce Dunton Hot Springs: 52068 County Road 38, Dolores, Colorado, 877.228.4674. duntonhotsprings.com

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