This morning I wanted to resolve my question of "Where does this road lead?" that I posed when on top of Flagstaff Mountain in Boulder this past spring. (The answer, by the way, given by someone who lives 10 minutes from that road was "I don't know"). Since not knowing where a road leads is unacceptable to me, I had to check it out!
I drove up Route 36 to Boulder (to pick up some mail that my school sent to the address where I was supposed to live, which was not fun...) and headed up the windy road to the top of the mountain. This picture was taken past the point of my posing the question above ("Aah... so this is where this road goes!"). The road flattened out in the mountains, then eventually dipped down through several valleys before depositing me, after a long and windy trip on a dirt road, into something resembling civilization.
I knew from looking at the map that there was a resevoir along the road, but I didn't anticipate such a spectacular view from the road:
I was surprised to see a view between the mountains (I think the left hand one in the picture may be the back of one of the Flatirons) which usually greets me on my way home, not in the middle of a drive. I could see the flat prairie land peeking at me between the mountains. There were some very neat rock formations in this area, which was fenced in with signs stating that the park is closed. All of the trees were charred trunks, so I'm assuming there was a forest fire that claimed most of the trees in the area, unless there is some sort of Charred Trunk Fungus of which I am unaware.
There are some beautiful little wildflowers out here that remind me of morning glories. I have no idea what they are called....
And one last mountain view for the road:
I posted in my trip to Winter Park that many of the pines in that area were brown, adding color to the landscape. I learned from one of my house mates that there is some sort of beetle that has been killing the trees. I mention this now because there is one very obviously dead and brown tree right in the middle of the above photograph.
I continued driving down through some of the southern parts of Denver, which I haven't seen as much as downtown and my neighborhood. I'm having a really hard time dealing with the housing situation out here. Apparently Colorado is big into preserving its open spaces, which in many ways is a fantastic idea and I'm sure is the reason why Denver hasn't infested the foothills.
Their solution to this problem is to build houses right on top of each other, like the suburbs in Connecticut except more intensely crowded. Some of the homes in these neighborhoods are huge and expensive looking, but in order to walk around them you basically have to keep one foot in your neighbor's yard the whole time. The areas that are beautiful to live, where you are 30-40 minutes west of the city (only west, cause that's where the mountains are... who wants to live east? Not me!) are made up of sprawling homes that cost millions of dollars... a leeetle bit of a stretch for the budget of a school psychologist.
I keep reminding myself, "Think of New Britain, and Newington, and West Hartford. Think of Springfield and New Milford and Worcester, there are places like this around home too", but it's not doing me any good. All I can think of is my parents' house, close enough to I-91 and downtown Hartford, with a big yard and beautiful trees, a stream on one end of the road and a pond on the other, cornfield down the hill past the backyard. I feel like in Connecticut, people have sprawled out in the rural areas. Yet there are few untouched places there, as opposed to here where the majority of places are untouched. I told a friend yesterday on the way back from hiking, as I pointed to an anonymous apartment house type thing which looked terrifyingly like the 500,000 other apartment house things surrounding it, "If I ever have to live in a place like that, I will shrivel up and die."
He explained to me the merrits of keeping open spaces (namely that Denver hasn't invaded the mountains, so they are still beautiful and untouched), but it's very hard for me to see things through those eyes. Maybe we are spoiled in Connecticut, or maybe it's just my hometown. I can't tell.
I have no idea why I'm even thinking about good places to live out here anyways... I mean, I don't even know if I want to stay past next summer when my internship is up. When I originally planned on moving out here it was to be a permanent move, but things are obviously no longer following the original plan. It's hard for me to see where I would fit in here, I think: I'm not a city girl, and I'm definately not a suburban girl either. I need space, room to move and air to breathe. But living in a rural area out here means a town population of 1,000 and a 3 hour drive to any major city. Apparently the places where I'd like to live are where everyone in Colorado would like to live (does this mean I have good taste at least?)
This is not intended to be critical of Colorado at all. I think that my friend raised a very excellent point when he said that open space helps keep this state looking beautiful and wild. But within the areas that are inhabited and not too far from civilization, I can't see myself thriving. I guess the awesome thing about living out here, regardless of how big your yard is or how many trees it has, is that you're always a fairly short drive from beauty and peace in the mountains, hiking and biking and climbing and all those crazy things people do out here. : )
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