Good morning and happy shoulder season to you all.
It’s that fabu-awful time of the year when in one moment it’s sunny and you are plotting where the tomato plants will go in the garden and the next it’s raining and you’re taking a personal day to check on the “snowpack” at Copper Mountain. That sort of nothing-is-quite-as-it-seems quality is one of Colorado’s best characteristics — at least to me.
That spirit infuses this week’s cover story by Tyler Hickman, Samantha Tindall and Devin Farmiloe, who tagged along with a team of fire archaeologists in southwestern Colorado last fall as they scoured landscapes of the Uncompahgre Plateau for subtle evidence of long-ago communities and made plans for protecting these tiny shards of societies from massive wildfires.
Senior Editor
The Cover Story
Local news matters — and sparked an interest in fire archeology
I always try to pick up newspapers in small towns when I travel, just to see what’s going on. Last Labor Day, I found a copy of the Gunnison Country Times on a trip to Curecanti National Recreation Area and in it read a story about a wildfire that revealed some old mining carts. Wildfires are burning through Colorado more and more frequently, so I wondered how often archaeologists are finding new sites after a burn.
It turns out archaeology and wildfire are a lot more intertwined than I realized. I pitched the story to my teammates, Devin Farmiloe and Samantha Tindall, in CU News Corps — the capstone class for journalism students at CU Boulder – and it sent us down a “bunny trail,” in the words of BLM fire and fuels archaeologist Brian Flynn.
Fire and cultural history in Colorado have an evolving relationship, and there are few people thinking about it. As the wildfire season gets longer, and more intense, people like Flynn are thinking about the natural and historical resources that sit in the line of fire, and how to protect them from the flames.
READ THIS WEEK’S COLORADO SUNDAY FEATURE
Section by Tyler Hickman | Writer
The Colorado Lens
Did you know the colors of the Colorado state flag and logo represent the state’s geographic features? The gold and blue signify the abundance of sunshine under the blue skies, the white nods to the snow-capped mountains, and the red symbolizes the state’s soil. Enjoy this week’s images from the steps of the Capitol to the windy fields of Dolores County.
Section by Hugh Carey | Photographer
Flavor of the Week
“Discovering” a cool concert venue hiding in plain sight
You know how sometimes you can live for years in close proximity to something remarkable, something you’re well aware of, but for some reason you just don’t take the time to experience?
The nonprofit Swallow Hill Music launched in 1979, the same year I arrived in Denver, as a successor to the Denver Folklore Center of 1960s vintage. I knew it existed, but the right confluence of circumstances never took me inside its doors until recently, though I’d driven past its various locations for years, including its current spot at South Lincoln Street and East Yale Avenue.
Suddenly, a long-simmering frustration with overpriced musical acts, an urge to have a date night that did not involve bats, balls or pucks (not that there’s anything wrong with that. At all.) collided with the news that singer-songwriter David Wilcox would be performing at Swallow Hill. A few keyboard clicks later I’d taken the plunge.
Already giddy at having to shell out only about $40 a ticket, my wife and I found that there were no bad seats at this all general-admission event (though the first four rows were reserved for paid Swallow Hill members). By choice, we took seats in the balcony. It proved a terrific vantage point to watch the sold-out acoustic performance of the formidable guitarist, brilliantly metaphorical lyricist and rich voice we first discovered in the early ’90s.
(If Wilcox sounds like your musical wheelhouse, sample his live performance of “Rusty Old American Dream,” then move on to the CD or streaming version of his album “How Did You Find Me Here?”)
Of course, your musical tastes probably vary, but Swallow Hill presents an eclectic sampling of its foundational roots, acoustic and folk music and also offers everything from lessons to music therapy. Most local music fans probably know all this — I mean, Swallow Hill was inducted into the Colorado Music Hall of Fame, among other notable honors.
But if you’re like me and never got that nudge to look beneath the surface, consider yourself … nudged. With reasonable pricing, an intimate concert experience plus connections to concerts at other local venues, it feels like I’ve stumbled upon something new and exciting.
Even if it’s been here all along.
Section by Kevin Simpson | Writer
SunLit: Sneak Peek
In “Not Quite Dead Geniuses” diverse life forms create an unusual alliance
EXCERPT: When a trained biologist like Gary Raham takes on the world of science fiction, the results are nuanced, occasionally humorous and unavoidably complex. In “Not Quite Dead Geniuses at Large on an Angry Planet” — the fourth entry in his “Dead Genius” series — his characters encompass a broad range of biological forms, and that’s not counting the artificial intelligence that whispers to them.
THE SUNLIT INTERVIEW: Raham explains why he goes beyond the basic human/alien premise of lots of traditional science fiction to bring a host of other life forms into the conversation. Here’s a portion of his Q&A:
SunLit: Tell us this book’s backstory. What inspired you to write it? Where did the story/theme originate?
Raham: Themes that I pursue in this book and those that followed reflect what I have learned as a biologist over the years: Life is complicated, unbelievably intertwined from the microscopic realm of bacteria, viruses, and fungi to the macroscopic creatures like us with delusions of grandeur. … I postulate that any human-alien encounters will involve not just a meeting of human and alien minds, but a meeting of the complicated biomes that support them as well.
READ THE INTERVIEW WITH GARY RAHAM
Section by Kevin Simpson | Writer
Sunday Reading List
A curated list of what you may have missed from The Colorado Sun this week.
🌞 Our apologies for failing to get a photo of an actual beaver for this story, but apparently these charismatic rodents were too busy doing wildfire mitigation to show up for a shoot. Freelancer Bay Stephens reports on research that shows their dams and channels can be key in turning back even megafires. Humans have noticed and are mimicking their building techniques to revive charred landscapes.
🌞 Pay $700 a night to stargaze in the San Luis Valley? Don’t mind if I do. But owners of more ordinary campgrounds told Tracy Ross they are worried posh accommodations like Kosmos Stargazing Resort near Alamosa will drain some of the gritty charm from the region.
🌞 We live in Colorado so we’ve heard plenty about the rights of rivers. But now the concept is getting a bit of higher level attention. Shannon Mullane reports that as negotiations over flows in the Colorado River across the West heat up, environmental activists and other water experts want to make sure endangered fish and ecosystems are included in the conversation.
🌞 It’s been a hot second since we’ve had an initial public offering for a made-in-Colorado, stayed-in-Colorado company. Tamara Chuang reports on the New York Stock Exchange debut of Ibotta, the engine behind many couponing and consumer rebate apps.
🌞 A big wave of tax credits that helped pay for the construction of affordable housing in Colorado are about to expire, and that’s got lawmakers worried those buildings will be sold and converted to market-rate housing. Brian Eason reports on how this might work and how the state would really like to give local governments the first crack at buying the buildings.
🌞 In other political news, U.S. Rep. Lauren Boebert’s fundraising slide continued in the first quarter, but she still outraised all of her primary opponents in the 4th Congressional District. In the GOP’s ongoing attempt to stop unaffiliated voters from messing up their primaries, a subpoena was sent to state Rep. Mike Lynch seeking records from his 2020 primary against super conservative Vicki Marble, including records of conversations with Kent Thiry, the man behind the ballot initiative that gave unaffiliated voters the right to cast ballots in primaries. A late-night committee vote killed a plan to raise taxes — big time — on vacation rentals. And two bills in the statehouse are trying to make it much harder for homeowner associations to foreclose on properties.
🌞 I was surprised, and yet not, to read that back in the day, women could be charged with “lunacy” and shipped by train to the state mental hospital in Pueblo, where many of them lived the rest of their lives. Jennifer Brown spent time with museum curators in Golden who have been going through court ledgers line by line to help keep these women from being lost to history.
Section by Dana Coffield | Senior Editor
Thanks for hanging out with us again this week, friends. We’ll see you back here next beautiful Colorado Sunday. As always, if you’d like to introduce someone to our little brunch crew, please send them this link: coloradosun.com/join
— Dana & the whole staff of The Sun
Corrections & Clarifications
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