Introduction- The Pointylands

A Chapter by Cricket Colfax

Introduction

There is a cultivated wilderness, an integral part of the American consciousness, in nearly every state. Some of it is truly wild and beautiful and rough, some of it only has stocked ponds and paved trails for show. However, both kinds of wilderness stand as a constant reminder of two opposing ideals: man can tame anything, and nature conquers all. Millions of people flock every year to enjoy a more cultured back-woods experience in the Rocky Mountains of Colorado.

In 2012, 3.2 million people visited Rocky Mountain National Park, where a lack of predators has caused a massive influx in the elk population. You may be guaranteed to see a herd of elk after your stay in the infamous Stanley Hotel, but those same elk destroy woodlands and meadows and carry a deadly wasting disease not unlike mad cow disease. Re-introducing wolves to the area has more than once been presented as a plan of action, especially with recent success in doing so in Yellowstone National Park, but as of now, volunteer hunters are recruited not only to kill elk (ones with wasting disease cannot be eaten, thus creating an incentive to kill healthy ones), but to also shoot elk cows with birth control. In this way, humans have brilliantly devised a solution to a human-made problem, and nature is more-or-less in balance without introducing unsavory carnivores. Certainly large untamed dogs would cause problems when confronted with people, but the people do seem to have a way of finding trouble with the wildlife at hand. Elk may not tear the skin off your face with the finesse of a wolf, but weighing about as much as a horse, they can pose an eminent danger to humans, especially in their mating season, known as rut. Bulls are famously protective of their harems. Fighting between bulls is common and often yields collateral damage to curious tourists. Their lifetime of exposure to people has made them almost uncomfortably socialized, to the point where people might be able to pet them if the bull wouldn’t chase them off. I have even heard a story of people attempting to place a child on the back of an Estes Park Elk for a cute photo op. Tourists.

Yet Rocky Mountain National Park, despite its dense population of tourists, despite the elk and the wasting disease and the overgrazed meadows, is just magical. Anyone will tell you that. Sure, many of the trails have seen thousands upon thousands of stranger’s feet, but there are places where you could go days without seeing another human being. The ponderosa pines, which smell distinctly of butterscotch, gather crowds of children leaning closely inwards to savor the bouquet. At dusk and dawn, the bugles of the elk echo for miles, bouncing off each jagged peak in the sacred valley. This corner of wild America, cut back and trimmed up, is for many the closest they will ever get to caring about ecology. Samson, widely considered one of the biggest and friendliest elk in the area, was poached in 1995. The town of Estes Park cried out for justice, and the poacher was quickly caught and punished. “Samson’s Law”, which was implemented explicitly for this poacher, dealt a fine of $10,000 for poaching of an elk 6x6 points and above. To this day, Samson remains a mascot of Estes Park and Rocky Mountain National Park. Pictures of him adorn nearly every hotel lobby, he has his own beer made after him, and a life-size statue of him commands attention from visitors and residents alike.

This book is not about Samson or Estes Park. Its tales of obvious human infestation merely spark the themes to be explored. This book centers more on a less-glamorous portion of the Colorado Rockies where park rangers have no jurisdiction, where nature, history, and modern industry often clash and seldom align. This book details the interactions of a community once lost to time, and then upon the construction of I-70, becoming something else entirely, an amalgamation of strange mountain people both disdainful of and dependent on tourism, a wilderness both controlled and violent.