Wednesday, July 05, 2006
Colorado
I still remember the first night I set eyes on Colorado Springs. For a moment I thought I'd overshot and hit Kansas by mistake.
"Ehh, we're not in California anymore, Toto".
Colorado Springs was anything but how I'd imagined Colorado. This wasn't the alpine wonderland I'd signed on for. This was industrial. And brown. Where were the trees? the mountains? the bears?
Most people equate Colorado with the Rockies. Aspen, Vail, chichi après-ski cocktails and log-built alpine chalets. But this was nothing like that.
And that is something that surprises the first-time visitor: the eastern half of the state is flat. Colorado is the end of the Great Plains. Grass and scrub and yucca. And the odd cactus or two.
Unless you find 20th Century Strip Mall to be the height of chic, Colorado Springs itself is ugg-LEE. Compared to some of the other places I've lived [1], Colorado Springs ranks right down there with landfill, trailer parks and rural Mississippi. The region has been in the throes of a construction boom, throwing up neighborhood after neighborhood of identical, drab, cheaply constructed houses which possess neither detail nor character. The arts scene is ... *cough*... nascent, and shopping is ... *coughs harder*... stylistically challenged.
In short, moving here was depressing.
But Colorado Springs IS where the plains meet the peaks. The western side of the city butts up against the foothills of the Rocky Mountains. And at 8-9,000 feet, those hills are already twice as high as the highest peak in Britain. [2] Even if I don't live in the Rockies, I can see where they begin from my backyard.
In a way, it's one of those magical lines of demarcation: where this begins, where that ends. As a child at the beach, I liked to stand in the water, exactly where the wet met the dry, and think, "This is the end, the very very end. There are 4,000 miles of land behind me, but this very inch of sand is where it ends." Colorado Springs may be the end of the plains, yes, but I stand in the shadows of the greatest mountain range in North America. Here is where it begins.
1. Prague, Tübingen, Galway, and Edinburgh: admittedly a hard crowd to beat.
2. Ben Nevis, 4,406 feet, and a real bitch of a walk.
"Ehh, we're not in California anymore, Toto".
Colorado Springs was anything but how I'd imagined Colorado. This wasn't the alpine wonderland I'd signed on for. This was industrial. And brown. Where were the trees? the mountains? the bears?
Most people equate Colorado with the Rockies. Aspen, Vail, chichi après-ski cocktails and log-built alpine chalets. But this was nothing like that.
And that is something that surprises the first-time visitor: the eastern half of the state is flat. Colorado is the end of the Great Plains. Grass and scrub and yucca. And the odd cactus or two.
Unless you find 20th Century Strip Mall to be the height of chic, Colorado Springs itself is ugg-LEE. Compared to some of the other places I've lived [1], Colorado Springs ranks right down there with landfill, trailer parks and rural Mississippi. The region has been in the throes of a construction boom, throwing up neighborhood after neighborhood of identical, drab, cheaply constructed houses which possess neither detail nor character. The arts scene is ... *cough*... nascent, and shopping is ... *coughs harder*... stylistically challenged.
In short, moving here was depressing.
But Colorado Springs IS where the plains meet the peaks. The western side of the city butts up against the foothills of the Rocky Mountains. And at 8-9,000 feet, those hills are already twice as high as the highest peak in Britain. [2] Even if I don't live in the Rockies, I can see where they begin from my backyard.
In a way, it's one of those magical lines of demarcation: where this begins, where that ends. As a child at the beach, I liked to stand in the water, exactly where the wet met the dry, and think, "This is the end, the very very end. There are 4,000 miles of land behind me, but this very inch of sand is where it ends." Colorado Springs may be the end of the plains, yes, but I stand in the shadows of the greatest mountain range in North America. Here is where it begins.
1. Prague, Tübingen, Galway, and Edinburgh: admittedly a hard crowd to beat.
2. Ben Nevis, 4,406 feet, and a real bitch of a walk.
7 Comments:
They do say you should live life on the edge.
The only thing that Colorado Springs evokes to me is the tvshow "Dr Queen" with Jane Seymour. Don't know if it was really shot in the area, but they had splendid settings.
Dude, but how close do you live to SG1!
aahh yes! I had forgotten that! Sg1!! Sg1!! Hee. Cheyenne Mountain. Does it really exist? *puzzled*
Yes, Nadine, It does!
WOW. Now i'm impressed.
*lol* You guys crack me up.
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