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CLICK ON THE PICTURES TO READ EACH STORY
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Colofornia
(sung to the tune of Green Acres)

Colorado is the place to be.
Ranch livin' is the life for me.
Land spreadin' out so far and wide,
Keep Aurora, just give me that countryside.

I use Aurora here because it fits (especially if you have ever been to Aurora), but you can insert the name of any Front Range city. I met a guy from Fort Collins at a party last summer. His name is Wrecks. Someone told me it's actually spelled Rex but he prefers the former. His family homesteaded a small ranch in what is now the heart of the city's south side. As recently as the '70s the street at the end of their driveway was dirt. Now it's four lanes of asphalt and the family homestead is a housing development. So are all of the surrounding ranches for ten miles in every direction. That's how fast the prairie is being transformed into city. Now, I'm not going to launch into one of those diatribes against development filled with dire predictions and scary statistics. Everyone needs someplace to live. I do think that Colorado needs a coherent policy to manage growth -- one that does not create a big new bureauocracy or inordinantly escalate the cost of housing. If I knew what that was I'd probably be governor, but I don't and I'm not. That's not what this journal is all about. It's about how this superurbanization is changing not just the landscape, but the people themselves.  Read More . . . .

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Maunamoku and the Stone Giant

Over the years I have told many stories about Colorado that reach back before my time and, often, before the time of the white man. I like these stories most but they are difficult to research, seeing as how the Europeans and white Americans who came here cared little about them and did little to preserve them. One such story is the Arapaho myth about Horsetooth Rock west of Fort Collins. I have heard bits and pieces of it for years and finally think I have enough scraps to sew together into a story. When the first whites settled around Camp Collins, as the town was known then, they looked up at the mountain and decided the rock on the summit looked like a great, stone tooth -- a horse tooth.  And I suppose it does. So the name stuck. But the Native Americans who lived here had a different name for it, and for the valley that lies beyond the mountain. The valley was called the Valley of Contentment and the mountain, well, it was called the Stone Giant.   Read More . . . .

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Donald and the One Tree

So, I heard this story some time ago, a long time ago actually, about this guy named Donald Currey. I forgot his name soon after I heard it, as so often happens with me and names, but I have never forgotten the story attached to it. Then, in my wanderings through the infinite expanse of the world wide web one day last week, I ran across it while searching for something unrelated, and I couldn't resist passing it along to you. If you have heard it before I apologize, for it is a part of the legend and lore of the conservation movement and has been told thousands of times over the last few decades. It is about Donald and his trip to Nevada's Wheeler Peak in 1964 and the one tree he encountered there. It is also about how we should never allow the government to act as sole trustees for our natural heritage and to recognize that it belongs to us as citizens and not to the bureaucracy that manages it. That's the moral of the story. I mention it here at the beginning because the moral of this story is not really the point of the story. But, now, on to the tale of Donald and the One Tree.   Read More . . . .

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In the Back of a Lexus

Toward the end of the last century I used to joke about how the Star Trek world envisioned by Gene Roddenberry was coming into being even as we watched. And, indeed, with the exception of space travel (which we have seemingly chosen to abandon in favor of more shortsighted earthly pursuits) much of the world we live in today looks very much like the one Spock and the boys inhabited. Except they were supposed to have lived in the 23rd century and we have barely scratched the surface of the 21st. Today's cell phones look exactly like Kirk's communicator, even to the point that they flip open. Kirk, however, didn't get pictures with his and I'm certain it didn't have voice mail either. Then there's PDAs, touch screens like the one the nurse used, and smaller versions carried around by half the corporate world. They are exactly like the ones all those red-shirted crew members on the Enterprise kept handing Kirk and Bones to look at or sign their name or whatever. And flat screen computer monitors, once only found in Star Fleet, have now descended from the heavens onto every desktop in America. I could go on and on; microwaves, digital cameras, satellite TV and radio, the vast Internet, all connected wirelessly with Blue Tooth and OnStar and such. My iMac even talks to me when I do something stupid. I don't talk back very often.   Read More . . . .

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Jack Slade and Virginia Dale

Virginia Dale is in Colorado, but her heart is in Wyoming. If you've ever been there you know what I mean. For Virginia Dale is not a person, she's a place. And the fact that the Wyoming border is several miles away makes no difference to Virginia. She's as much Wyoming as any place on Earth. You know this as you drive up route 287 from Ted's Place toward the State Line Cafe. Even the most dyed-in-the-West Coloradan will see that this landscape belongs to that state up north. It has a sharper, almost prehistoric, look. Ancient mesas and blood red rimrock stand guard over places like Tie Siding and Phantom Canyon, where tall grass prairie gives sheltered home to pronghorn and bison and -- outlaws. Well, perhaps the outlaws are gone, like most of the buffalo and Indians, but their ghosts linger on the top of Robbers' Roost and here, in the rock and the forest around Virginia Dale.   Read More . . . .

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The Look

They say power corrupts. In the case of the Great Plastic Electric Empire we all live in, power addicts. We are all addicted to power. Electric power. Here in our solar-powered house we are no different. We may be off the grid but we are still addicted. An abundance of sunshine this past summer meant an overabundance of electricity. We became heady with all that power and then grew complacent. It is human nature to waste rather than conserve. Winter has changed all that. Short days under a weak winter sun have turned us back into conservationists. Our solar house is so like the forest around us, vibrant and filled with energy under the warm summer sun, quiet and subdued in winter. So like the forest around us. Unlike the forest, however, our need for power is always greatest when the sun is lowest and the days shortest. Summer finds us, inevitably, outdoors, taking lunch on a far ridge, sipping iced tea or chilled Sauvignon on the deck, working in the wood camp or around the house. Then winter descends upon us. Sub-freezing temperatures and darkness chase us indoors. The TV gets more play, lights burn longer. And all about us the forest sleeps. And our little solar house glows -- a little glow in a vast expanse of darkness on a high frozen ridge. Trees rest under a blanket of snow. Small creatures huddle in dark burrows. Herds of deer gather together under sheltering pines. And, there far below us, the prairie blazes with a million lights and pulses with unimaginable power. Winter grips the city just as it fills the forest. Yet the flow of power is steady, unwavering, abundant. And the great mass of men and women are bright and warm, sucking at the nipple of the Great Plastic Electric Empire.   Read More . . . .

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Dream

                As the 20th century flickered and then dimmed into the darkness of history we fled the crumbling cities of the Industrial Age and went to live in the forest of the Rocky Mountains. Soon after, I wrote the first paragraph of what would become our Colorado Journal. I don't know why, but I sat in the car at the gate and the words just fell out of my pen and onto the pad of paper I kept in the car to make notes on for work. The next day I wrote some more. As I wrote, Julie began taking photographs. And we encouraged each other and continued to reflect this beautiful place in our words and pictures. For more than six years we have shared our life in the forest with you. It has been an amazing experience. But the most remarkable part of this adventure has been the number of people who have written to us over the years. For the most part they write to offer hope, not in the outcome of our personal journey through life in the wilderness but, rather, in the greater journey now undertaken by all of the Earth's creatures that crouch in the last remaining wild places and strive, still, against the vast, onrushing herd of humanity and the endless war we have waged on them. It is to them, and the the forest itself, that we dedicate our work.

Locked away in this website, somewhere behind this glowing page on the humming hard drive of the server, are several thousand photographs and more than a thousand journal entries. Today's entry will be the last one.   Read More . . . .

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