Where Nature Meets Culture—Plus Wildfire, Dogs, Environmental News, and Writing with a Southern Rockies Perspective.
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Having driven out of the hills and onto the prairie, we stopped for a short break before going on to Pueblo. Where did this blog go? No, I have not quit blogging, but I was a little distracted during the month of July. At around 6 a.m. on June 29, a tree (it is believed) was blown into a power line near the little resort community of San Isabel, on the Custer-Pueblo county line. (Local residents…
It's a long way from the Southern Rockies, but this video fits the June 20 theme of " predators and fawns/calves. " A friend in Poland sent the video's link to the news site Notes from Poland. The European bison, sometimes called "wisent" (similar to ours but taller and slimmer) was extirpated by over-hunting. Its population has recovered in a few places due to re-introduction from captive herds.…
The suspect makes his first pre-dawn appearance. My "neighborhood" is a little too rural for apps like Nextdoor , but we do have a text-message network. It lit up a few days ago when a young (I'd say yearling) black bear started doing the equivalent of squeezing the door handles of all the parked cars. Before long he (?) was spotted at this house and that. Over the next few days he knocked over…
A week ago, Marco the Chessie and I were walking up a pedestrian-bike trail that goes trough "open space" by the Walking Stock golf course in northeast Pueblo. Suddenly he jumped sideways. I looked down and back — this bull snake was artistically coiled next to the wall that separates one of the adjacent upscale houses from the public path. Not a bad homestead for a snake—a secure den under the…
Paddleboarders on the Arkansas (Colorado Parks & Wildlife) Today's Colorado Sun reports that the low snowpack -- 24 percent for the Arkansas River basin -- means low runoff and a shorter season for the rafting companies: There are about 45 river outfitters in the Arkansas Headwaters Recreation Area between Leadville and Cañon City who host as many as 250,000 commercial rafting visitors every year,…
I read once about this Appalachian doctor who told a patient to take a certain medicine in the winter and to keep taking it "until snakes crawl" -- in other words, until warm spring weather. Tying the directions to the natural world was simpler and easier to remember than setting a calendar date. Now I have my reasons for avoiding rattlesnakes , so maybe I could just be a tech-user and watch the…
Antero Reservoir (Colorado Parks & Wildlife A ntero Reservoir, one of the two "saucer" reservoirs in South Park, as I like to think of them, is being drained to save water in the current drought . (The other is Spinney Mountain Res.) Denver Water announced Monday it will drain and close South Park’s Antero Reservoir fishing and camping spot to avoid critical evaporation losses in a tinder-dry…
Marco checks out a muddy arroyo in Huerfano County. I let March go by without posting. That's bad. I was deep into the most annoying book-edit of my life. Kind of like " Who's on first? " but with different drafts and different sets of corrections from different proof-readers. That said, I did get out in the weirdly warm and dry weather to investigate some public hunting lands-mostly Colorado…
Something there is that does not like a yellowjacket -- but loves to tear up the nests and eat fat larvae. * * * T his was a rough autumn in Wasp World. The tenant in our rental cabin, about 150 yards from the main house, reported being attacked by yellowjackets when stepping out on the back stoop. And he is sensitive to them, although not full anaphylactic-shock-death-sensitive. The wasps got me…
I'm using the broad definition, not the Kansas-centric one . And it's the Colorado Otero County, not the New Mexican Otero. But both counties are named for the same man, Miguel Antonio Otero (1829–1882). Now you know. Endless sky.
