A trip to the Rocky Mountain Arsenal National Wildlife Refuge

We took a short trip out to the Rocky Mountain Arsenal National Wildlife Refuge this afternoon. It's less than half an hour drive from downtown Denver (just a little over 11 miles away) and a great stop for a leisurely afternoon walk or hike. I'm pretty familiar with the Arsenal from the air because we photograph it monthly as part of my aerial survey job, but I was impressed by the scale of the place on the ground (27 square miles!). Here's a photo of part of the arsenal from the air this summer:


On the drive towards the visitor center we were greeted by two impressive bucks and their friends:

We're pretty sure this was a bald eagle:

photos by Nathan Abels

The world we live in

Here's an excerpt from Alan Prendergast's article in this weeks Westword titled, "In Colorado, it's not about why the wildlife cross the road, but whether they'll survive the trip";

"Establishing safe passages for wildlife is a long-term investment in the state's future, insists Julia Kintsch, an ecologist who operates her own consulting company, ECO-resolutions, and has worked on the Vail Pass bridge project for years. 'There's this hangup that it's for wildlife, not for people,' she says. 'We need to recognize that wildlife are an important part of the world we live in, too. It doesn't always have a monetary value attached to it, but it has value to our economy. It's a large part of why people come here to recreate and to live.'"

Wildness and the Savage Heart

photo by Nathan Abels - taken in Estes Park, Colorado

From Wallace Stegner's The American West as Living Space;

"Why should I stand up for civilization? Thoreau asked a lecture audience. Any burgher or churchwarden would stand up for that. Thoreau chose instead to stand up for wildness and the savage heart."