The Other Colorado

(This photo was taken  in the fall of 2013 on the U.S. Forest Service Comanche Grasslands.  The date is printed on the picture.)

This is the other Colorado.  This is the Colorado of the high plains and short-grass prairie. With the exception of an occasional deep canyon or a dry creek bed this land is as flat as a billiard table.  There’s an old cowboy saying that goes something like, “you can see fifty miles in any direction and if you take the Copenhagen chewing tobacco tin out of your back pocket and stand on it you can see a hundred miles.” 

The land is in the grip of a prolonged drought.  In wet years the vegetation is almost lush and green, at least for a month or two in the spring.  Normal precipitation builds a biomass that anchors the soil and protects the ground from the strong winds.  The winds intensify as they blow from west to east over the fourteen thousand foot peaks, then crash to the ground a hundred or even two hundred miles downwind in striking long straight patterns.  I was on a flight from LA to Boston one time and a particularly chatty airline captain with an interest in meteorological education explained the phenomena over the airliners speaker system.  Looking out the windows from 35,000 feet we could see huge plumes of dust rise from the prairie in 50 mile long north to south swatches parallel with the mountain range.  The dust pattern repeated itself about fifty miles down range, then a hundred, and then a hundred and fifty miles east of the mountains.   He told us that the phenomena of the mountain wave also caused the big lenticular clouds to form when conditions were right.  The mountain waves are indeed a force of nature. 

In the 1920s the land in the picture at the top of the page was rich farmland.  The absence of rain and snow year after year has degraded the entire landscape over millions of acres.  Without the healthy biomass the very soil that I am standing on can be blown several thousand miles to the east coast and beyond.  As I walk my boots kick up a little cloud of dust with each step.  Dust covers every brown blade of grass and every cactus needle.  The distance between each little tuft, each little island of grass, grows further apart with the passing of each dry season.   I can walk as far as the eye can see and avoid stepping on any vegetation.  Every stride leaves an imprint of my hiking boot in the broken and dried dust. 

Still, there is magnificent beauty here on the high plains.  This weekend I am here out of choice. The stark contrast between the earth and sky are striking to the point of taking ones breath away.  The scenery, the solitude and the immense feeling of emptiness is a gift for anyone who loves wilderness.    This other Colorado stands in stark contrast to the mountains, but this very unique bio zone holds its own magnificence.  I stand in one spot and slowly turn through a 360 degree arc and see no sign of civilization anywhere.  My eyes stop abruptly on a heard of about twenty pronghorn/antelope grazing on a sparse patch of Blue Grama grass about a half mile to the northwest.  I wonder, how do they find enough grass to eat?

What makes the photograph especially interesting is the fact that it was taken only a mile from the United States Army Pinon Canyon Maneuver site.  Pinon Canyon is designated a tank and artillery maneuver training- site.  Not too many years ago the land now occupied by the United States Army in the canyon was in the hands of hardworking Southeastern Colorado ranchers.  The land wasn’t always sold willingly by the ranchers who had been there for several generations, or more. 

The vehicle double track in the photo cuts across the prairie.  It’s a scar.  It’s a gash on the landscape.  It’s a foot deep and in some places runs as straight as an arrow.  In this part of the country the dirt track is a reasonable and necessary part of the rural infrastructure.  Once you leave the county grid divided by township and range the dirt tracks are the only good way to get around, unless that is,  you have a horse.   I was camped here for three days and only one or two local vehicles used the double track each day.  Most often the vehicle was old and beat up, the vintage ride of a local rancher checking on cattle.  I didn’t see much vegetation for the cattle to chew on.  I couldn’t help but wonder how the rancher was making a living in this awful drought.   You can call the drought biblical in scope having never stepped foot in a church or synagogue.  You can blame global warming and attribute the drought to another bad luck product of climate change.  Even without the climate stressors that we hear about every day, Colorado has always experienced wide seasonal and annual variations in precipitation.  When the wind blows hard the dust rises into the sky like a writhing dark demon and consumes the vastness in a few short minutes.  You can’t see a hundred yards.  The only animals that escape from it live in burrows they’ve dug themselves or borrowed from a former resident.  I have to pay attention to my footfalls when I walk. It’s an easy place to break an ankle.   I wonder what lives in the hole that I almost stumbled into.  It could be the home of a skunk, a rattlesnake or a pair of burrowing Owls.  I hope some critter lives in it.  I hope all the creatures haven’t picked up stakes and moved away. 

In the distance I see the flash of reflected sunlight off a strip of bright chrome on an old Ford F 150.  He’s two miles away and headed in my direction.  Even though he’s driving slowly the dust rises behind him in a brown cloud.  As he nears I step back into the tent to avoid the dust cloud which has already laid down a thick layer of dust on everything inside.  I feel bad about my disappearing act.  Its always been my practice to step near the two track and chat with the rancher.   They always stop.  They have an interest in seeing who is camped next to their small heard of Herefords, or in the high country, their sheep.  The animals have a right to be here just as much as the rancher, and just as much as me.  The Sierra Club endorses the multi-use concept of land formulated by the U.S. Forest Service long ago.   I don’t want to breathe the dust as he slows the truck out of consideration and continues on by.  I don’t bother to open the flap of the tent and wave.    

The army wants more of this land.  They probably want the land I am standing on at this very moment.  They already own a big chunk and they want even more.  Such is the nature of Armies, the 4^th Infantry Division and the bureaucracy behind them.  The Armies land acquisition attempts have followed a loose pattern of on-again, off-again.  Local residents seem to rarely know when the army has an interest in acquiring more land and when they seem to have lost interest.  Months, or several years can elapse until one morning you open the newspaper and there’s another story of intended acquisition next to a picture of a congressman or senator shaking the hands of a four-star general.  They always have a big smile and a twinkle in their eyes.  It’s camaraderie all around.

Here’s the dilemma. We need to train our soldiers to the very highest standards.  But we also need to protect the land at the same time.  The soldiers deserve the best training our tax dollars can buy. 

What we have here in Southern Colorado is the makings of another 1930s dust bowl.  This is not training country.  The individual grains of soil all around me are so tiny that I can barely see one with the naked eye.  The slightest breath of wind picks up the soil and sends it flying.  Imagine what the big tracks on a 60 ton M-1 Abrams Tank going 35 mph does to the soil. 

We really don’t want to train our soldiers here.  There are hundreds of thousands of acres elsewhere with soil that doesn’t blow away at the slightest stirring.  Breathing this dust can’t be good for anyone.  The ground is not good for the soldiers and the soldiers are not good for the ground. 

Last summer I flew over Pinon Canyon in a small plane in the last rays of the setting sun.  The shadows were long and the tank tracks had ripped up the country side like so much confetti.  This makes no sense.

The problem of windborne erosion on the short-grass prairie didn’t begin until the 1920 when a large population homesteaded the high plains prairie, plowed the ground and ripped the protective grass from the soil.  Prior to that ill-conceived government program the soil of the high plains was kept, for the most part, in place by a bio mass that was well tuned to the vagaries of nature and the large annual variations in precipitation. 

We need the army for national defense.  We don’t need huge heavy armored vehicles running over this incredible and fragile landscape, one of the last large short-grass prairies on the high plains.  The Army is focused on short and long term logistics.  They don’t really consider collateral damage to the degree the rest of us should consider it.  They don’t always have the luxury.  I hesitate, as a veteran to play the trump card, but I feel that I must.   I cringe when I think of the term for the powerful herbicide used in Viet Nam and the Korean I Corps.  The term is Agent Orange.  This herbicide continues to cause severe health problems for a very large number of veterans.  Agent Orange was collateral damage to our own troops.  We must say no to the Generals and the bureaucracy that is commissioned to protect us.  They aren’t always right. We must protect ourselves from the collateral damage of another dust bowl.  We don’t want to pay the heavy price for more collateral damage than is necessary.    

There is a warning on the federal government map of the grasslands that reads, “it is your responsibility to be aware of the potential risks and take safety precautions at all times when you visit the national grasslands. Changing terrain and weather conditions present a wide variety of hazards. Hazards include but are not limited to: slippery roads, landslides, caves, falling trees or rocks, high or rushing water, contaminated water, wild animals (including poisonous snakes), severe weather, becoming lost or over exerted, hypothermia, mining remnants, and other activities involving excavations and exposure to unreasonable acts  of other people.”

The only part of the warning that really concerns me is the few words that read, “. . . exposure to unreasonable acts of other people.”

As I pour myself a shot of Jack Daniels I wonder when this beat up country will get its next drink of water.

Thousands of acres of open range and these Black Angus won’t leave me alone. 

Article by Wells Sheppard, Sierra Club Sangre de Cristo Group