Diego’s Imagined Diary Crossing Into Colorado in the Early 1700s
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An imagined diary can tell a kind of truth that a map cannot. A map names rivers, ridges, distances, and borders made long after the traveler is gone. A diary names thirst. It names fear. It notices grass bending under a horse’s mouth and bread turning hard in a saddlebag.
What follows is not a recovered manuscript. Diego is a fictional voice, a young Spaniard from Toledo, imagined as part of a small group crossing into the land now called Colorado in the early 1700s. This land was not empty, and it was not waiting to be found. Indigenous peoples knew its rivers, seasons, animals, trails, and dangers with a knowledge far deeper than any European newcomer could claim.
Still, I believe a story like this has value when it stays honest about what it is. It lets us stand near an ordinary human being at the edge of the unknown and feel how huge the world must have seemed. This is Diego’s Imagined Diary Crossing Into Colorado in the Early 1700s, written as it might have been written, full of dust, cold, homesickness, wonder, and bread.
A note written before the first entry
I write these words as Diego, though Diego belongs to imagination. I give him ink, hunger, a small knife, a horse with tired legs, and a memory of Toledo so bright that it hurts him.
I also give him limits. He does not understand all he sees. He is young. He carries the habits and pride of his world. He may call things new that were ancient to others. That is part of the truth, too.
The land will not explain itself to him. It will only receive him.
Day One
We crossed a line today that no one could show me.
There was no wall, no gate, no carved stone, no church bell to mark it. The captain said we had entered a country spoken of by guides and men who repeat stories beside fires. I looked down and saw only grass. Gray-green grass, short and stubborn, moving in the wind like the backs of animals.
If this is a beginning, it begins quietly.
The plains stretch farther than the mind wishes to travel. In Toledo, a street bends, a wall rises, a tower interrupts the sky. Here there is nothing to stop the eye. The land runs away from us in every direction. I feel as if God has taken the world and pulled it flat.
We rode until the leather under me felt like a punishment. My horse lowered his head often. The others spoke little. Even the men who always laugh seemed careful with their voices, as if too much sound might offend the emptiness.
At noon I ate a piece of bread so hard I had to hold it in my mouth and let it soften. I thought of bread at home, warm and torn by hand, and of my mother striking my knuckles when I reached too soon. I would accept the sting again with gratitude.
Tonight we sleep near a low place where water gathers in the dark soil. It is not a river, only a seep, but we treated it like treasure. We filled skins. We washed dust from our lips. One man crossed himself before drinking.
Water has no crown, yet all of us bowed to it.
Day Two
The wind woke before we did.
It came over the plain with no tree or building to break it, and it searched every blanket. I had dreamed of Toledo, of stone warmed by sun and the Tagus curving below the city. I woke with my teeth clenched from cold.
Cold here does not knock. It enters.
Before dawn, the stars were so many that I felt ashamed for never noticing how poor the sky is above a city. They burned white and hard. Some seemed close enough to strike with a thrown stone. I thought of sailors trusting stars upon black water. Here we sail grass.
The captain says we must keep to the direction given by our guides, toward streams that come down from the high country. I have not yet seen this high country. I have begun to doubt it. The plain teaches doubt because it repeats itself so perfectly. Grass, dust, sky. Grass, dust, sky. A man could travel for days and believe he had not moved.
We found tracks near midday. Not ours. Not deer. The guide studied them and said little. Later we saw smoke far away, a thin mark rising and disappearing. No one rode toward it.
This land is not silent because no one lives here. It is silent because we do not know how to hear it.
That thought followed me all afternoon.
Day Three
Today the mountains appeared.
I first thought they were clouds. Dark, motionless clouds resting on the edge of the world. But clouds soften and change. These did not. As we rode, a white line showed along the top of them, bright as scraped bone.
Snow.
I have seen mountains in Spain, but these seemed less like land than judgment. They stood so far away and still filled the whole future. I felt joy, then fear, then a smallness so complete it was almost peace.
Some of the men shouted when they understood what they were seeing. One laughed like a child. Another removed his hat. I could not speak.
The plains had been endless enough. Now the earth had lifted itself into walls.
All day the mountains grew without seeming nearer. It is a strange torment to ride toward something that refuses to arrive. The sky above them was a blue I have no word for. Even the horses looked up, or I imagined they did.
By evening we came upon better grass. The animals tore at it greedily. I watched their mouths pull life from the ground and thought of how little separates courage from a full belly.
Our supper was beans, a strip of dried meat, and bread. I saved a crumb in my palm. It looked like a stone from home.
Day Four
We reached a river today.
I will not write its name because I do not know it, and because naming a thing too quickly feels like taking possession of what has not offered itself. It ran clear over stones, cold enough to hurt the fingers. Cottonwoods stood along it, their leaves trembling as if whispering news from upstream.
After days of dry travel, the sound of moving water made us foolish. We laughed. We knelt. We filled every skin and pot. One man soaked his feet and cursed from pleasure. I washed my face and saw, for a moment, a stranger in the broken surface.
My cheeks are darker now. My lips have cracked. Dust sits in every seam of my clothes. I am younger than many of the men, but I feel older than I was when we left the settlements behind.
The captain ordered care. Rivers give life, but they also choose paths for others. Animals come. People come. Weather follows water. We made camp back from the bank, among low brush, where the horses could graze.
I walked alone a short distance before sunset. The ground was damp near the river and gave under my boots. I found a patch of grass shining with drops and knelt to touch it. Grass is humble in Spain. Here it seemed like an answer to a prayer.
I miss Toledo most when I see beauty. That surprises me. I thought hunger would do it, or cold, or fear. But beauty opens a door and home rushes through.
The river kept speaking after dark. I did not understand a word, yet I was glad of its company.
Day Five
This morning frost lay on the saddles.
The men rose stiff and angry. We cursed the cold as if it were a person who had wronged us. My hands shook so badly I could not tie my satchel at first. The captain said we must move early, since the weather from the mountains changes its mind quickly.
The mountains were clearer today. I could see folds in them, shadows, ravines, long slopes of dark trees. The snow above them did not melt in the sun. It shone with a calm that made our whole party seem temporary.
We followed the river for part of the day. In places it widened and shivered over gravel. In others it cut deeper, hiding itself between banks. Birds rose from the reeds with sudden wings. Once we saw a herd of animals far off, dark shapes moving together. They seemed to belong to the plain more than stones belong to a wall.
By midday, the silence had changed. On the open plain, it had been wide and empty. Near the river, it was full. Water, leaves, hooves, tack, breath. Small sounds appeared and vanished.
I began to think silence is not the absence of sound. It is the space where a person learns his own measure.
At supper, I shared the last of a small round of bread with Martín, who had ridden beside me since before we crossed into this country. He told me he dreamed of wine. I told him I dreamed of Toledo. He said wine was more useful. I said Toledo contained wine. We laughed so hard the captain told us to sleep.
For a moment, I was warm.
Day Six
We saw signs of people again today.
A place where a fire had burned. Cut reeds. A mark on a tree. The guide studied them with great care. We spoke softly after that. I felt the old fear return, but also shame at the fear. We are strangers here. If someone watched us from a ridge, what would they see? Men with metal, animals, hunger, and prayers. Men who say they travel in the name of king and God, yet still depend on unknown hands to point the way to water.
The captain does not like such thoughts. He prefers certainty. Many men do. Certainty sits well in the mouth. Doubt must be chewed.
In the afternoon, clouds gathered over the mountains. Their shadows moved across the plain faster than we could ride. Rain fell in long gray curtains to the north, but none reached us. We could smell it, though. Wet earth, sharp and clean.
That smell nearly broke me.
It reminded me of streets washed after rain, of mule carts, of the cool breath inside churches, of my father’s cloak when he returned home damp in winter. I turned my face away so the others would not ask why my eyes watered.
Tonight the stars are hidden. The sky is low. We have tied the horses close.
I keep touching the little cross at my neck. I do not know whether I ask for safety or forgiveness.
Day Seven
The storm came before dawn.
Rain first, then hard pellets of ice that struck the canvas and our hats like thrown seeds. The horses pulled at their lines. One nearly broke loose. We stumbled in mud, shouting over the weather, grabbing rope, packs, pans, anything the wind tried to take.
By sunrise it had passed. The world looked newly made and badly used. Water stood in hoofprints. The grass flashed with light. The air smelled clean enough to drink.
My blanket was wet. My boots were wet. My bread was wet.
And still, I felt wonder.
A soaked crust of bread is a poor thing until it is all one has. Then it becomes breakfast, mercy, and proof that the body still continues. I ate slowly. I watched steam rise from the horses. I watched the mountains clear themselves of cloud. Snow had fallen lower in the night, whitening slopes that yesterday were dark.
The land changes while we sleep. That frightens me more than danger. A man can face an enemy if he sees him. But how does one face a country that remakes itself between one prayer and the next?
We rode only a short distance. The ground was heavy, and one mule went lame. The captain was angry, but anger does not heal a hoof. We stopped early near a bend in the river.
I spent the evening scraping mud from my boots with a stick. Such a small task. Such a necessary one. I thought then that history, if anyone writes it, may speak of routes and claims and grand purposes. It will forget the mud. It will forget how much of discovery is just trying to keep one’s feet dry.
Day Eight
I woke missing the sound of bells.
No bell calls the hours here. Time is made by light, hunger, distance, and cold. The sun rises, and we move. The sun falls, and we hope to have found water. The body becomes a clock.
We climbed a low rise today and saw the plain behind us. It spread out pale and immense, crossed by the thin silver of the river. Our tracks were already fading. Wind and grass were erasing us.
I felt a strange comfort in that.
We think we mark the world by passing through it. Often the world suffers us for a moment, then closes over the mark. Yet I know we will not leave unchanged. The land may erase our tracks, but it has written itself into me.
I can no longer imagine distance as I did before. I can no longer think of water as common. I can no longer see a piece of bread without seeing a whole chain of hands, soil, rain, grain, fire, and hunger. I can no longer look at stars as decoration. They are witnesses.
Tonight, I sit with my journal on my knees. The ink thickens in the cold. The men breathe under their blankets. The horses shift and crop the grass. Above us, the sky has opened again, crowded with stars.
I think of Toledo. I see its stone, its narrow streets, its doors, its familiar shadows. I ache for it with a pain I would not trade away, because it proves I belong somewhere.
But this place has begun to make a claim on me, too.
I do not know what men will call this land in years not yet born. I do not know where borders will be drawn, or whose names will be praised, or whose will be forgotten. I only know what I have seen: plains without end, mountains like a command, rivers that save the living, nights so cold they make pride useless, and a sky large enough to humble every king.
If we continue, we will be changed. If others come after us, they will be changed as well. Some will come with hunger. Some with ambition. Some with prayers. Some with violence. Some with hope. The land will receive them all, but it will not remain small enough for any one of them.
This country will change everyone who walks it. It has already changed me.
FRANCO ARTESEROS:::...
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