Colorado: A Love Letter
Colorado: A Love Letter
Colorado is an extremely arrogant state. Every state tends to think of itself a bit better than others, but in Colorado if you weren't born here, you aren't from here, even if you moved to the state when 3 months old. There are little NATIVE bumper stickers on thousands of cars, mostly in the mountains and Denver, which is ridiculous for some pretty obvious reasons. Colorado also happens to be one of the whitest states I've ever lived in. The KKK have a huge membership base here. The county I have the honor of voting in is 90% Republican (yes, including me), but we're technically a ~blue~ state, which should tell you something about the population dispersement. South Park is not a real town, but it is a real place, even if it's an big boring flat one in the middle of the mountains that doesn't even have the benefit of aspen trees. What counts as rivers here tend to be called creeks in other states, and I'm pretty sure they're called rivers here just so people can point at it and go WOW, THAT'LL BE THE COLORADO RIVER IN A FEW MILES! Colorado is going through a drought almost constantly. Colorado is one of the sunniest states in the Union, with something like 300 days of sunshine a year. Colorado is where some of the wagon trains to Oregon/California/etc. had to resort to cannibalism. America the Beautiful was written from the top of Pike's Peak, and when you're up there, you can understand why. Colorado has 54 mountains over 14,000 feet tall, with Mt. Elbert as the tallest, although the Mt. Massive Society has been screaming against that horrible inaccuracy for over 100 years. This might be because Mt. Elbert is so damn easy to climb, although calling any journey up a mountain at that kind of altitude should never be called easy. People in Colorado have a higher level of red blood cells, and my brother uses this to drink people under the table when he's at sea level. We have sand dunes in the southwest, which is probably my favorite area of Colorado, since I'm madly in love with the desert. The sand is a cross between gold and orange, like a particularly hazy sunset. The plains stretch on and on and on, in a way that makes me wonder why people from the East Coast ever came to Colorado in general. But then I remember it's there, and that's enough of a reason for a lot of people.
There is a dot on the map labeled Pumpkin's Crossing on the plains, sitting proudly in the middle of nothing at all. All that's there is an old gas station, a house, and a pumpkin patch, and I love it madly. When the sun is shining, the plains are a sagey green that stretches as far as you can see and further after that, the sky the sort of blue you dream about, the clouds such a pure white that if it weren't for the smell of the land - like old abandoned christmas trees and slowly-drying mud - you might think you're in heaven. There are no forests before the foothills, and the foothills themselves used to be mountains. The current Rockies are the second set of them, dwarfed by the original 20,000 foot mountains that the world saw but humans never did. The current set, however, has dinosaur footprints carved into many of the cliff walls of the red rocks that suddenly jut out of the land at an average of a 35 degree angle, although the Red Rocks region is well-known for the scattered walls of red sandstone that pierce the green of the ground, or the white blanket of snow.
There is a beauty in the emptiness of Eastern Colorado, and a terrifying wonder in the mountains of Colorado, and the Western Slope of Colorado is where there are the chasms, and some of the best melon-growing land you've ever seen. I have seen bears, and deer, and moose, all from the comfort of my cousin George's living room. I know prairie dogs as pests, hawks as an inevitability, owls as the thief of tiny lives. I know cows as food, wind farms as a green waste of money, elk as lazy and stupid, and bears as uncaring so long as you don't care either. (Moose, though? Moose you leave the fuck alone.) Denver itself is a young city trying desperately hard to live up to its older sisters in the East, and for the most part succeeding. The entirety of Colorado is new, and big. Rocky Mountain Oysters are the ultimate joke on coast folk.
Coloradans are the type of people who will stick a steamboat in a mountain pond and be damn proud of it.
Colorado has more parks than any other state, more national forests and monuments than any lazy person could visit in a lifetime. I have been to many of them, but my favorites are the hard to get to ones that people think are too arid, too dry, too baked and hard and unmajestic. I love the harsh simplicity of the desert. I love the immensity of the mountains. I love the misleading emptiness of the prairie. I love the ungrateful people who live here, no matter that I'll never be considered one of them. That's just another reason to adore them. I love that there's no obvious fandom presence in my state, that I've lived here for years and hardly know anyone nowadays, that Colorado thinks itself to be the greatest place on earth and hates everyone else for wanting to experience it. I love that it's arid without ever truly feeling dry, that the cold is the type that sucks the water from you but is otherwise kind so long as you continue to have water to give, and the heat is the type that sucks the water from you and burns you more than anywhere else, the fact I've seen the new kids on campus sunbathing and lobster red and shamefaced in the morning.
Colorado is eager.
I love that Colorado is cruel to you until you understand it, and that I'll never understand a place so varied and complex. There are cowboys, there are mountain men, there are desert people, there are plainsmen, there are city slickers, and there's everything but an ocean and a rainforest.
There's nothing like being terrified of the outdoors to make you really, really appreciate what you see.
I have lived in many places, Colorado the longest. I love that I hate myself for belonging so completely to a place, that the fact my constant inherited wanderlust finally has a place for me to always come back to when I'm done, even though stopping there is optional. We both know I love Colorado, even though she's a tramp, seducing people left and right. But I am not the first to love her, or the first to hate that I love her, or even the one who does these things the most. Colorado is a name for a place named a thousand times over, and when she tells me her name, I might stay. But, until then, I remain single.
Colorado is, genuinely, America The Beautiful.
You should visit.
You will hate me when I tell you why I wrote this. Because of this, I won't.
Colorado is an extremely arrogant state. Every state tends to think of itself a bit better than others, but in Colorado if you weren't born here, you aren't from here, even if you moved to the state when 3 months old. There are little NATIVE bumper stickers on thousands of cars, mostly in the mountains and Denver, which is ridiculous for some pretty obvious reasons. Colorado also happens to be one of the whitest states I've ever lived in. The KKK have a huge membership base here. The county I have the honor of voting in is 90% Republican (yes, including me), but we're technically a ~blue~ state, which should tell you something about the population dispersement. South Park is not a real town, but it is a real place, even if it's an big boring flat one in the middle of the mountains that doesn't even have the benefit of aspen trees. What counts as rivers here tend to be called creeks in other states, and I'm pretty sure they're called rivers here just so people can point at it and go WOW, THAT'LL BE THE COLORADO RIVER IN A FEW MILES! Colorado is going through a drought almost constantly. Colorado is one of the sunniest states in the Union, with something like 300 days of sunshine a year. Colorado is where some of the wagon trains to Oregon/California/etc. had to resort to cannibalism. America the Beautiful was written from the top of Pike's Peak, and when you're up there, you can understand why. Colorado has 54 mountains over 14,000 feet tall, with Mt. Elbert as the tallest, although the Mt. Massive Society has been screaming against that horrible inaccuracy for over 100 years. This might be because Mt. Elbert is so damn easy to climb, although calling any journey up a mountain at that kind of altitude should never be called easy. People in Colorado have a higher level of red blood cells, and my brother uses this to drink people under the table when he's at sea level. We have sand dunes in the southwest, which is probably my favorite area of Colorado, since I'm madly in love with the desert. The sand is a cross between gold and orange, like a particularly hazy sunset. The plains stretch on and on and on, in a way that makes me wonder why people from the East Coast ever came to Colorado in general. But then I remember it's there, and that's enough of a reason for a lot of people.
There is a dot on the map labeled Pumpkin's Crossing on the plains, sitting proudly in the middle of nothing at all. All that's there is an old gas station, a house, and a pumpkin patch, and I love it madly. When the sun is shining, the plains are a sagey green that stretches as far as you can see and further after that, the sky the sort of blue you dream about, the clouds such a pure white that if it weren't for the smell of the land - like old abandoned christmas trees and slowly-drying mud - you might think you're in heaven. There are no forests before the foothills, and the foothills themselves used to be mountains. The current Rockies are the second set of them, dwarfed by the original 20,000 foot mountains that the world saw but humans never did. The current set, however, has dinosaur footprints carved into many of the cliff walls of the red rocks that suddenly jut out of the land at an average of a 35 degree angle, although the Red Rocks region is well-known for the scattered walls of red sandstone that pierce the green of the ground, or the white blanket of snow.
There is a beauty in the emptiness of Eastern Colorado, and a terrifying wonder in the mountains of Colorado, and the Western Slope of Colorado is where there are the chasms, and some of the best melon-growing land you've ever seen. I have seen bears, and deer, and moose, all from the comfort of my cousin George's living room. I know prairie dogs as pests, hawks as an inevitability, owls as the thief of tiny lives. I know cows as food, wind farms as a green waste of money, elk as lazy and stupid, and bears as uncaring so long as you don't care either. (Moose, though? Moose you leave the fuck alone.) Denver itself is a young city trying desperately hard to live up to its older sisters in the East, and for the most part succeeding. The entirety of Colorado is new, and big. Rocky Mountain Oysters are the ultimate joke on coast folk.
Coloradans are the type of people who will stick a steamboat in a mountain pond and be damn proud of it.
Colorado has more parks than any other state, more national forests and monuments than any lazy person could visit in a lifetime. I have been to many of them, but my favorites are the hard to get to ones that people think are too arid, too dry, too baked and hard and unmajestic. I love the harsh simplicity of the desert. I love the immensity of the mountains. I love the misleading emptiness of the prairie. I love the ungrateful people who live here, no matter that I'll never be considered one of them. That's just another reason to adore them. I love that there's no obvious fandom presence in my state, that I've lived here for years and hardly know anyone nowadays, that Colorado thinks itself to be the greatest place on earth and hates everyone else for wanting to experience it. I love that it's arid without ever truly feeling dry, that the cold is the type that sucks the water from you but is otherwise kind so long as you continue to have water to give, and the heat is the type that sucks the water from you and burns you more than anywhere else, the fact I've seen the new kids on campus sunbathing and lobster red and shamefaced in the morning.
Colorado is eager.
I love that Colorado is cruel to you until you understand it, and that I'll never understand a place so varied and complex. There are cowboys, there are mountain men, there are desert people, there are plainsmen, there are city slickers, and there's everything but an ocean and a rainforest.
There's nothing like being terrified of the outdoors to make you really, really appreciate what you see.
I have lived in many places, Colorado the longest. I love that I hate myself for belonging so completely to a place, that the fact my constant inherited wanderlust finally has a place for me to always come back to when I'm done, even though stopping there is optional. We both know I love Colorado, even though she's a tramp, seducing people left and right. But I am not the first to love her, or the first to hate that I love her, or even the one who does these things the most. Colorado is a name for a place named a thousand times over, and when she tells me her name, I might stay. But, until then, I remain single.
Colorado is, genuinely, America The Beautiful.
You should visit.
You will hate me when I tell you why I wrote this. Because of this, I won't.