Pitkin County’s sage growing at the Upper Colorado River Environmental Plant Center.

Can unimaginably tiny seeds help turn back the clock a century or more in the Brush Creek Valley? Pitkin County Open Space and Trails is determined to find out.

(more…)

The calf and young bull at North Star.

An orphaned, local moose calf tagging along with a young bull tugs hard at human sentimentality and anthropomorphic tendencies.

(more…)

The Great Spangled Fritillary – the male (left) and female.

The lingering days of late summer spell the beginning of the end of the season for butterflies, but some of nature’s loveliest insects will continue to flit about as long as the blossoms linger. Others – namely the Monarch butterfly – might pass over Colorado in the coming weeks in a remarkable migration on delicate wings. The Western Slope is potentially on the route, though I have not seen this spectacle here, ever.

(more…)