On a recent Sunday morning, I rose before dawn to join two friends for a pheasant hunt. The temperatures were mild, and it was a joy to walk the fields, the only sound the dogs working back and forth through the dew-glistened grass, punctuated by an occasional explosion of a bird rising to escape a dog locked on point. The crisp air smelled of grass and sage, and the longer view was of mountains, valleys and the Uncompaghre plateau.
It’s getting tougher every year to find such a pristine experience.
My family has been in Colorado for nearly 100 years, living from the Eastern border to the West and, boy howdy, have things changed. Whether in pursuit of game, fish or just the solitude of a hike, a person didn’t have to go far to find it. It was inevitable that Colorado would be found and populated; this place is just too nice to keep secret for long.
If you think me selfish on this, fine. Here in Mesa County, so much of the farmland has been broken into small ranchettes and subdivisions that the pressure on remaining large landowners is too great to allow a knock on the door for permission to hunt. The Colorado River desalinization project did in much of the nesting habitat by concreting all of our canals and ditches, eliminating the needed cover. It was necessary for downstream users, but a mortal blow to bird reproduction.
I grew up on what used to be the fringe of metro Denver, catching trout in Bear Creek near the Mullen High School campus. It was bliss to set out on a warm summer morning with my pole and a sack lunch to spend the day playing outside.
My dad and I could make the short trek down to the South Platte near Deckers and rarely see other fishermen. Our family made annual trips to Rosy Lane campground on the Taylor River in Gunnison County and it was possible to fish nearly the entire expanse from the dam to Almont. Now, on the Taylor and elsewhere, landowners, many living out of state, are doing their best to eliminate all access to such waters, including fishing from boats. Whether due to abuse by sportsmen or to self interest by landowners, the law changed, and one has to float to fish. Even the right to float, to catch fish paid for by our license fees, is being challenged.
But Coloradans have not gone down without a fight. In 1972, we voted down the winter Olympics that we had been awarded in 1970. A 1972 article in Life magazine cited the very reasons to bring the Olympics in. “The Olympic committee was lured by some of the world’s best skiing, magnificent scenery and lots of elbow room.” Our response: No kidding. Now stop looking and get out!
Denver Mayor William McNichols was quoted as saying, “The people of Colorado would have to live with this shame for the rest of their lives.” OK. I voted against it in my first eligible election, and you don’t need to guess how I feel about it still.
There is work being done across the state to preserve the wild in Colorado. Elk Ridge near Snowmass was recently rescued from development. Telluride put together a consortium of private and public money to save the valley floor from the same fate. Just west of Grand Junction, my kitchen window looks out over Walker State Wildlife Area, where the winter cacophony of ducks and geese almost drowns out the yipping coyotes patrolling the tree line.
I’m no NIMBY’er, and acknowledge that my family moved here three generations ago, displacing the original native inhabitants. My sense of loss over a way of life is literally nothing compared to that. Though I’d like to, it’s too late to lock the gate. But one can hope that we continue to strive toward rational, non-sprawl growth, leaving places of solitude for our children and grandchildren to enjoy in their own way — a commune with nature in this beautiful place we’re blessed to call home.
Mark Sandstedt (sandstedtm@gmail.com) lives in Grand Junction.
