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If you were looking for golden aspen last weekend, you were likely disappointed. At least, my 600 miles of research revealed that most of the trees were still green.
The plan was an expedition to the San Juans to visit friends and promote a book. Such promotions have to be scheduled well in advance, and so in July we picked the third weekend in September, when the aspen ought to be at their absolute glowing peak.
However, the calendar isn't working right this year. Poncha Pass offered perhaps half a dozen yellow aspen, and it had more than Wolf Creek Pass. Nor did the other crossings: Lizard Head Pass, Dallas Divide, Cerro Summit, Blue Mesa. The cottonwoods, alders and scrub oak along the valleys and their flanks were likewise verdant, rather than crimson or ocher.
Only on North Cochetopa Pass, en route from Gunnison to Saguache on Saturday afternoon, were there enough altered aspen for a view, and even there, most remained green.
Any trip around the San Juans offers ample scenic pleasure, anyway, so the unchanged aspen weren't much of a disappointment.
Some people blamed the delay on La Nina, allegedly a climatic phenomenon of hot and dry weather which follows an El Nino winter.
But it hasn't been all that dry recently in the mountains. Elsewhere I have read that the aspen change in response to the shortened hours of sunshine in the late summer and fall, and that the weather -- hot, cold, whatever -- has no effect on the timing of the transition. A storm might blow the leaves off, but it won't change their color.
So why are the aspen staying green? I'll blame it on Art Goodtimes, my host in Telluride. He's a poet by profession, and a performer of such talent and energy that you never want to follow him onto a stage.
He's also active in local politics -- in 1996, he was elected a San Miguel County commissioner. When I saw him Friday afternoon, he'd just been at the courthouse, changing his party registration from Democrat to Green.
Do you think the Democrats will be as mad at you as
they are at Ben Campbell for switching parties?
I
asked.
Maybe. But I really don't care,
he said. I
think it's the honest thing to do, now that the state has
made it easier to belong to a minor party, and the Greens
are much closer to what I stand for than the Democrats
are.
To my knowledge, he is the first Green officeholder in Colorado, and perhaps this is connected to the green aspen phenomenon.
It's one of those cosmic mysteries, I suppose, but it's
hardly the only one troubling me. As I write this, the TV
set offers live coverage
with President Clinton's
videotaped testimony.
If it's taped, how can it be live
?
Other recent live coverage
showed Keiko the
killer whale being returned to his native Icelandic waters.
My older daughter, Columbine, spent the 1993-94 school year
in Iceland as an exchange student. She made a good friend
there, Kristina Snorisdottir, who has since visited us
twice, most recently last July.
I once asked Kristina why Iceland opposed whaling bans -- had they relied on whale meat, blubber and oil?
Not to any great degree,
she said. Our economy
is based on fishing, both for local consumption and export.
Killer whales eat the fish before we can catch them, so
that's why we want to get rid of the killer whales. They
compete for our food supply.
That's pretty much the same reason that grizzly bears and wolves were hunted to extinction in the western United States -- the predators ate the sheep and cattle that the residents wanted around for eating and for export.
If there have been any Icelandic protests against the return of Keiko, they didn't appear in any of the gushy coverage I saw.
I tried to imagine what would happen if a detachment of Vikings landed in some rural Colorado county and turned loose some wolves and grizzlies they had brought along.
This is only fair,
their leader would explain.
If you want us to put up with natural predators who
disrupt our food production, then you must also.
The local deer rifles would come out, but even if Iceland is now a mellow Scandinavian socialist democracy, the small nation still celebrates its warrior-culture days, and doubtless it holds some atavistic militants who yearn for the shining times of the Norsemen a millennium ago.
The ensuing action should make a much better movie than
Free Willy.
But then again, it's probably safer to wonder why the aspen haven't changed yet.
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