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When I moved to Colorado, I drove through this area on the same two-lane state highway that I would later drive on my commute to work for nearly two decades. It was fairly nondescript, perhaps boring to drive through. Closer to Colorado Springs what stood out were unpalatable-looking fields of yucca that didn’t look like good pasture, and too many automobile junkyards of corroding and partially-dismembered vehicles. It wasn’t pretty; it wasn’t appealing. It would be years before I’d return with any purpose other than to get through both eastern Colorado and Kansas as quickly as possible.
So, I get it if you take a quick look at the high-elevation, semi-arid shortgrass prairie that makes up nearly half of the state, and think there’s nothing there, or it’s not appealing, or it’s okay to slather it with several hundred miles of very-high-voltage transmission lines and thousands of industrial wind turbines solely to provide metropolitan Denver with electricity that’s touted, perhaps in some ways incorrectly, as “green”, “clean”, or “renewable” energy. The energy production debate is a different topic for a different website.
We’re here today to help you see, as I have learned to, that this place has a beauty of its own, and that it’s a fragile, natural environment to cherish and protect.
Granted, you won’t see the in-your-face majesty of a redwood and rhododendron woodland.
We have our own forms of majesty.
Come, Walk with Me
If you’re driving on the highway on your way to or from Colorado Springs and you see a field like this, you may think it looks empty. But take a closer look, and you’ll see that it’s subtly teeming with life and beauty, and perhaps messages if you know how to read them.
Here’s a field of blue grama grass with occasional fringed sage standing above the grazed blue grama. Horizontally across the slope, there’s a dip where the land was contoured long ago to mitigate erosion. If you walk upslope toward that taller plant barely poking its head above the horizon, you’ll find a prickly poppy in bloom.
[Alternate the photos of what I said it’s not, with the photos of what it is.] It’s just more subtle than a New England mountainside in autumn with its blazing maples and oaks with deep green evergreens mixed in. It’s not an apple orchard, though there are delicious Macintosh apples and large crabapples to eat, if you know where to look. It’s not a hillside vineyard overlooking a beautiful lake in the Fingerlakes region of New York state. But there is a most amazing Concord grape vine that produces the best Concord grapes – perhaps the best of any grapes – that I ever have eaten. There’s not a lake to sail on, nor a pond for rowing or fishing. But there is a vernal pool with treasures and surprises to delight an inquisitive visitor who takes the time to look closely at what lives there. The little lizards. Hummingbird moths on the golden currant flowers. Miller moths pollenating the lilacs. Butterflies on all the flowers. Hummingbirds buzzing across the fields. The hover flies that in past years made the whole field abuzz. The story of the Mr. Meadowlark. The occasional deer. Scaled quail.