Hello!
My name is Andrew Saltarelli, and after thirteen years out of school, I'm back to finish my degree. I have chosen South Valley Park Open Space as the location for my blog. Back in the Bitterroot Mountains of western Montana, where I lived before moving to Denver, I became very interested in the hunter-gatherers who hiked the mountains long before me, and far more wisely, sensitively, and adventurously. At any rate, this interest carried over to Denver, and I spend as much time as I can in the summer wandering round the Indian Peaks looking for ancient rock walls and cairns. Essentially, the high country of the Front Range has some of the best archeology in the world. The game drive rock walls -- one of which you can actually see from Google Earth -- were built for the great big horn sheep hunts during the rutting season in early fall. At any rate, some of the people who summered in the Indian Peaks -- and Middle Park and North Park -- wintered in the hogback valleys at the extreme western edge of the Great Plains. To my mind the best place for a winter encampment would not have been Red Rocks but a little farther south, in SV Open Space. There are some amazing south facing rockshelters and overhangs with great views of the valleys and the foothills. This blog, I realize, is about physical geography, not ancient humans, but I'm pretty sure those ancient humans were far more in touch with that geography than anyone today. So hopefully as class progresses I'll be able to better understand all the complex processes that make this area such a unique and variegated ecotone, capable of fostering so much life (I do not include that d--d Lockheed building!) even as the country to the immediate west and east -- the mountains, the Great Plains -- is so often harsh and inhospitable.
