Having recently heard about Michael Salerno’s (UTA extraordinaire) dream of going out west for graduate studies, I was anxious to get back out west and prove him wrong via the catalyst of the great state of Colorado! Having spent most of Fall Break at my home in the Denver metro area, I ended up going to a local park, who’s pièce de résistance consisted of the loveliest little dried up dam. Google maps says there’s a pond there, and they’re right (if you consider a fetid little puddle of shallow still water a pond).
Nevertheless, the natural beauty of this location was particularly striking. As an aesthetic-loving white mom at heart, the presence of sweeping swatches of beige and brown were beyond exhilarating! The nature in the ol’ CO is vastly different from that up here, as demonstrated by the presence of the skinniest little birch trees in my phenology spot, who are currently fighting for their lives a mile above sea level. The understory was lush, filled mostly with dead grasses, who’s constitution allowed them to survive a little longer, at the expense of making my home look like the set of an old western. I actually did really wanna get some pictures of Aspens to flex on everyone here because they’re really cool, but I am lazy and forgetful. I did make it up to the mountains, though (scenery from the car window pictured below).
I didn’t really feel that I had an appropriate gift to give to my phenology location, especially considering that park-based ecosystems in Denver are really fragile, and I wasn’t gonna mess with a less resilient ecosystem like that, because I’m not a very evil person. In all seriousness, Colorado is an absolutely beautiful state, and I’m glad to have grown up there, it just experiences a really volatile change in seasonality due to the dryness of the air and high altitude, so it doesn’t stay as pretty as Burlington (or anywhere on the east coast) for nearly as long as it should. As cool as the mountains, the Winter there makes me glad to be studying nature up here (with utmost respect to the Centennial State).
