My good buddy Phil, raised in Colorado, today explored with me what he’d heard was one of Colorado’s best-kept secrets, the Pawnee National Grasslands.
Several chunky, chalky buttes grouped together were the tallest features in these miles of freeing open prairie east of Fort Collins. We also drove past a submerged feature, a missile silo encircled by a chain link fence.
Around sunset, I hopped on I-25 to drive back to Boulder.
To my left, above the trailer sales lots, chain motels, and other miscellany of the interstate, a full moon peeked out between lavender clouds.
To my right, the Rockies and the cottony clouds above them were various shades of slate blue, with white and pale pink glowing between the clouds and the silhouette of the sawtoothed mountains. Then for a few quick minutes, the highway commercialism between the mountains and me disappeared, and the only foreground was a field thick with amber grasses.
My breath caught in my throat, and I thought of how in the past three weeks, almost every day has yielded glimpses—sometimes one or two, sometimes hundreds—of stunning natural beauty.
What moments have caught your breath lately? Please share them with us!
Nice pictures of the Grasslands. Your other pictures have been good too, but if you can't get good pictures from the top of Arapahoe peak and Mt Elbert, you probably ought to just throw your camera away and just take in the views.
Posted by: Kurt | August 28, 2007 at 07:08 AM