Where Are the Jolly Lumberjacks When You Need Them?

  

Video from Colorado Parks and Wildlife. 

A log jam on the Arkansas River -- probably the first time I have heard of one of those -- is frustrating boaters in the Brown's Canyon section:

The blockage, below Hecla Junction and downstream of the Seidel’s Suckhole rapid in lower Browns Canyon, stretches for 100 yards, and anyone using the river is required to portage around it. Nobody should try to cross the debris raft or try to remove parts of it, state officials said, as the floating wood is unstable. 

You never know, maybe some of those young guys who throw axes in taverns might equip themselves with caulk boots, buffalo plaid shirts, and peavey poles, and try to clear it. Probably best to leave the job to the spring run-off though.

The source of these logs is not mentioned. No large fires have burned above that spot recently. I am open to suggestions,

Now if you want a real big log jam, try the "Red River Raft." Miles long, many years old.

The raft removal project, initiated by Captain Henry Shreve in the 1830s, opened new territory in Louisiana and East Texas for settlement and agriculture. Its engineering audacity inadvertently reshaped the geology of the Lower Mississippi River watershed.

The "Red River Raft" came to the US government's attention in 1806 when it was blocked the upstream  progress of the Freeman and Custis "Red-River Arkansas" expedition. It was centuries old and nearly a hundred miles long. 

The Louisiana Purchase, more or less (Wikipedia)

This expedition was a less-known parallel to Lewis and Clark's trip up the Missouri River and to the Pacific Ocean, and Zebulon Pike's probe up the Arkansas River.

All three expeditions were devoted to exploring our 1803 Louisiana Purchase from France, which supposedly covered all French land claims in the Mississippi drainage.  

The problem was that Spain claimed some of that territory too. In fact, President Jefferson thought that a frontier war with Spain was a distinct possibility.

The Spanish tried twice to intercept Lewis and Clark on the prairie but were too late both times. As is well-known, they did shadow the Pike expedition along the Arkansas and captured his little group (who probably were in fact spying as well as exploring) in the San Luis Valley of Colorado in February 1807. 

The Freeman-Custis Expedition, the most purely scientific, was an easy snatch for the Spanish. As Dan Flores writes,

The Spaniards had no intention, then, of letting the Americans treat with Comanches and groups like that, and so for their own reasons, the Spaniards were determined to make every effort to block these American expeditions. . . . the Red River of the South was easily accessible to those Spanish troops, and so Spain, in the spring of eighteen-six, began to put together a plan for stopping this Southwestern Expedition. It decided—the Spanish government in Madrid, and in Cuba—decided to, first of all, alert the authorities in New Mexico and in Texas of the impending American expedition. 

Collecting specimens and mapping, the expedition (with Caddo Indian guides) had to pole their boats through streams and swamps to bypass the Great Raft. But then on July 29, 1806, on roughly today's Arkansas-Oklahoma border, they encountered about two hundred Spanish cavalry troopers. Oops.

No blood was shed. The Spanish commander, Capt. Francisco Viana, was firm with them.

He said, my instructions are, you cannot proceed beyond this point. He said, this is as far as the French ever established settlements and posts the Americans had passed an old French post about two days before. And the Spaniards had set up their blockade of the river just about fifty miles upstream of that old French post, and Viana said, this is as far as the French ever proceeded on the Red River, the country above this is ours, and you are going to have to retrograde to American territory. 

Thomas Freeman, the expedition leader, was a civil engineer, not a soldier like Zebulon Pike or Meriwether Lewis, although some American soldiers were present for protection. This was not a military probe of hostile territory. President Jefferson had given Freeman written instructions that if they encountered hostile forces, they should turn around. And so they did.

Flores has several reasons why no one remembers the Freeman-Custis Expedition:

This expedition, blocked by the Spanish army in 1806, simply doesn’t play into the idea of American expansion across the Southwest. Now, it may be, in our own time, as the history of the West becomes more multicultural, that Hispanic-Americans in the Southwest will look upon the outcome of this expedition as sort of one of their victories in blocking American imperialist expansion into the West. But, I think in terms of American national history, this is one of those events that can’t be fitted comfortably into the story of a successful kind of migration of the American people across the continent.

Another thing that makes it an invisible expedition to a certain extent is that the scientific results were relatively meagre, and they were undermined really by how the expedition was reported by the Jefferson administration. The map that resulted from the expedition was a remarkable map, but it didn’t really explore very far into territory that the French hadn’t already explored. So it didn’t provide much in the way of new geographical discoveries.

Peter Custis’s work, on the other hand, I think, had things played out a little differently, might have made the expedition very well known and famous, but the way, in fact, Custis’s work did pan out, it made the expedition even more ill-starred. What happened was that Custis wrote descriptions of more than two hundred and sixty-seven plants and animals that he described on this four-and-a-half-month expedition. It’s a remarkable ecological kind of time machine into what the Red River was like in 1806.

But the the publication was fumbled: you can read more here.

Low Flows Threaten Arkansas River Rafting. Guess Who Benefits

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, almost 75% of them coming from out of state. Those vacationers riding the most rafted river in the country direct anywhere from $50 million to $75 million into the local communities every year. 

The Arkansas River rafting season will happen. It will just be a bit different. There will be fewer paddlers on smaller boats. If guests are ready, they will captain their own stand-up paddleboards or inflatable kayaks, which are called duckies. Trips could take longer. Paddlers in rafts are going to play a larger role, helping guides navigate more technical lines through rapids. Lower sections of the river with more water — like the Royal Gorge — will see more traffic. 

The calls from vacationers are coming in. Demand is there. And outfitters are ready. 

Let's face it: When flows are down around 500 cfs, it's hard for guides to give clients the high-excitement pinballing riiver rides that some will tip extra for. (Guides call this trade-off "bash for cash.") 

But there's a bright side too. Anglers won't be sitting out the "rubber hatch" in June and waiting for flows to drop. It should be a great summer for river fishing.

Greeley Next to Embrace Its Prairie River

Urban river trail, Fort Collins, Colorado

When I was a kid in Fort Collins, we enjoyed the Cache la Poudre River — upstream from the city. We fished in it, hiked in its canyon, my Boy Scout troop planted willow cuttings to stabilize the banks, and so on.

The river in town? I hardly saw it, except when crossing  the bridge on North College Avenue. Like so many river towns, Fort Collins turned its back on the "urban Poudre." It was junky.

Nowadays, all that has changed for the better. There are in-town trails and foot bridges and access points, with a riparian park, Gateway Natural Area, extending through the foothills.

 Now Greeley, once again, takes cultural signals from its upstream neighbor is planning to change its part of the Poudre for the better, reports the Colorado Sun:

For decades, cities across Colorado abused rivers, using them as dumps, funneling them into canals and surrounding them with concrete and bridges. Greeley wasn’t any better, and as a result, the length of the Poudre decreased by 15%, or about 2 miles. Squeezing the river increased its speed, and that led to erosion, killed much of the aquatic life and, most of all, led to flooding. It also limited, if downright evaporated, the chances of any recreation. . . .

Greeley hopes to change that by, among other things, reconnect the river with its historic flood plains, giving it room to spread out, increasing its length and creating spawning beds for fish, wetland ponds, boulder clusters, gravel bars and places where the public can spend some time with it, if not in it.

Greeley students ponder a river map (City of Greeley).

Traditionally, rivers that flowed out of the Rockies onto the Plains were seen mainly as conduits for irrigation water, their purpose being to flow "efficiently" and tp deliver said water to the downstream ditch companies.

Since roughly the late 1980s, that utilitarian approach has changed. 

Pueblo built its Riverwalk, which takes its name and concept from San Antonio's River Walk, although it will only ever be a fraction of the length. It makes downtown Pueblo a more enjoyable place.

Cañon City's Arkansas Riverwalk Trail runs seven miles from the mouth of the Royal Gorge downstream toward Florence.  

It is quite popular. Perk, my first Chesapeake Bay retriever, swam there a lot and made one of his most spectacular retrieves just below the Raynolds Avenue bridge, when he picked up a fledgling swallow that had fallen from its mud nest up under the bridge and delivered it, wet but unharmed, to my hand.

Florence has its own modest river walk. Objections from some intervening landowners have kept it from connecting to Cañon City's — and they have a point, because a trail would cut through pastures and make parts of them effectively unusable. 

Grand Junction, eyesore that it is, has done some good things in the Colorado River as it passes through. Other communities down the Arkansas seem mostly to regard that river as a flooding threat.

I hope this trend of interacting with our urban rivers continues.

Our Southern Rockies Desert is Amazingly Young

The northern border of the Chihuahan Desert in is (very roughly) US 50 and the Arkansas River in southeastern Colorado. It forms an "embayment" in eastern Frémont County, and otherwise it laps against the various ranges of the Southern Rockies, extending southward into the Mexican state for which it is named.

One of its iconic critters will be celebrated September 27–28 in and around La Junta, Colorado, during the annual Tarantula Fest.

In this video from New Mexico State University,

Intrepid host Kevin Von Finger guides you through the fascinating arid environment of the Chihuahuan Desert, our North American Outback. Visit ancient caves with revealing clues that indicate this desert is surprisingly young. See gigantic skeletons from animals that roamed the area in the last Ice Age-mammoths, giant sloths, and prehistoric camels. Learn about the phenomenal changes that this land has seen since the beginning of earth. Our North American Outback provides a unique journey to North America's largest desert.

And climate change? Honey, you ain't seeing nothing like the High Plains Altithermal.

"Right to Wade" Advances in New Mexico and Colorado

Fly-fishing in Colorado (Colorado Parks & Wildife photo)

I am writing this from northern New Mexico, where there are some trout streams — and the usual controveries over landowners blocking access.

Earlier this month, the New Mexico Supreme Court issued an important decision:

The court’s long-awaited opinion further clarifies its March 1 oral decision, which overturned a State Game Commission rule that allowed private landowners to exclude the public from streams flowing through their property. This unanimous decision, as many anglers interpreted it, effectively re-established the public’s constitutional right to wade and fish in these streams.

The court explained that the public’s right to fish and recreate in New Mexico streams has always superseded a private landowner’s right to exclude the public from privately owned streambeds. The justices stressed that as long as the public does not trespass on privately owned lands to access public water, they have every right to walk on and float over these streambeds in order to fish.

Meanwhile, the New York Times has noticed the access war on Colorado rivers, with a case sparked by angler Roger Hill, 81, who enjoys fishing the Arkansas but has encountered viscious opposition by riverside landowners.

The exploding popularity of the outdoors, fueled in part by the limits of the pandemic, has brought a new term to what has long been an etiquette-obsessed sport: combat fishing.

“I tried to take my son fishing last spring,” said Flora Jewell-Stern of Denver, a member of the first all-female team to win the state’s prestigious Superfly tournament. “There was nowhere to park for three miles. And it was a Wednesday.”

For advocates of public access, an upside to the conflict has been the formation of an increasingly assertive alliance of rafters, hunters, kayakers and other river users. Many see themselves as defending more than just pastimes.

Colorado does not have a definitive high-court opinion, but one will be coming. At issue, whether a river or stream is "navigable," which means accessible.

“We’re a total outlier,” said Mark Squillace, an environmental law professor at the University of Colorado who is representing Mr. Hill. “Standing in the bed of the river is something the U.S. Supreme Court has explicitly guaranteed, and the idea that Colorado would try to deny those rights, which are enjoyed by the citizens of every other state, is pretty shocking.”

Mr. Hill would like the state to clarify its position in the face of his historical evidence, which mainly consists of newspaper clippings from the 1870s demonstrating that the Arkansas was at the time flooded with timber used for railroad construction.

“There’s no doubt it’s navigable,” he said.

The attorney general has argued that Mr. Hill lacks standing; the State Supreme Court is reviewing the case, potentially paving the way for a trial this fall.

A Big Burn Down by Bent's Old Fort

Fires everywhere in southern Colorado this week. I myself was "toned out" of bed at 2:27 a.m. yesterday, soon to be loaded into a brush truck (Type 6 engine) with three other volunteers, headed up the canyon as "mutual aid" to a grass fire running in front of 50 mph winds. 

A concentrated attack from three fire departments soon knocked it down, and after that we were just wet-lining and chasing flare-ups. 

The fire burned right up to the walls of the reconstructed trading post (National Park Service).

Meanwhile, down the Arkansas, two big fires blew up in southern Colorado, one around John Martin Reservoir and the other upstream at Bent's Fort.  This famous 1840s-1850s trading post was rebuilt on its original site in time for the 1976 American Bicentennial — now the reproduction has outlived the original. (And it has flush toilets).

Fire in cottonwood groves along the Arkansas River (La Junta Fire Dept.)

The Bent's Fort fire has burned more than 1,000 acres today.  No threat to the fort really, and no homes lost in the area. 

“There is no threat to Bent Fort, it is being protected so I want that to be the main point. Mainly the fire has been in the river bottom, it has gotten out to some farm land but we’ve contained it off some farm land so its maintained to the river area,” [La Junta Fire] Chief Davidson said.

Funny thing, a fire like this probably would make the area around Bent's Fort look more like it did in its heyday, when the horses of trappers, traders, travelers, and visiting Cheyenne Indians no doubt nibbled all the grass and the riparian cottonwood groves were picked over for firewood. I have been told by Park Service staff that the wetland area east of the fort was not there in those days — it is a result of changing drainage patterns.

An old pole barn at Oxbow State Wildlife Area (Colorado Parks and Wildlife).

 

Across the river, much of the Oxbow State Wildife Area burned over too. It's a place where I once had a good duck hunt with my old dog Jack, and I was thinking of revisiting it with Marco this year. And maybe we will, just to see how it looks after a summer's regrowth.

Further down, another fire was burning around Fort Lyon and John Martin Reservoir. More old stomping grounds. 

The fire near Cheraw was contained Tuesday. (KOAA-TV)

 

It's time to become reacquainted with all that area, come September or October.

Where in the Riparian is the Redtail?

Another patient in the Raptor Center "ICU."

The injured red-tailed hawk, the game warden said, was somewhere in the riparian cottonwood grove near where the power line crosses the little gravel road to the fishing pond.

What color is a red-tailed hawk sitting on the ground? Streaky brown and creamy white. What color(s) is the landscape? Shades of tan and brown.

He couldn't help because he was two counties away at some other activity. Luckily, he did have the phone number of the man who found the hawk,  and luckily that man answered and agreed to meet me at the site. 

The finder led me to a spot near the bird, which was impersonating a small stump in the tall grass beside the winter-clear water of the Arkansas River.

I laid my cotton flannel capture net on it, and it rolled into claws-up defensive position, which actually makes a hawk easy to pick up if you have your heavy gloves on. It footed me, but not very strongly. 

Into the bright blue carrier it went — I like this model because you can lift the top and set birds into it, instead of having to stuff them into a smaller end opening. 

Off to the Raptor Center we drove, where the hawk was pronounced dangerously underweight. 

"He's been on the ground [not hunting] a few days," the director said. Hydration, rest, and food come next. 

The hawk probably collided with the aformentioned power line, maybe burning a wing tip and injuring a foot. Human infrastructure strikes again.

Retrievers and Me (3): A Bulldozer of a Dog

Perk modeling an improvised muzzle, from an article
I wrote for Gun Dog magazine on field first aid.

Already published

Part 1: The Retriever Who Did Not Retrieve

Part 2: A Professional Golden Retriever

Just a few years after I hunted over the "Swiss guide" golden retriever, M. and I found ourselves living in a 1908 smelter worker's cottage on the wrong side of the tracks in Cañon City, Colorado where I had been hired on a start-up outdoor magazine, Colorado Outdoor Journal, edited by my friend Galen Geer, who appeared in Part 2 as a writer-deputy sheriff but was on his way up, or at least out.

You probably have not heard of it — not because you are unhip, but because like 80 percent of magazine startups in the (barely) pre-Web era, it failed. That's another story.

As managing editor, I was the main point-of-contact with the writers. Some were already established, such as John Gierach and Ed Engle for trout fishing, Doug Harbour for upland bird hunting, and David Petersen for elk hunting.

Others were not, like the man from the North Fork Valley who had written a piece about his moose hunt, back when moose were only recently re-introduced in Colorado and licenses very few, available only by a lottery system.

The North Fork Valley in Delta County is on the Western Slope, but he was going to be in Cañon and wanted to drop off some photos or something in person, so of course we said "Come on by."

After taking care of business, he asked Galen and me, "Do you fellas like dogs?" 

"Sure," we said. 

"I have two pups out here from my last litter," he said, "but I have not yet found homes for them." 

He had built a sort of nest with straw bales and plywood in the bed of his pickup truck. He dropped the tailgate, and the two pups emerged. One bounced right out, while other came more cautiously.

They were four-month-old Chesapeake Bay retrievers, born to a dam named Dustbuster of Bone Mesa, sired by a dog named Mount Lamborn's Baron. One or both, take 'em. No cost. I chose the bouncy one.

Galen had no room for another hunting dog but I now had a small house on a large lot with open land beyond that  — and I remembered that superb golden retriever. I knew nothing about Chessies, but they were clearly retrievers too.

I called M. at home and said that I had been offered a puppy. She agreed to my bringing him home. Later she admitted that the word "puppy" to her meant a little guy that you could hold in your cupped hands. Instead, here was a doggie who weighed maybe thirty pounds already!

His first new experience was being attacked by cats. We had three. They all went into full Intruder -Attack Mode, and he was soon backed into a corner of the dining room, going "Please don't hurt me!" The cat line-up would change, but he always drew a line between Our Cats (politely ignored) and Other Cats (could be chased out of the backyard).

His name was Perk, from the idea that free puppies were a perk of the job. I joined the Hunting Retriever Club (HRC) chapter down in Pueblo, and so registered him with the United Kennel Club as "Baron's Editor's Perquisite."

He grew to 105 pounds (48 kg), a stoic bulldozer of a dog. He traveled with us from Puget Sound to the Shenandoah Valley and made the move from Cañon City to the higher hills. He hiked and hunted and accompanied me at the endless summer work of cleaning the irrigation ditch.

At the new place, where houses were farther apart, a neighbor once asked if we still had a dog. "I never hear him," she said. 

That was because he saved his window-rattling Woof! for serious things: "Someone is walking up the driveway!" or "There is a bear out front!"

I took him to HRC training classes. That group makes much of distinguishing themselves from other dog groups. They have "hunt tests" or "hunts," not "field trials."  Handlers wear camouflage, not white coats. Duck calls are blown and blank shotgun shells fired. 

We learned some good things.  But serious competion would require travel around about a four-state area, campaigning a dog through various "hunts" of increasing complexity. I lacked the time, money, and inclination.

It seemed to me that a "Started" dog had the basic skills for a hunting retriever, assisted by his own learning on the job. So I dropped out after that level. He got his one (camouflage-printed) ribbon. It might still be around here someplace.

Plus, I never forgot a conversation I overheard while waiting for an HRC chapter meeting to begin. This woman, one of the club stalwarts, was complaining that her husband had taken their competition dog out the previous weekend for some actual duck-hunting. 

"He ruined [the dog]!" she exclaimed to her friend.

The lightbulb went on for me. It was not about the dogs and actual hunting; it was about humans coming up with increasing complex and unrealistic challenges for the dogs so that they could have canine winners all neatly ranked.

Perk would jump into the Arkansas River flowing with bits of ice and grab a duck. Wasn't that what it was all about? 

Part 4: Hardscrabble Jack

Celebrating October in Cañon City, Colorado

Arkansas River in Cañon City, looking upstream (west).

M. and I were in Cañon City Friday because  . .  . oh right, we had to pick up our mushroom CSA box. Yeah, mushrooms. Fruits-and-vegetables CSA's are like, so 2008.

Arkansas River in Cañon City, looking downstream (east).

After two years of early, bough-breaking snows, everyone is pleased that this year was a proper low-altitude Colorado fall, with deep blue skies and heart-piercing golden cottonwood leaves.

You have to understand that while these views of central Cañon look bucolic, I was practically having my butt brushed by passing cars on the South Reynolds Avenue Bridge while making them.

Because everyone is driving everywhere — and fast.

Brown Trout, Road Work, Yurts: Getting Re-located on the Arkansas River

Waiting for a pilot car on US 50 near Texas Creek. The driver is Darryl Godot.

I went fishing on the Arkansas River today, which should be normal as pie for a southern Coloradoan, but for me it has not been that way.

I just wasn't making enough time for fishing—and then COVID 19 fell like an old-time theatre fire curtain. That should have made for more time, me being already in work-at-home mode, but I was fooling myself: I was not invulnerable to the "languishing" and loss of purpose affecting many of the Laptop Class.

My last remaining two-piece medium-weight spinning rod had died in combat at North Michigan Reservoir in State Forest State Park in August 2019, and I finally replaced it last month. So today's mission was  to (a) try out the new rod and (b) go someplace.

I came out of a side canyon on a little county road, popping onto US 50 beside the Arkansas River,  where the traffic was pouring up the river — eighteen-wheelers, RVs of all description, and the repurposed school buses favored by the whitewater rafting companies, painted with names like "Chuck" and "Dionysus."

On the sound system, Mara Aranda is singing in Latin and Ladino. Lots of drums. It all fits —  a troop of medieval lancers on skinny horses might pick their way down these rocky slopes looking right at home.

Smoky haze from fires further west fills the canyon, obscuring "Precambrian rocks cut with black dikes and white dikes." It's like a haze of memory: I am driving down the canyon in my old pickup late at night, headlights on the granite walls, after visiting that girl in Salida. She ditched her radio DJ boyfriend and came down to my place, but the kindling just never caught fire, and she went back to  . . . LA?

Forward a few years—beer, chips and salsa on the patio of the old Salida Inn as local Trout Unlimited members strategize how to protect fisheries in the proposed state parks division's Arkansas Headwaters Recreation area, which seems to be all about commercial rafting, commercial rafting, and oh yes, kayaking. Colorado Trout Unlimited's state resource director, Leo Gomolchak (major, USA, ret.) was always there to keep us fighting. I walk out to the parking lot with him—the tires on his Bronco are worn down to the steel cords. (He resembled the actor Lloyd Bridges, don't you think?)

Another memory: coming down the canyon at night in my friend Dave's truck, and a mountain lion comes up from the river, dashes in front of us, and climbs the steep hillside on the right, at speed. 

The spinning rod is no longer a virgin, so to speak.  We will eat trout. I am normally a catch-and-release guy on wild trout, but at least once in a season, I eat some, if only to recognize that this is Serious Business for the fish, if not for us. It's not like a friendly game of tennis where the players shake hands across the net. "Good game!" "Great casting, man, total respect!"

But I had gotten so disconnected. The river seemed higher than I expected—I had not even checked a fishing report. The Wellsville river gauge, upstream from where I stood, was showing 766 cfs, definitely in the fishable zone but still a little higher than I had expected. 

I was back to wearing new-ish rubber-footed hip waders, which reminded me about how in the late 1980s and 1990s, you were a total bumpkin if you wore rubber-footed waders. All the kool kidz had felt-soled wading boots, and eventually so did I.  

Ed Valdez, the short and stocky original owner of the Cañon City fly shop Royal Gorge Anglers, used to refer to the Arkansas' underwater surface as "greased cannonballs," in other words, slimy rocks. He wore felt soles with strap-on cleats, and he cast a long fly line. "I'm short, so I have to cast good," he said.

Now many states have outlawed felt-soled boots because they can more easily spread invasive organisms. Deplorable rubber soles are cool again.

And I am feeling a little unsteady on the "greased cannonballs," even in ankle-deep water. Note to self: bring a wading staff. Yet as ever, the presence of the river draws a curtain between me and the highway traffic. There is only the rod, the lure, the water, maybe the trout. Until the sun is too high, and I feel my  concentration slackening.

So I had a hamburger at a little store. The gas pumps were plastic-bagged, and the the indoor restrooms were dead. What is this, the Other Colorado? There were porta-potties — evidently on the six-month service plan.

I drove down part of the highway that I had not seen for five years or more. How is this happening? It's the Covid Contraction. Must fight it! 

There was road work in progress. Cue the northern-states joke about there being only two seasons, "winter" and "highway construction."

A rafting company now offers "luxury riverside yurts." True, they were on the river bank, but they were in a gravel parking lot where the paying customers get off the buses, hear their safety lectures, and load onto rafts to run the Royal Gorge. And all this only a hundred yards from US 50's truck traffic. Maybe at night it is a "luxury" experience.

And so back up in altitude to home. Five stars, will do it again.

I Skipped National Grasslands Week — for a Reason

You probably missed this because you were watching migrating birds or something, but National Grasslands Week was June 18th-24th.

Or maybe you skipped it because the Comanche and Cimarron national grasslands are interesting country but it's just too damn hot there in June for recreation. Especially this year. (There are other national grasslands as well.)

I went to the Purgatory River dinosaur trackway that week in 2015, and while it was a good experience, I would much rather have gone in December. I have hunted in shirtsleeves on New Year's Day in southeastern Colorado.

January is also good, absent any blizzards. Or February. I used to take the nature-writing students out to Vogel Canyon (in the upper-left light-blue area on the map below) in early February.

It's a good entry point for the grasslands experience — all that aridity and melancholy and mysterious rock art.

It must have been someone sitting in an air-conditioned office who put National Grasslands Week in June. The bureaucratic mind at play.

Trout 1, High Art 0: The Arkansas River Will Remain Undraped

Christo and his late wife and collaborator, Jeanne-Claude, in 2009
with a sketch of how "Over the River" would look (Keystone/Dominic Favre).

Zee artiste Christo has canceled his plan to drape miles of the Arkansas River in plastic sheets. 

He blamed Donald Trump of course, but locals who have fought the project since 1992 want some of the credit for his decision.

The controversial project that was first conceived in 1992 by Christo and his late wife, Jeanne-Claude, has been mired in legal battles as opponents feared the environmental impacts of the 14-day installation above the river between Salida and Cañon City that would take 2½ years to build.

Opponents' bumper sticks are often seen.

The Arkansas River is heavily used for whitewater kayaking and rafting, and many boaters (but not all) were not happy about the project.

The Denver Post quotes one opponent:

Colorado river activist Gary Wockner was equally excited, although more snarky. “This may be the first good thing Trump has done for Colorado’s environment,” he wrote in an e-mail.

The New York Times called the Colorado opposition the world's largest art protest, quoting Christo as blaming President Trump for his decision. In other words, from their point of view, it is not about Coloradans protesting Christo's decision to hang plastic over the river, it is about his protest of Trump's election.

Maybe that is just an excuse, and local opponents ran out the clock. In a Wednesday announcement, it was reported elsewhere, Christo did not mention President Trump but said, "After pursuing Over The River, Project for the Arkansas River, State of Colorado, for 20 years and going through 5 years of legal arguments, I no longer wish to wait on the outcome."

Christo Wraps Rail Cars?

Zee artiste Christo, currently thwarted by legal challenges from commencing his huge project of draping plastic sheets across the Arkansas River, had apparently chosen to work on a smaller scale, "wrapping" (one of his signature techniques) antique narrow-guage rail cars at the Cimarron Canyon Rail Exhibit on US 50 in western Colorado.

Propping up Charlie Goodnight's Barn

Goodnight's barn — the oldest standing structure in Pueblo?

"Charles Goodnight c. 1880" (late 40s) by University of Oklahoma Press; photo by Billy Hathorn -Wikimedia commons.

Famed cattleman Charles Goodnight is usually associated with the Texas Panhandle region, but he had a ranch in the 1870s that stretched southwest from Pueblo into the Wet Mountains. A feature of this ranch was a sandstone barn built in 1870. Goodnight dreamed big, but he never would have dreamt that his barn would have its own Facebook page.

And its own preservation committee, whose website says, 

Charles Goodnight was born in 1836 in Illinois and when he was 10 years of age his family moved to the newly formed State of Texas. Here learned about cattle herding and began his life-long love affair with Texas Longhorns. He and Oliver Loving began trailing Longhorns north to Colorado and Wyoming in the 1860s. Goodnight invented the chuck wagon in order to more easily feed the drovers on the trail.

In 1868, Goodnight put down roots just west of the newly created town of Pueblo, Colorado. He built his Rock Canyon Ranch below the bluffs of the area just west of what is named Goodnight Street. He ran his cattle all over the Gervacio Nolan Grant and had line camps over the area, including Babcock’s Hole Ranch in Wetmore, Colorado. The ranch remains today as a testament to Goodnight’s western heritage.

Goodnight and his wife lived several years in Pueblo before he transferred his headquarters to Palo Duro Canyon south of Amarillo. The barn lies between the Arkansas River and Thatcher Boulevard/Colorado 96 on the city's west edge. Formerly it was surrounded by the buildings and machinery of a gravel operation mining the alluvial deposits. Now all that is gone.

In a classic bureaucratic snafu, there is a sign by the barn about its history, but you cannot

The Goodnight barn about 1900 with windmill.

(legally) enter the property, even it is (I think) state-owned now. Bring your big telescope.

The barn needs structural help. As the committee reported last week,

The City and County are set to approve $5,000 each toward the cost of Construction Documents and Specifications. The total for the documents is $37,500.00! Frontier Pathways and HPI are funding $1,000 each toward this amount. The Committee is giving $26,540.00 which we raised already! . . . . In April we will be writing a State Historic Fund Grant for $200,000 to begin the exterior work on the barn next Autumn. Our grant writer is also submitting grants to go toward the cash match and more. We are looking forward to a HUGE 2016!

Assorted factoids about Charles Goodnight from Wikipedia and elsewhere.

• Young Charlie was too busy being a cowboy and then a Texas Ranger to be bothered much with schooling, never learning to read and write. About the time the barn was going up, he married Mary Ann "Molly" Dyer, a Texas schoolteacher, who handled all written matters for him. She died in 1926.

• He smoked numerous cigars every day.

• He is credited as the (very loose) inspiration for the character of Woodrow F. Call in Larry McMurtry's novel Lonesome Dove (1985) yet also appears himself as a minor character.

• At the age of 91, after Molly's death, he married a woman of 26. She got pregnant, but miscarried. (He and Molly had no children either.) He died two years later at the age of 93.

War and Groundwater

Someone once explained the 1967 Six-Day War, when Israel fought off Syria, Jordan, and Egypt and ended up controlling the Golan Heights, in terms of water.

By capturing the Golan Heights, the article asserted, the Israelis controlled the recharge area where precipitation filtered down to the wells watering their farms.

Western kid that I was, I thought, "Oh, I get it, it's all about water. No wonder the tanks are rolling."

Some students and I once kicked around alternative bioregional histories for southern Colorado. I suggested that if Kansas and Colorado were separate countries fighting over the Arkansas River's flow, we probably would have had a hard time stopping their troops. The citizens of Pueblo would have been digging trenches, like those of Warsaw in 1920. The border would probably be at Fowler now.

Fortunately, we have a judicial system which settled things, meaning that Coloradans do not have to say "Ar-KAN-sas" like those barbarians to the east. But I digress.

We all have heard about the California drought and the over-pumping of groundwater there. We should know that the same thing is happening on the High Plains (another argument for industrial hemp over thirsty corn).  Cities such as Santa Fe and Albuquerque, not to mention some Denver suburbs, depend on ground water—how long will that last?

What I did not know is that the Saudi Arabs have been playing the same game, and in about thirty or forty years they have drained an aquifer in the name of growing wheat. Saudi Arabia a wheat-exporting country? Who knew? Not me. But they are hitting the wall called No More Groundwater.

Just one more thing to stir up the Middle East. Over there, the tanks do roll.

The Machine That Must Run Forever

Leadville Mining District (Bureau of Reclamation).

This is the website for the "10,000 Year Clock" proposal, also known as the Long Now.

There is a Clock ringing deep inside a mountain. It is a huge Clock, hundreds of feet tall, designed to tick for 10,000 years. Every once in a while the bells of this buried Clock play a melody. Each time the chimes ring, it’s a melody the Clock has never played before. The Clock’s chimes have been programmed to not repeat themselves for 10,000 years.

Very nice, but we already have a "10,000-year clock." Several of them, in fact.

They do not tell time, but they must run forever. As in forever, as long as people live downstream from Colorado mine pollution.

Or until there is some major geological change, a technological breakthrough, or society devolves into some kind of Max Max, The Dog Stars, or World Made by Hand kind of future.

In that case, cadmium and other heavy metals in your drinking water and a lack of trout in the river might be lower down your list of problems. Who can say?

Maybe you heard about how work by the Environmental Protection Agency to remedy mine-drainage pollution in a tributary of the Animas River in SW Colorado went horrible wrong.

A toxic slug is flowing downstream into New Mexico and eventually to the Grand Canyon and the Colorado River.

Some people just want to use this incident to beat up on the EPA. Others worry about the effects on people dependent on the river and on its aquatic life.

My point is, this is not unique. Colorado, "mother of rivers," (South Platte, North Platte, Rio Grande, Arkasas, Colorado) is also a state built on mining.

Take the headwaters of the Arkansas River — the mining area around Leadville. It boomed on silver, but in the 1940s, the call was for zinc — zinc to make brass — brass for all the cartridge cases and artillery shells of World War Two.

But the mines filled with water as they went deeper, water percolating from rain and snow melt. So miners drilled a long, long tunnel to drain them, routing it into the river.

Leadville Mine Drain — the "floor" is water.

The metals that the tunnel picked up killed the river. So in 1991, the Bureau of Reclamation opened a treatment plant to neutralize the drainage. It's simple chemistry really.

When I co-taught an environmenal writing class at Colorado State University-Pueblo, my colleague and I used to take students up there on a field trip. We would rent some vans — it is about 160 miles one way, and many students had never been that far up the river that feeds their city.

We would tour the treatment plant and also drive past  the similar Yak Drainage Tunnel.

As some who read the old Whole Earth Review and CoEvolution Quarterly, I know about the "Long Now" project. I was interested, but I wanted to bring those Bay Area techno-hippies up to Leadville.

"Look here," I would say. "It's already running. Just add the chimes."

Because this "machine" has to run forever.

Forever.

Forever.

In the words of that old treaty with the Iroquois Confederacy in New York, "as long as the waters flow."

We all know how that worked out.

John Martin Reservoir is Full Again

Enjoy it while it's this way.

I have never fished John Martin, but I have tried it for waterfowling with mixed success. When it is high like this, you can find some cover and improvise a blind.

But when it is low,  the best areas are surrounded by a wide margin of boot-sucking mud. I wonder how far down the original bottom is under the the silt that has washed in.

News release from Colorado Parks and Wildlife:

HASTY, Colo. - The wet Colorado spring at John Martin Reservoir has allowed something that hasn’t been seen for quite a while: high water levels.

That means it’s a great time to visit the park. There’s plenty of room for boating in the reservoir that now spans roughly nine miles long and two miles wide. There's also 200-plus campsites and nearly five miles of hiking trails to explore.

Water levels at John Martin Reservoir are nearly seven times higher than levels last year. As of June 23, the reservoir had 276,000 acre feet of water, while last year at a similar time of year the reservoir held only around 30,000 acre feet.

"The reservoir hasn't looked like this in a long time," said Park Manager Dan Kirmer. "If you haven't been to the reservoir before or haven't been in awhile, you definitely need to come check it out."

Boat, picnic and fish at this peaceful oasis known for its wildlife. John Martin Reservoir is also considered a birdwatcher's paradise with almost 400 species documented in Bent County.

Beat the crowds and long lines at boat ramps at other reservoirs across the state and enjoy the open water at John Martin Reservoir. While the dock at the east boat ramp had to be closed, boats can still launch and both the east and west boat ramps remain open.

The reservoir is letting in water at a rate of around 3,900 cubic feet per second and is releasing at a rate of about 820 cfs, so the high water levels will remain for a while.

For more information about John Martin Reservoir State Park call 719-829-1801, or click here.

A Last Chance to ROAR?

Opponents of zee artiste Christo's plan to cover miles of the Arkansas River with fabric have one more court date, and then they have run out of legal options.

Rags Over the Arkansas River, the organized opponents, are appealing to the Colorado Supreme Court after losing an earlier appeal:

The Court of Appeals on Feb. 12 rejected ROAR's request to reverse the Colorado State Parks' approval of Christo's plan to suspend fabric across 5.9 miles of the Arkansas River between Salida and Cañon City. The group argued the parks division — now Colorado Parks and Wildlife — failed to follow its own regulations when it approved Over The River in 2011, a week shy of its merger with the Colorado Wildlife Commission, which opposed the installation.

The appeals court agreed that the parks division's decision to approve the project through a cooperative agreement instead of a special activities permit violated procedure, calling the permitting shift "arbitrary and capricious."

Christo has spent a lot on this project, but then he also makes mllions by selling drawings, documents, etc.,  related to his projects.

The motel owners have been salivating for years over this one. I am not sure what the owners of the whitewater rafting companies are saying. Maybe they think that people will line up to pay for the "greenhouse effect" of floating under the panels if the project is built. 

Waiting for Some Snow

Click to embiggen.

Put this snowpack map together with this news release (PDF) from the federal Natural Resources Conservation Service: "Snowpack Percentages Decline throughout Abnormally Dry January," and you will see why we are hoping that the predictions for a wetter spring come true.

January is an important month for mountain precipitation over the course of the average year.The month of Apriltypically provides the most mountain precipitation at 3.6 inches, followed by March at 3.4 inches, and January coming in the third highest at 3.2 inches. This January provided only 1.47 inches of mountain precipitation, 45% of the average. The South Platte saw the greatest precipitation totals compared to normal at 62% of average. 

Here in the foothills, I have had my snowblower out only three times, and the deepest snow was only seven inches. (Via Coyote Gulch, the go-to Colorado water blog.)

Brown's Canyon, Political Theatre, and the Changing Face of Conservation Rhetoric

I spent the afternoon in Salida at what was essentially a 500-person pep rally for the proposed Brown's Canyon National Monument in Chaffee County.

With me was fellow Backcountry Hunters  & Anglers member Paul Vertrees.

Like a few others, this "monument" would not involve the National Park Service but be managed by the agencies currently involved: the U.S. Forest Service, Bureau of Land Management (BLM), and Colorado Parks and Wildlife (CPW).

There are two stories here. One is political theatre and process, and one is about changes in conservation rhetoric.

1. Wilderness protection and national monument designation proposals for this stretch of the Arkansas River, where it runs through mostly public land away from any highways and railroads, have been floating around since the 1980s, at least.

Last year, as I blogged, Senator Mark Udall (D-Colo.) introduced a new bill to make this wilderness study area into a national monument that would still allow grazing, hunting, fishing etc.

Then came the 2014 elections. Udall, much to his surprise (I am guessing), lost his seat. Given Congress's preoccupations, his bill's chances don't look good, despite support from most of the Colorado delegation.

Hence Plan B: Have the president designate the national monument under the Teddy Roosevelt-era Antiquities Act. Such designation would be legal, constitutional, and has been upheld by the courts.

To make the case for that, Udall roped in our other senator, Michael Bennett, plus the chief of the U.S. Forest Service and the assistant directors of the BLM and the Colorado Department of Natural Resources.

They sat at a long table while listening to hours of testimony from local governments (the towns of Salida and Buena Vista, plus Chaffee and Saguache counties), business owners, conservationists, rafters, hunters, etc., 99.5 percent of whom said executive designation would be a Good Thing. Which brings me to . . . .

2. Last year I briefly mentioned the new "veterans for wilderness" movement, as shown in this Wilderness Society article, "Veterans want to protect the public lands that help them heal." We heard testimony from, for example, the Veterans Expeditions group, which takes vets rafting and camping in the canyon.

This year they were jointed by T-shirted members and former members of a group called (if I have it right) Hispanic Access Foundation, which takes kids from metro Denver on outdoor trips, including rafting Brown's Canyon.

They spoke of seeing starry skies for the first time in their lives, of being out of the city for the first time in their lives, and some hope was expressed by adults that some of these kids might seek careers in natural-resources management.

Who could argue with that? Well, possibly the staffer from Rep. Doug Lamborn (R-Colorado Springs), who claimed that an executive proclamation would be a "top-down" action foisted on an unknowing population.

Let's see, I attended my first public hearing on this matter in Buena Vista when Senator Ken Salazar hosted it, and he left office in 2009 . . . and that was just one of several.

I hope that what he heard from local government and business types, in particular, might persuade him otherwise, but you never know.

Meantime, we await the judgment of our performance from the critics who matter.