Back In Cow Country

Gracenote

Steamboat Springs, CO.  7/25/2013:     If you take a bad picture out here, you're pointing the wrong side of the camera.  

  My old friend, Larry Guss and I set out for Routt National Forest yesterday, intent on nothing but finding pretty things to shoot.  We only quit when we got hungry.

  This is cow country..ranchers are getting hay in right now..mowing and baling huge fields that spread wide in the valleys.  Cattle feed in pastures high on the mountainsides.  The long views are spectacular, but the closeup details are just as wonderful.  So here's another little album dedicated to nothing but peaceful beauty.

  

  

  Rivers race out of the mountains over rocky beds.   On the banks, wildflowers soften the mood.  The red plant is called Fireweed..not because of the color, but because it's the first to come back after a fire.

  

  Aspens and pine.  Everywhere.

The more you wander, the more you see.  The hours slip away quickly.
Those are the Zirkle mountains in the distance.

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   I jokingly ask people out here how they can bear to live among such beauty.  They just smile and roll their eyes.  In truth, the land exacts a price from those who choose to find a living here.  Family ranching is hard, year-round work.  The weather plays a big role, summer and winter..and winter lasts a long time.  But those I've met have never told me they'd rather be somewhere else, doing anything else.  

   Good.  

   We need them.

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  Passing generations leave their mark.  This old homesteader's cabin was once the center of a busy enterprise.

                                  Now it just tells a quiet story.

Left behind.

Corral.

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    It's wonderful. 

    You'd like it here.  

    I'd bet on it.

Adios, Compadre.  

For now.

                                   Photo courtesy of Larry Guss

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7/25/2013