Hiking the CO-X, at the Sherbino in Ridgway

Join India Wood for wild stories about backpacking her own route along a 1,500-mile X across Colorado. Be inspired by one woman’s solo adventure and hear her observations of this state as a square sample of our planet.

Join India for a showing of the short “Diagonal” documentary, slide show, and stories about backpacking the Colorado X, a walk no one else had ever done. She was a 50-something empty nester, unfit, her career and marriage falling apart when she decided to learn to stand on her own two feet again. The first NW diagonal pulled her toward her wild teen self who found a dinosaur near Maybell. The second SW diagonal proved her mettle in the San Juan Mountains, a place of lost hikers and cannibals. Along the way she rediscovers her mom’s strength as she explores places like Silverton, Rico, and Dolores that her mother chronicled in the 1970s. Ranchers help India “go diagonal,” offering friendship, places to hike and camp, and a deeper understanding of private vs. public lands and the sustainability of ranching. India’s journey challenges her with wrenching loneliness, poison water, Cascade Creek hypothermia, and a Vail bear with a nose for chocolate.