Best Summit Hikes in Colorado
By James Dziezynski
There's an ages-old saying: "Do what you love and you'll never work a day in your life."
Thinking back on the year I took to write my first book, Best Summit Hikes in Colorado I find that mostly to be the case. The times I spent hiking, mapping and taking pictures in the beautiful mountains was "work" in a conventional sense; never once did I daydream I was somewhere else or wish I was doing something else. Truly the hardest part of the endeavor was enduring the blazing hot temperatures in my non-air conditioned 1989 Honda Accord. I was also on an extremely limited budget; what was originally supposed to be a paid two month sabbatical in the mountains became unlimited freedom with no paycheck as the company I was working for, Hooked on the Outdoors, went out of business in March of 2006. At several instances in the project, I had every reason to turn around or quit or simply delay the whole thing until life stablized.
And yet, I remained undeterred. If there's one thing I've learned is that our dreams have a certain shelf life we need to be respectful of, lest they spoil. Writing a book is what I've always wanted to do--or shall I say, writing a meaningful book. Something that adds to the overall human experience. I kept that as my mantra as I spent 90 days climbing over 85 peaks, then retreating into my cocoon and spending 5 months writing, editing, mapping and creating the final product.
I am extremely pleased with Best Summit Hikes in Colorado because I know that every step of the way I gave it my best and never took any shortcuts. There's a lot of material that you won't see in the book such as alternate routes, bad trailheads or mountains that simply didn't make the cut. And yes, in some ways the timing was awful... no income, no cool 4x4 to tackle the gnarly mountain roads and a very modest advance that was primarily spent on a new alternator in the desert of Utah.
But before anyone else could call me a professional writer, I had to hold myself to those standards. So I ate PB&J for an entire summer. I rode my old mountain bike up rocky dirt roads to trailheads. And in essence, in simplifying the process I was able to better focus on the task at hand. Like most challenges in life, I had a million excuses not to start. To invoke yet another wise saying,"The journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step."
So from the time I set foot on the familiar Amphitheater Trail in my hometown of Boulder to tackle hike #1, Green Mountain, to the final step as I exited in a shower of golden aspen leaves at hike #50, East Beckwith Peak outside of Aspen, the story between is the substance of this book. It's been condensed, compressed and edited so that while you may be following in these footsteps, the story you live is going to be uniquely your own--and I hope you love every step of the way! 