Sun's Out, Buns Out

Well it’s been a few weeks and I’m afraid I’ve left my two or three avid readers chomping at the bit for more news from Colorado (Hi Grandmom!). So what better way to quench your thirst than with a tall, cool tale of hippies, nudity, and sleepaway camp. Or perhaps… a hippie nudist sleepaway camp? Crazy talk, you say? Nonsense! The stories are all true, and it has a name: Orient Land Trust. The OLT, as the local tweakers call it, lies 4 hours south of Granby and was a mining town on top of a mountain in the 19^th century. Just before the Great Depression, it was shut down and abandoned… that is, until a clairvoyant group of thermal-pool-hugging hippies saw the land as the perfect location for their nudist colony. Thermal activity beneath the mountain creates Jacuzzi-esque temperatures for six different natural pools scattered about the mountain. The best part? The pools all look 40 miles out onto the valley below. The even better part than the best part? Nudity is not only allowed, it’s encouraged. In fact, you’re more likely to receive a judgmental stare if you are wearing clothes than if you aren’t. And since there is already a fair amount of judging and staring going on at this place, we felt obliged to conform. The entire property is like the Garden of Eden, except only just after eating the forbidden fruit: you’re still naked and immersed in nature, but you’re entirely aware of how awesome the combination is. And the forbidden fruit is Busch Light.

I’ll begin our story of reaching this clothes-free Mecca (so not really Mecca at all) with proof that God controls all animals. You see, we were crunched for time on the road, and even though we had Dale Earnhart Beall Jr. behind the wheel, we were slated to get into the park after the gates to paradise closed. At our most distraught moment, stuck in a no passing stretch behind a Subaru Outback going 20 mph under the speed limit, divine providence revealed itself in the form of a stupid deer. Before our very eyes, this deer stood at the edge of the road, looked left, saw a car, looked right, saw our car and the Outback, realized how desperately we needed to pass it, and leaped out into traffic. The beast was clipped by the oncoming car, spun 5 times in the air, and then hurled itself towards the Outback, shattering both the windshield and its vital organs simultaneously. The whole scene lasted 2 seconds, but was so close that we could see in mid-air that the deer’s eyes had already glazed over. It was the perfect combination of THIS and THIS.

Now any heartless, egocentric person would have immediately pulled over to check on the Outback and deer. But not us. No, we knew that Stanley (as we later named him) had sacrificed his earthly body so that we could get to Orient Land Trust. So rather than selfishly making sure everyone in the accident was okay, we ensured that Stanley had not been martyred in vain and selflessly passed the damaged Outback without hesitation. Needless to say, we poured one out for our homie later that night, but only after having made it to the gates with 10 minutes to spare.

The next morning we would witness many more terrible bodies. Now I hate the idea of forming a wrong first impression of someone’s personality, which is why I rely entirely on judging people by their looks. It’s much easier that way. So needless to say, I had a field day at the OLT. Take the Hugger for example. This was a man, not much younger than 60 and not much heavier than 260, who would wander the camp aimlessly, awkwardly forcing free 30-second-long hugs onto anyone within a 15 foot reach. Naked. Most of the people we met clearly went through a fat kid phase—and then never grew out of the phase. I’m just lucky my mother was far too embarrassed to take any family photos of me during my fat kid years. Thanks to Mom’s forward thinking and adamant refusal to let me in the Christmas card photo, there is no evidence. We adroitly evaded many nude characters like some sort of naked Frogger game as we made our way up the mountain and relaxed in the natural hot tubs overlooking the entire valley. We spent the day pool hopping and enjoying the perfect weather, and Charley even exploited my amply exposed skin to lay down perhaps the greatest five-star of the 21^st century.

As the sun began to set, our second reason for trekking to the OLT came to center stage: bats. Two hundred and fifty thousand bats, to be exact. They make their way up from Mexico to summer in the extensive, abandoned mine shafts, and at dusk and dawn ever day, they erupt from the cave to chow down on the bugs in the valley. We waited outside the mouth of the shaft, and just like veteran showmen, they kept us waiting. But once a few hungry bats took a peek outside, the floodgates were broken and thousands of bats came soaring out of the mouth of the cave just mere feet above our heads. I felt exactly like Bruce Wayne in his bat cave, except without the amassed fortune, social prestige, martial arts skill, bravery, or sense of moral purpose. The whole scene lasted nearly half an hour and was truly a sight to see—unless you were a bat, in which case you probably couldn’t see anything. As the sun continued to set over the valley, we hiked back down and started the long journey home.

It’s safe to say a lot of personal barriers were broken on this trip for Charley, Andrew, Lindsey, and me. But our pilgrimage to the OLT was deemed a success. And as we drove home, we could only agree that it would be best if the outside world never found out about that little paradise… and for that matter, it would be best if the people from the Orient Land Trust never found out about the outside world.