American Lakes Trail
First visit to State Forest State Park, and wow! I love that this was a moderate trail with flat sections for recovery so that I could bring my senior dog who hates going uphill. So many mountain bluebells, and a streak of Perry’s primroses. It’s always a good day when you see a Perry’s primrose.
The trail was fairly busy (though the Front Range on any weekend is way worse), but we still had a peaceful time.
I happened to read this passage from Matt Bell’s Appleseed during our lunch break. The character is in a dystopian agro-industrial future. It’s a good reminder that a busy trail is a trail with people who will protect it. These mountains were here long before our country was, and will be after we’re gone.
“John doesn’t forgive those who came before, but he tells himself he also doesn’t flee his own complicity: there’s no crime in being born into a harmful story, but surely there’s sin in not trying to escape. The story of how we got here, the story we refused to abandon; if that was all the human world could be, then he wants a different world. A world of mud and rot, a world of green life blooming everywhere without human intervention; a world of migrating megafauna, of birds of prey hunting bountiful meadows and bright-sparkling river steams; a renewed story of hooves and horns, of broad wings and bright scales, with a smaller, gentler humanity living as part of the whole, not better or more important. Humanity as equal to, not greater than.” - from Appleseed by Matt Bell