June 24th, 2009 · No Comments

Heading southwest, travelers can pass through abandoned mining towns (built, of course, by wealth accumulated with little concern for environmental impact) on their way to the remains of an altogether different kind of community: the fascinating ruins of Mesa Verde.

More than 4,000 archeological sites have been uncovered here, revealing clues to the lives of the Ancestral Puebloans who arrived around 1,400 years ago and stayed, building increasingly sophisticated dwellings, for over 700 years. The most impressive sites are entire villages tucked into cliff-side recesses, accessible today via a system of crude ladders. But the terrain itself is also novel — a huge expanse that, compared to what precedes it on this road trip, is so flat and scrubby it looks like another world.

Given the long drive required to get into the park, the only real way to see this vista during the dramatic hours of sunrise and sunset is to sleep in the park. A variety of camping options are available, but there’s also a convenient lodge whose comfortable rooms are located yards away from a rooftop bar particularly well situated for watching the colors change at dusk.

My trip lasted only a week, and while I didn’t feel rushed I could easily have spent three times as long following the same route. Even before I got home I was envisioning what I’d do on my next visit, and I’m clearly not alone: Deb Frazier, communications manager for the state’s park service, says that “more than 11 million people have visited a Colorado State Park each of the last four years, with the number increasing by a few percent each year. In 2009, we’ve seen about a 2 percent increase so far.”

While the parks, like their bigger National Park Service siblings, have “always provided naturalist led hikes, campfire programs and information about geology, wildlife, plants and other natural resources,” certain trends unfortunately provide Colorado visitors with more immediate ecological lessons. For instance, Frazier says, “there are significant pine beetle infestations in several of the parks that are located in Grand, Routt and Gilpin Counties.”

The infestations, which discolor trees dramatically and might be mistaken by visitors for seasonal color change, began to be a big problem in Colorado around ten years ago, according to Frazier, and have killed so many trees that in some areas acres of forest have simply been blown over by the wind.

Beetle infestations can be reined in by very cold winters, but as Frazier notes “we haven’t had a severe winter in several years” — a fact that also worries all those Colorado ski towns whose existence depends on regular snowfall.

As troubling as beetles and climate change are, though, it’s hard to remain pessimistic about the world’s future while trekking through Colorado. Making the trip — even in a hybrid car — requires a significant carbon footprint, but the payoff is well worth it.

(Photo credits: Ypsilon Mountain, Big Horn Sheep, Sheep Lakes, Black Canyon of Gunnison and Cliff Palace, Mesa Verde — all National Park Service)

Copyright © 2009 Green Right Now | Distributed by Noofangle Media

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