The Field

Skulls

Combing open spaces for weeds, it happens that we also see a lot of bones. Our open spaces are littered with the bones of animals past. I almost never see animal remains on a trail, but since this job started, we've found skulls (and in one case a disturbingly fresh head) representing six families of mammals from four orders. If you want specifics -- and I know you do -- here they are:

1. Order Rodentia (rodents)
Family: Sciuridae (squirrels)
Genus/species: Cynomys ludovicianus (black-tailed prairie dog -- these skulls are everywhere)

2. Order Lagomorpha (rabbits and hares)
Family: Leporidae (rabbits and hares)
Genus/species: Sylvilagus audubonii (desert cottontail (this is an educated guess based on the local abundance of this species.)

3. Order Carnivora (carnivores)
Family: Canidae (canids)
Genus/species: Vulpes vulpes (red fox)
Family: Mephitidae (skunks)
Genus/species: Mephitis mephitis (striped skunk -- this is an educated guess -- there are four species of skunk that live in Colorado, but this should be the only one in this region.)
Family: Procyonidae (raccoon family)
Genus/species: Procyon lotor (raccoon)

4. Order Artiodactyla (even toed ungulates)
Family: Cervidae (deer, elk and moose)
Genus/species: Odocoileus hemionus (mule deer -- there's a lot of these too.)

There are eight orders of mammals to be found in Colorado, with 22 families (nine and 23, if you count horses). I wonder how many more we might find?  I find this interesting because it's evidence of biodiversity that you don't usually get to see when you're hiking on the trail, and the abundance of bones off the trails reminds you that you are in a dynamic environment, where a multitude of life and death dramas happen all the time, and where nutrients (like the calcium in animal bones) cycle from the ground, to living things, and back to the earth again.  As we respectfully buried the raccoon skull the other day, I imagined it saying, "Hello IPM crew, I'm dead!  One day you will be like me.  You too must go into the earth."  Well, that's just not true.  We can be cremated and have our remains shot into space if we want, and if we have the money.  Then again, maybe giving back our nutrients and giving rise to future life isn't such a bad fate, even if it is a little creepy coming from the surprisingly toothy grin of a long dead raccoon.

Fishing for cell phones

It feels a little post-apocalyptic, being surrounded by heavily altered nature, fishing a piece of broken and toxic technology out of a small body of polluted water. On my walk today, breaking in my new Garmont Kiowa Vegan hiking shoes, I weeded the sprouting Russian olives some and then noticed pieces of a cell phone in the pool under the little old bridge. As more important people have noted, computers, cell phones, tv's, and other modern conveniences contain an array of heavy metals and chemicals that are fine while contained in their technological form, but horrendous if released into the environment (to say nothing of the fact that they also contain small amounts of gold and other things worth recovering.) That's why responsible recycling of old technology is so important. It's unfortunate, then, that it's so darn fun to break stuff and throw it in bodies of water. I managed to fish out the face plate, and the circuit board with antenna attached, but unfortunately I didn't find the battery, whose acids are probably still leaking into the water. There was a medium sized crawdad dead in the middle of the pool. Not an encouraging sign. Other than that, it was a very nice day.

The Myrtle Spurge Scourge

It was still winter today near the Shanahan trail just above Boulder. The snow was light and powdery, unlike the wet, spring snow farther down. We opted to try myrtle spurge on Shanahan again today, hoping there would be less snow under the trees and it would be more visible than the med sage down on the plains. It wasn't, really. There was 1-2 inches on the ground, and only the larger plants were visible unless they happened to be uncovered by our probing feet. So we followed the GPS around to our points, stopping and carefully searched likely spots, looking for the long shape of its stems buried under the snow, or a few pointed leaves sticking out. Myrtle spurge, with its distinctive leaves that spiral around the stem and strange yellow flower heads is, like so many invasive weeds, is an escaped ornamental from people's gardens that's now mucking up natural areas, crowding out native vegetation. Plus, it has a wicked anti-herbivory defense -- the milky latex that pours from any wound is poisonous to animals that might eat it and causes severe irritation if it gets on your skin. And it must be hand pulled, because it will regrow from any root left in the ground, hence our rubber gloves. Later in the year we'll also have to wear safety glasses to counter its explosive seeds. Yes, the weeds can shoot at us now. All hail the frightening power of evolution.

It's hard enough to find every weed when you can see them; this was kind of ridiculous. But how often do you get to walk though a forest covered in fresh fallen snow? It was worth it. For a little while, the sun came out and shone on the frosted Flatirons. Walking into a densely wooded location, I noticed a bunch of deer tracks, and thought about mentioning them, but didn't. Then one of my coworkers said, "There's a lot of deer." Sure enough, the herd was just ahead. They turned their giant ears toward us and mosied along quietly as we did our work. Later, I found a number of the large, ovoid body prints in the snow where they had slept.

Our feet were getting wet and cold and conditions were not improving, so we called it off after only a couple hours and went home, which was nice because the snow had kind of made me hope that I wouldn't have to do very much work today hehe.

I'm getting paid for this?

That thought occurred to me more than once as I hiked up the snowy Chautauqua Park trail with the rest of the IPM crew, the trees wreathed with snow, the Flatirons frosted and topped with misty clouds, and as I sat down alone in the middle of a small stand of trees to complete my assignment -- 20 minutes of silent contemplation of my surroundings, open space, nature, etc. The snow on the bare branches surrounded me with a fractal maze of black and white lines. It was still but for the tiny sound of little, hard specks of snow hitting my jacket and birds occasionally calling in the distance, and the wash of traffic far down in Boulder. I'm getting paid for this!

Besides that, most of my first day was standard first day stuff -- orientation, introductions, and paperwork. Being around peers and watching a powerpoint on weed management made it feel strangely like an ecology class back at CU -- a class where the school was paying me instead of the other way around. The other three techs and the leader seem to share goals with me -- learning plant identification, GIS mapping software, and improving communication skills by speaking up more and asking questions when necessary -- so I think they'll be pretty easy to work with. There was only one guy who said he actually wanted to "tone down" his apparently overbearing extrovert personality. Hopefully there won't be any conflicts. Anyway, I'm really excited to get to work outside doing relevant ecology work, even if it does mean having to give up being a night owl so that I can wake up at 5:30 or 6:00 in the morning, a time I'd usually just be heading to bed.

Wind on the Coalton and High Plains trails

This has been the windiest winter!  Whitney and I went for a walk on the 13th, and we couldn't have picked a clouder, windier day for it. Really, the conditions were pretty unpleasant. Luckily for us, hiking in bad weather builds character, or something. It was a trail I've never seen, despite its nearness -- the Coalton trail in Superior, off of McCaslin Blvd. It was a few miles east of the trailhead for the Greenbelt Plateau trail that we hiked on Valentine's. It was a strange trail -- really more of an unpaved road -- that was broad and rocky with a wire fence on either side, and arrow-straight. The first mile and a half led through a large prairie dog colony and past it, climbing a hill and revealing a great view of grassland and mountains as it made a 90 degree turn south. The prairie dogs, protected from interlopers by the fencing, were mostly unconcerned with us, which made for some good up-close viewing of the highly social little fuzzballs, who are a very important part of the ecosystem and couldn't be cuter if they tried.

Atop the hill there was a view of the mountains I've never quite seen before in all my years of looking at these mountains -- the long crest of the hill sloped down into a grassy valley with a tiny, unnamed pond. More khaki, grassy hills rolled toward the mountains. It was as we continued down the trail that we began to feel an incredible amount of solitude. It was only a few miles to the cookie-cutter subdivisions on the other side of McCaslin, but we hadn't seen another human since we parked, nor could we hear any traffic noise despite relatively near highways. What we could see of the city looked very far away, and the only immediate sign of civilization was the high-tension power lines (or whatever they were) running parallel to the trail. But they represented the same sort of absentee civilization as empty office buildings, and didn't count. We were on a dirt road out in the country somewhere, alone but for the howling wind and the occasional appearance of a bird of prey, in a hilly sea of short brown grass.

I wore two hoods, more to keep the wind off my ears than for the cold. Persistent wind hurts my ears and dries out my eyes, and I hate it, but I think I'm finally getting used to it. Maybe the clouds were a blessing, since there wasn't a tree within two miles. Obtaining such solitude, with such open views is a remarkable thing when you're just outside a big city. Most of the land we explored is protected as part of the city of Boulder's massive open space green belt, and it's impossible not to be grateful to the people who had the foresight to preserve it, and it's amazing, humbling and extremely gratifying to think that come Monday I'll be working in places like this. I finally managed to get a job, as a seasonal Integrated Pest Management (IPM) technician with the City of Boulder Open Space and Mountain Parks department. "Pests" in this case are invasive plant species -- weeds -- that I'll be helping to control on open space lands.

Eventually, Highway 128 came into view, and the Coalton trail merged into the High Plains Trail, where the dirt road and fencing gave way to a narrow footpath with no fences, which was a nice change of pace even if it did make walking side by side more challenging. We wound around a few hills, crossed a little wooden boardwalk over a drainage, where there was at last a few trees, and then came to another, slightly longer little bridge where we stopped to rest and eat snacks and enjoy each other's company. We had the grassy plains all to ourselves, and the sun was peeking out.

We were already pretty tired, so it was a long walk back in the wind. When we reached the Coalton trail again, we finally caught sight of some humans -- one man running, four women with a dog, and one man on a bike. As we started down the final hill on the home stretch the ungainly subdivisions and offices of Superior and Broomfield lay suddenly ahead. I figure it was about a seven mile walk, all together. After four hours in the wind, it was nice to get in the car, where it was warmer and not windy at all.

(Belated) Pre-Valentine's adventures

I had to work on Valentine's, so we had to have most of our festivities on the 13th. It was sunny, so we went for a walk. Since we had the opportunity, I wanted to go someplace outside the neighborhood, but it wouldn't do to go to the mountains because it'd be too snowy. So I thought of one of the only alternatives I know -- that one place off of highway 128, where it's out of town and near the mountains, but still down on the grassland. It turned out to be the Greenbelt Plateau trail; I remembered it from several expeditions there when I was a kid or young teen with my dad and brother, often on bikes. It's just north of Rocky Flats, the defunct-Cold-War-nuclear-weapons-plant/future-National-Wildlife-Refuge, and runs parallel, and a little too closely, to highway 93. But the road noise didn't bother us much; it was mostly drowned out by the howling wind. We'd been chased off the trail by cold, relentless winds on several recent walks, so we weren't about to let this one turn us back, but darn if it didn't try. It never completely went away, but the trail turned down slope, offering a grand view of Boulder, and descended to a more sheltered hillside with more trees, and the wind eventually let up a bit.

We found ourselves next on the Community Ditch trail, which followed what I can only assume was the Community Ditch. What the community does in this ditch remains unknown. It was obviously a popular place, and it was easy to imagine people tramping off the trails, squashing vegetation and creating dozens of new trails. In response, there seemed to be a little sign every fifty feet reminding you to please stay on the trail and not trample all the nature we've worked so hard to preserve here, thank you very much. I was hoping we'd make it to the big lake I'd seen on the trail maps, Marshall Lake, which I'd never been to before. I was hoping my love and I might have a romantic walk around it. As we drew near, the trail widened and was flanked by bright new wooden fence work (another measure to keep folks on the trail). The trail went up a small hill, and the lake began to come into view at last. Then the trail ended in a dead end. An old sign declared No Trespassing by order of the irrigation company that presumably created the lake. A newer looking sign declared No Trespassing by order of the Louisville Rod and Gun Club. A few trucks were parked down by the lake, where some men were no doubt having fun playing with their rods. Should you be able to own a lake like that? What harm would there be in just letting average people stroll around it? We were forced to turn back in defeat.

There was a mature cottonwood that seemed to be growing up straight from solid sandstone, and ponderosa pines that were growing in a cross-section created by the ditch, their roots stretching visibly down the layers of exposed rock. Whitney asked me if I had yet begun to think about my inevitable blog post about our walk. Of course I had. I thought about the debate over access versus preservation. There was an article in the paper a few days prior about how the majority of lands protected by conservation easements in Colorado don't allow any public access, and I thought, well, that's fine -- at least land is being protected, giving us the benefit of great views and less troublesome development. Besides, almost everywhere else is open to people, and the mere knowledge that some places will remain wild and free of development is itself comforting. Furthermore, not allowing humans into certain protected lands may very well be in accordance with conservation goals if they are meant to protect sensitive animals and plants from all of the molestation that recreating humans can bring. But being able to see Marshall Lake and yet not get close to it was annoying. And it can be argued that experiencing a place gives it more value in your mind than just seeing it or knowing that it's there, and that allowing people to recreate in a place makes them value open land more, and could likewise promote conservation efforts. I don't think people should be allowed everywhere... but a lot of places, certainly. Including Marshall Lake.

I lost my ear muffs. The grassland felt expansive, and you could almost believe you weren't surrounded by a major metropolitan area. To really appreciate a prairie, you need a lot of it -- its beauty comes through in its open, airy quality, when hills roll on and on and big blue sky meets grass all along the horizon. It makes you feel like you could run forever. A single misplaced structure on any of those horizons can really ruin that feeling and make shrinking prairies start to look like bare lots waiting to be built upon. Most of the world's prairies are long gone. I hope the little stretch that remains between the Front Range and Denver's suburbs survives.

That night, after an aborted attempt to eat at a Moroccan restaurant that had sadly apparently gone out of business, we at the Leaf, a boulder restaurant that might very well convert you to vegetarianism if you aren't already. It was beyond delicious. Flavors came in combinations that were new, unexpected, hearty and exciting. It was not a meal, it was an experience, like visiting a National Park, or a big museum, or a major theme park, but in my mouth. Somehow, they took blackened figs, and parmesan cheese, and bread, and true love's first kiss, and put it on a plate. Tempura plantains, sweet potatoes, and tofu. Jamaican jerk tempeh on forbidden black rice. Apple and cranberry pie with vanilla ice cream and creme brule (sp?). We wanted more and more, I ate myself painfully full, and then spent the next several days thinking about that meal, and how nothing else I've eaten compares to that. I'm pretty sure the ingredients also included children's laughter, unicorn tears, and hope for the future. It was that good. We fell asleep soon after returning home. She got me a 13 month Xbox Live subscription and I got her season 2 of Buffy, and we got each other the same card. That was a good Valentine's.

A hawk, goth kids, and plastic bags

So last Monday (January 28) I cleaned up in the field for the first time since September.  The necessary elements came together – mild weather, not too much snow on the ground, not having to work, and being able to muster the will to do it – so I hit the trails.  I couldn’t find my big heavy-duty trash bags, so I made due with our smaller, flimsy kitchen bags.  It was breezy, so I knew whatever trash I picked up would probably be replaced in short order, but it still needed to be done.  I made my usual circuit, starting on the hill and turning past the Countryside rec center park and down toward the baseball fields, which I’m now informed the hoa is adopting, so hopefully that area won’t be as trashy in the future.  It tends to be pretty bad, with drink cans and bottles, sunflower seed bags and the like.  I ended up spending some time in the copse of Russian Olive saplings behind one of the ball fields, where there was an annoying amount of cardboard boxes and plastic bags wrapped around the trees.  So many plastic shopping bags.  I lost count of how many I picked up and pulled out of trees and bushes – several dozen at least, this day.  If you still use these, you need to stop.  They are a scourge on the environment that must be wiped out at the source – don’t get them in the first place.  Refuse bags if you’re purchasing few enough items that you can carry everything with your hands, and otherwise purchase some of the cheap reusable canvas shopping bags that are now readily available at most retailers and grocery stores.  Otherwise, your bags will end up here, in the creek, or there, wrapped around a tree, or there, floating in the lake or the ocean.  They’re ugly, overly durable, and they kill animals that mistakenly try to eat them.  They need to be outlawed, but until then, refuse to use them.  And then there are the plastic bags that newspapers come in.  I get a lot of those, too.  As much as I enjoy reading the paper, I’ve recently decided to agree with my fiancé they’re just too wasteful.  A new plastic bag and a new tree every day of the year… maybe we should just get our news online and on TV.

I continued on the main path, at the base of the hill, and filled the first bag and half of the second before coming to the trail junction.  A hawk flew over the field, over the prairie dog town, the place you’re most likely to see a raptor or other predator here.  I dropped off the first bag at my sign and continued around on the main trail.  School was out, and I passed a cute couple of goth kids.  There was a boy and a girl, possibly high school freshmen but more likely sixth graders (the clothes and the makeup made it kind of hard to tell).  They both wore mostly black, the boy had a dog collar and the girl wore some interesting black makeup designs and a fluffy, fox-like tail that hung down to her knees.  The boy was attempting to impress her by trying to climb a tree.  If it were any more precious, I would have had to stop and declare with rising intonation, “Ahhh!”

A utility/telecom crew of some sort did some work on the side of the hill above Mayfair park last year, and in addition to flattening all the vegetation there they also left behind a twenty foot long section of PVC pipe, along with a smaller six-foot section and another small enough to put in my bag.  Several years ago when they repaved 106 Avenue and installed one of those black plastic construction fences along the border of the field, they left it behind in a similar manner.  This is city owned Open Space… why are they allowed to do that?  I dragged the shorter section of pipe down to Mayfair park and then continued, and filled up the third bag from the creek near the little bridge, where I retrieved another section of plastic piping.  This one was, about six inches in diameter, four or five feet long and made of corrugated black plastic, was apparently intended as part of a storm drain into the creek, but it eroded out and was loose in the creek bed.  I found what appeared to be a still functional micro RC plane lost in the bushes.  I deposited it on the sign that tells you to clean up after your dog and dragged the pipe and the third bag up to the drop spot.

It started to cool off around 4 when the sun went behind the clouds and the hawk went hunting.  Perched in a sapling near the prairie dog town, it swooped down and hit the ground in the field.  I watched while it secured its prize, and then took off, mouse in talon, for a dead standing cottonwood in the center of the field that hawks favor.  I finished dragging the smaller PVC pipe over to the drop point and, surprised at how much I can get done when I get started at midday rather than near sundown, I hit the 106^th trail and sidewalk.  My strategy for cleaning the creek here is to walk all the way down to the end and then clean up as I walk back toward the drop point, rather than cleaning up on the way and having to haul a full bag all the way back (the entire pattern of my cleaning route is designed to minimize the amount of time I spend with heavy, full bags of trash slung over my shoulder).  But it didn’t avail me this time, since all the trash was waiting for me at the far end, at the mouth of the creek.  The combination of wind, flowing water, and cattails here has obviously been piling up the trash for some time.  It was apparent that there was too much to fit in my final bag (I only brought 4, since I usually only use 1-3).  Luckily an entire trash can was in the creek, so I stuffed some of the larger items in there and set it on the curb.  It probably belonged to one of the residents on the other side of the street and had blown away in recent winds.  I hoped they would claim it and not mind the new trash content.  There were still boxes with ripped Christmas wrapping paper lying about.  I had to pick only the most unsightly items because of the limited space in my bag, and that end of the creek still looked in a shambles when I left. 

Volunteer litter clean up is an interesting job in that it both combats and feeds cynicism.  It’s a rule that when you bend down to pick up one piece of trash, you’ll notice another nearby, and another and another.  You can break your back cleaning up a small area, and almost feel like you’ve accomplished something, only to look up and see a sea of litter stretching before you.  Is this a park or a public landfill?  It’s easy to lose hope for humanity when you see its detritus cluttering the landscape and when you realize that a large part of what you’re picking up – pop cans, Sunny D bottles, Capri Sun pouches, pop and water bottles, candy wrappers, and so on – are being dropped on the ground by kids, kids who don’t care and whose parents don’t care enough to teach them any ethics on the subject.  I grumble and think misanthropic thoughts as I shift a heavy bag from one tired arm to the other.  There’s always more.  I’ll never win this battle. 

On the other hand, uncovering a pretty spot feels good, and lots of passersby openly admire your effort, and that feels good, and the work itself is good, and there’s plants and raptors and cute goth kids, and you know that most of the trash isn’t being maliciously littered, but rather collects here passively, in the low point of the neighborhood, by the action of wind and water on an imperfect system of resource use and waste collection – too many trash cans left outside without lids, not enough recycling.  These things, and even people’s level of consciousness about their own actions, can be changed and improved, and I hope they will be.  Maybe I can’t win, but I think some battles are only lost if you stop fighting.  It was still light when I headed for home, which is a better way to end it than in the dark.  I’ll have to try to get more early starts in the future.

So last Monday (January 28) I cleaned up in the field for the first time since September.  The necessary elements came together – mild weather, not too much snow on the ground, not having to work, and being able to muster the will to do it – so I hit the trails.  I couldn’t find my big heavy-duty trash bags, so I made due with our smaller, flimsy kitchen bags.  It was breezy, so I knew whatever trash I picked up would probably be replaced in short order, but it still needed to be done.  I made my usual circuit, starting on the hill and turning past the Countryside rec center park and down toward the baseball fields, which I’m now informed the hoa is adopting, so hopefully that area won’t be as trashy in the future.  It tends to be pretty bad, with drink cans and bottles, sunflower seed bags and the like.  I ended up spending some time in the copse of Russian Olive saplings behind one of the ball fields, where there was an annoying amount of cardboard boxes and plastic bags wrapped around the trees.  So many plastic shopping bags.  I lost count of how many I picked up and pulled out of trees and bushes – several dozen at least, this day.  If you still use these, you need to stop.  They are a scourge on the environment that must be wiped out at the source – don’t get them in the first place.  Refuse bags if you’re purchasing few enough items that you can carry everything with your hands, and otherwise purchase some of the cheap reusable canvas shopping bags that are now readily available at most retailers and grocery stores.  Otherwise, your bags will end up here, in the creek, or there, wrapped around a tree, or there, floating in the lake or the ocean.  They’re ugly, overly durable, and they kill animals that mistakenly try to eat them.  They need to be outlawed, but until then, refuse to use them.  And then there are the plastic bags that newspapers come in.  I get a lot of those, too.  As much as I enjoy reading the paper, I’ve recently decided to agree with my fiancé they’re just too wasteful.  A new plastic bag and a new tree every day of the year… maybe we should just get our news online and on TV.

I continued on the main path, at the base of the hill, and filled the first bag and half of the second before coming to the trail junction.  A hawk flew over the field, over the prairie dog town, the place you’re most likely to see a raptor or other predator here.  I dropped off the first bag at my sign and continued around on the main trail.  School was out, and I passed a cute couple of goth kids.  There was a boy and a girl, possibly high school freshmen but more likely sixth graders (the clothes and the makeup made it kind of hard to tell).  They both wore mostly black, the boy had a dog collar and the girl wore some interesting black makeup designs and a fluffy, fox-like tail that hung down to her knees.  The boy was attempting to impress her by trying to climb a tree.  If it were any more precious, I would have had to stop and declare with rising intonation, “Ahhh!”

A utility/telecom crew of some sort did some work on the side of the hill above Mayfair park last year, and in addition to flattening all the vegetation there they also left behind a twenty foot long section of PVC pipe, along with a smaller six-foot section and another small enough to put in my bag.  Several years ago when they repaved 106 Avenue and installed one of those black plastic construction fences along the border of the field, they left it behind in a similar manner.  This is city owned Open Space… why are they allowed to do that?  I dragged the shorter section of pipe down to Mayfair park and then continued, and filled up the third bag from the creek near the little bridge, where I retrieved another section of plastic piping.  This one was, about six inches in diameter, four or five feet long and made of corrugated black plastic, was apparently intended as part of a storm drain into the creek, but it eroded out and was loose in the creek bed.  I found what appeared to be a still functional micro RC plane lost in the bushes.  I deposited it on the sign that tells you to clean up after your dog and dragged the pipe and the third bag up to the drop spot.

It started to cool off around 4 when the sun went behind the clouds and the hawk went hunting.  Perched in a sapling near the prairie dog town, it swooped down and hit the ground in the field.  I watched while it secured its prize, and then took off, mouse in talon, for a dead standing cottonwood in the center of the field that hawks favor.  I finished dragging the smaller PVC pipe over to the drop point and, surprised at how much I can get done when I get started at midday rather than near sundown, I hit the 106^th trail and sidewalk.  My strategy for cleaning the creek here is to walk all the way down to the end and then clean up as I walk back toward the drop point, rather than cleaning up on the way and having to haul a full bag all the way back (the entire pattern of my cleaning route is designed to minimize the amount of time I spend with heavy, full bags of trash slung over my shoulder).  But it didn’t avail me this time, since all the trash was waiting for me at the far end, at the mouth of the creek.  The combination of wind, flowing water, and cattails here has obviously been piling up the trash for some time.  It was apparent that there was too much to fit in my final bag (I only brought 4, since I usually only use 1-3).  Luckily an entire trash can was in the creek, so I stuffed some of the larger items in there and set it on the curb.  It probably belonged to one of the residents on the other side of the street and had blown away in recent winds.  I hoped they would claim it and not mind the new trash content.  There were still boxes with ripped Christmas wrapping paper lying about.  I had to pick only the most unsightly items because of the limited space in my bag, and that end of the creek still looked in a shambles when I left. 

Volunteer litter clean up is an interesting job in that it both combats and feeds cynicism.  It’s a rule that when you bend down to pick up one piece of trash, you’ll notice another nearby, and another and another.  You can break your back cleaning up a small area, and almost feel like you’ve accomplished something, only to look up and see a sea of litter stretching before you.  Is this a park or a public landfill?  It’s easy to lose hope for humanity when you see its detritus cluttering the landscape and when you realize that a large part of what you’re picking up – pop cans, Sunny D bottles, Capri Sun pouches, pop and water bottles, candy wrappers, and so on – are being dropped on the ground by kids, kids who don’t care and whose parents don’t care enough to teach them any ethics on the subject.  I grumble and think misanthropic thoughts as I shift a heavy bag from one tired arm to the other.  There’s always more.  I’ll never win this battle. 

On the other hand, uncovering a pretty spot feels good, and lots of passersby openly admire your effort, and that feels good, and the work itself is good, and there’s plants and raptors and cute goth kids, and you know that most of the trash isn’t being maliciously littered, but rather collects here passively, in the low point of the neighborhood, by the action of wind and water on an imperfect system of resource use and waste collection – too many trash cans left outside without lids, not enough recycling.  These things, and even people’s level of consciousness about their own actions, can be changed and improved, and I hope they will be.  Maybe I can’t win, but I think some battles are only lost if you stop fighting.  It was still light when I headed for home, which is a better way to end it than in the dark.  I’ll have to try to get more early starts in the future.

Deep Time and Ice Skating

It was a massive day with three destinations!  First, Red Rocks Park, where we visited the amphitheater and then hiked a 1.5 mile trading post loop trail around Frog, Sinking Ship, Gog, Magog, and all the other rocks whose names I can't recall.  It was a glorious day, sunny and mild, and the views of the plains were made dramatic by the striped red rocks jutting up at odd angles.  Even to someone who knows next to nothing about geology, it's obvious that there's a lot of geologic fun to be had in this area, with the weathered stones' many layers -- and their sharp angle -- hinting at ages past and the forces that have shaped the landscape.  It's a place to consider the concept of Deep Time.  Some of those layers now exposed remember before the age of grass and other flowering plants that now surround them, before even the conifers that cling to opportune cracks in the rock and further split it with their roots, to a time when forests of scaly, two-headed Lepidodendron trees mantled the flanks of the Ancestral Rockies, before water and wind and roots eroded them to dust.  We saw a few pretty blue birds at the bird feeders, which weren't necessarily "blue birds" per se; they might have been mountain blue birds, or western scrub jays.  They weren't the dark, iridescent blue of a Steller's jay, but a softer, sky blue. 

We had left the house about thirty minutes later than planned and had a lot of ground to cover, so we hurried on to Dinosaur Ridge.  I learned that this very site, only a few miles from home, was the place many of the coolest and most commonly known dinosaurs were discovered, including Apatosaurus, Diplodocus, Stegosaurus, and one of my personal favorites, Allosaurus.  We didn't have much time to spend, so we just hung out at the very cool visitor's center/gift shop with the big, imaginatively painted stegosaurs, and stopped at several points of interest along the road.  One spot, once a flat bed of mud, now a rock wall tilted at a high angle, displays dozens of fossilized dinosaur tracks, with foot-wide, three-toed tracks left by an Iguanodon or something similar, and smaller, bird-like tracks of a carnivorous dinosaur.  The Interior Seaway that once drowned much of North America left ripples on the sand of its shores, where tube-shaped trace fossils from the tunneling of worms and other small animals can also be seen, and at another site Apatosaur-like tracks can be viewed from the bottom, as bulges in the rock left when the heavy dinosaur stepped above, deforming the mud layers below.  In Deep Time, a mountain range rose and weathered away, a great sea rolled in and receded, and a new mountain range grew up.  This place has been a steamy jungle, a coastline, and now a shrubland on a ridge.  In this time scale, the lives of individual species -- forget individual organisms -- are too brief to be remembered, except for those lucky few who become rocks themselves.  And then humans came and built roads and a big amphitheater nearby.  Weird. 

Finally, we continued on the road up to the town of Evergreen and Evergreen Lake for ice skating, which was fun if a little scary at first.  And awkward.  And somewhat hard on the ankles.  The temperature dropped as the sky darkened and we skated by stadium lights on the shore.  Pushing each other around in the chair was the most fun.  Do we do strenuous outdoor activities in the dead of winter just to put our bodies and minds in the proper condition to receive hot chocolate with whipped cream afterwards, like some sort of purification before a sacrament?  Maybe not, but that is a definite plus.  I managed to get us home without falling asleep at the wheel, but only just.

The mystery and desolation of the office building

I've always been struck by how much of our civilization can at once appear to be new and well maintained and completely abandoned.  My fiancé and I went for a walk today down the hill along Walnut Creek, where there is a hodgepodge of open space, golf course, and office buildings that appear to have been dropped randomly on an otherwise untamed landscape.  It was cold, and the wind made it frigid.  The scarf my love made for me for Christmas performed admirably, but even its powers could not contend with the wind forever.  Nonetheless, it was a good walk, and we managed to get through half of it before the sun went down and the cold became unbearable.  We walked west on the path from the Westview recreation center past scenes of native grasses and golf course greens and the occasional cottonwood, with the sun in our eyes.  Despite the sun, it was a little hazy and the slightest wind was freezing, in true January style.  But for the occasional private plane overhead and cars in the distance, it was quiet, the plants dormant, the animals absent. 

Then we came to the end of the open space and the trail at Simms Street and crossed over to a place I've often driven past but never actually been.  To the left there was a stand of trees in shallow, frozen water with many small birds in them, the first sign of any animals we'd seen.  And to the right, an empty parking lot and an office building.  Two Subaru's parked near the front were the only sign of any human presence.  There was a pristine sidewalk between the parking lot and the overly manicured bluegrass that surrounded the facility.  I could easily believe that we were the first to ever bother walking on it.  Also adjacent to the sidewalk were several small buildings of mysterious purpose.  My mate and I both have often wondered just what goes on inside office buildings, but never wanted to find out firsthand.  Just then, the distinct feeling was that nothing went on inside this building.  These places are like ruins, built long ago by a strange people possessed of unknowable motives.  Built, and then mysteriously deserted, left to be watered by automatic sprinklers and guarded by silent robotic security cameras.  Just as confounding as and no more lively than an ancient monolith, kept in impeccable condition for reasons beyond comprehension.  There were obviously people here once, but why did they build this place, and why did they just as soon abandon it?  We knew that on any given weekday you would likely find the parking lot full of cars, yet even then I'd wager you could scan the landscape and not see a single human.  The place could have been dropped on the ground by a passing spaceship. 

We made our way around the building, picking our way over the unnecessary lawn, which obviously served only to attract geese and store their feces.  Behind the building were -- guess what -- stone monoliths!  They presided over an eerily empty park-like area for employees.  Beyond it the road ended in a useless little circle.  A barbed wire fence formed the boundary of the premises.  We found a spot where the fence's bottom wire was missing, and slipped under.  The creek and an expanse of short-cropped grass stretched ahead, toward grassy hills and the mountains.  Ahead and to the right was a building of even more mysterious purpose, which sits shrouded from view by a screen of pine trees planted when it was constructed several years ago.  We probably weren't technically supposed to be walking back there, but we didn't see any no trespassing signs.  We walked across the field and rejoined the creek, which now had a two-track road running parallel to it that appeared to still be in use.  On the creek were more animal signs -- tracks in the snow.  The tracks were a few inches across and had five toes -- a raccoon, or a badger perhaps, I'm not sure.  The road there made a handsome trail, offering great views of the rolling grassland and mountains as it ran along the creek and passed through a stand of cottonwoods before turning up a hill.  I wish it were an official trail open to the public.  By the time we reached the bend where the road left the creek the sun was down and the cold was getting more bothersome, but I felt obligated to follow it as far as the top of the small hill, so we briefly went up for a look.  Nice view.  There were coyote, or maybe fox tracks in the hard patches of snow persisting on the road. 

We hurried back, trudging through the biting wind.  It was painfully cold.  From the back, the office building vaguely resembled a ziggurat, adding to its air of mystery and desolation.  I think I've always had a sense of this quality, but I first identified it outside the Standley Lake water treatment plant a few years ago.  It can be seen in office buildings, railroad tracks, industrial sites, the empty streets of a suburban neighborhood (especially new ones) and in the deserted and artificial environs of many a video game.  I've never known what to make of it.

Musing on seasons

I don't remember the last time the contrast between two seasons so stark.  On Saturday I ate ice cream outside with my girlfriend in the warm sun, beneath a deep blue sky with pretty clouds that I would have liked to stare at and find shapes in -- a perfect summer afternoon, if only I didn't have to spend the evening at work!  Sunday, the first day of fall, was chilly, gray, and damp.  I kind of wish the sans always did this, so that the solstices and equinoxes would actually mark the transition of seasons like they're supposed to.  Fall doesn't usually really come until October, and March is such a messy month that I don't think any season can properly lay claim to it.  Winter obviously comes well before the middle of December, and Summer well before the middle of June.  I'm tempted to think the solstices should mark the middle of winter and summer, rather than their beginnings.  Then again, the changing of seasons differs from place to place, so there isn't really a universal date of their beginning and end.  So why do we say that's what the solstices and equinoxes are?