OCT-B-5
THE LOCAL
DENVER/GOLDEN/EVERGREEN/RED ROCKS TOUR
IN THE
SUBURBAN DENVER AREA
WITH DON AND
MARTHEEN AND THE JASPERSE
FINDS MORE ELK
AND CLOSER
THAN THE
MAROON BELLS ELK HUNT!
Oct. 25, 2002
I had driven in after midnight through the dense and dangerous fog and the snowstorms in the mountains up at the mile higher elevations in the I-70 corridor which had nearly been shut down by piled up snow. We unloaded the Suburban of my gear, and left the elk quarters in it for their trip to the butcher, and the hide to taxidermy, while Tommy Thomas was going to see that the head was taken to Colorado State University for assay for the “prion” that is the alleged cause of Chronic Wasting Disease. I tried to clean up with the first shower and shave in over a week, and sort out the films I had taken in the winter wonderland. I met the ACS traveling fellow visiting Gene Moore’s Lab this week from Germany, as Gene is preparing to go to a big pheasant farm, with both of his sons, Peter and Hunter, despite the fact that Hunter has been the anti-hunter of the family,
When Don and Martheen picked me up,
we went to their parsonage, a roomy house on South Ogden near Washington
Park. I put my hunting clothes in the
laundry and got them packed up ready for the next hunts—for deer in MD and PA
and possibly NY, and then for hog in Cumberland. Their friends from Fuller Avenue in Grand Rapids, George and
Nancy Jasperse had been picked up earlier in the morning by an overnight train
from Chicago—a spectacular deal from an internet search that had them both
coming to Denver round trip for less than the one way trip I had made by train
from Chicago to Grand Rapids. When we
had had lunch, we began a bit of a local tour, which was very pleasant in a
sunny bright day in marked contrast to the heavy winter that I had been plowing
through.
We went through the adjoining
neighborhood that is full of boutiques and craft shops and one with chili
peppers hung everywhere around it called the Trading Post. We then turned up, again, into the mountains
of the Front Range. We passed my
previous hiking trail of the Beaver Brook Trail, and climbed up over Golden, CO
home of Coors brewing. There we went to
William Cody’s gravesite where he is buried—Buffalo Bill—an entrepreneur of the
old Wild West. We could look over
Denver’s smoggy skyline in the distance.
We then drove UP the same I-70 I had
just driven DOWN in the smoggy snowy night, and headed toward Mount Evans, a
fourteener south of I-70 and allegedly one of the two with a road up the slope,
possibly like Pike’s Peak (which I thought was the only road-accessible
fourteener) all the way to the top. We
did not yet know that the road, wherever it ended, was closed for the season
already. As we went through the small
town at about 3:00 PM we saw crossing guards and school flags, reminding us
that although it was Friday, it seemed like Saturday. The next reminder came in the form of an officer Thompson who
reminded us that in a school zone at yellow light time, the speed limit was 20 mph
rather than the 35-mph we were going, but that resulted only in a warning. We
wound up the mountainside in the missing Chrysler New Yorker until we came to a
small turnoff which led to Juniper Point, a very photogenic scenic overlook of
the whole valley and one from wh9ch we could see the snow-dusted peak of Mount
Evans—which does, indeed, seem to have a road to the top, or at least near
it. I liked the craggy old dead
junipers, which made a good backdrop for the pictures taken.
We then drove through Evergreen and
came along a large wide-open pasture of Elk meadow, with a few horses in one
end. There, spread out in magnificent
regal splendor was a wild herd of about sixty elk, mostly cows and immature
bulls, with one herd bull and a satellite bull that appeared legal—which I
could see through the Zeiss binoculars which I had brought along, as well as
make photographs of them against the few remaining golden Aspen which had not
yet shed their leaves at this altitude.
We then drove around toward Bear Creek
Canyon and the small ranch towns in which we had an even closer encounter with
a seated group of six elk, two bulls, two cows and two yearlings who could
perform for us at a 20 yard (bowhunting) range. So, I saw more elk stalked by a New Yorker than I did by hauling
big Jake behind me, but the latter are a bit more skittish from being shot at
regularly.
In the Bear Creek Canyon, we also
spotted several groups of mule deer, and a few could pose for me, fanning out
their big ears in front of suitable photogenic backdrops.
The deer and elk appear to be as
endangered a species as the former appear to be in my Derwood woods! I believe this alleged CWD must be a rare,
infrequent and short-term disorder quickly culled out of the population. I remembered that the name for the red deer
or stag of the European “Cervus species” (i.e. the Wapiti, which were mis-named
“Elk” –the European “Elch” is our “Moose” = Alces alces) is Waskasoo ---the
early name of Red Deer, the first interim in which I had visited Don and
Martheen before taking in several of their later ones in places like Southern
California, etc.
We then turned off into the 250
million year-old weathered sandstone formations of Red Rocks Amphitheatre,
which looks a lot like the Garden of the Gods formations in Colorado
Springs. A 10,000-seat amphitheatre was
built into these rocks for an east-ward view, which makes it an almost ideal
place for an Easter sunrise service, for which it is used each year.
In the distance, about seventeen
miles away, the Denver skyline seems to sit forlornly along the prairie, and a
few folk seem to come out here for exercise.
I talked with a number of them as I walked briskly to the top row of 52
levels, while they would run them up and down for a few “hill work” repeats one
of which was done with a border collie, another of whom was accompanied by a
pretty girlfriend. The collie was
fastest.
We then returned for a pasta diner
to presumably hold me for the next long haul—the 26.2 miles around DC. I tried to log onto my remote access to see
my email to learn if I was expected to be in Kuala Lumpur Malaysia later on
Monday, but, unbeknownst to me, the GroupWise server had been taken down for
maintenance on Friday/Saturday at GWUMC.
I did search the 478 references that Google pulled up when my name is
put in to search, most of which revolve around publications (especially Natural
health Secrets from Around the World), and races I have run (some with the
finish times), some linked to Nutrition and goiter, and one in a story from
Oxfam on the Humanitarian Impact of Small Arms trade in Congo. Griffioens and Jasperse meanwhile talked
about church politics, which is not a subject in which I devote any energy
whatever.
I
was already packed with the car loaded for an early morning takeoff in the
Friday evening, so I was ready to drop the multiple rolls of film into the
processing, from the varied scenes around me---from running races, to elk
hunting in panoramas of wintry wildlife, to the more fall-like scenes of areas closer
to the mile-high height of Denver.
This is a very good place to visit
Don and Martheen, and I would recommend it to any and all the family who want
to see them in one of their interim ministry sites!