Powers Boulevard (Colorado State Highway 21)

Digital Photography. Writing. Participatory Design

I always tell people that I grew up in the Rockies, and while this is not untrue it could also be leagues from the truth. My house sits in the foothills, squarely in the place where mountain and prairie meet I imagine that at one time my house could have been close enough to touch the purple slopes, but over time it seems the rift has only grown larger; the space between since filled by endless highways and fast-food chains. 
 
My childhood was spent watching the outside world from inside this box. Picturesque landscapes painted the walls and floors, but I could be an arms length or a world away from nature and not have known the difference. From the window in my parents’ room that faces west towards the Colorado sunset, only the tip of Pikes Peak is left amid the rooftops. Nature has always been an escape: from pressure, from society, and from hierarchy. The snow-melted canyons do not pass judgment the way that humans do. In our madness, we often turn to the earth to search for divination. For me, the carpets of my home became mountain meadows, the plastered lumps in the ceilings were stars from the deepest recesses of the universe.  For all the places I could not be, I visited in my dreams instead.

Some days, when I was brave enough to leave the sanctity of my home, I would wander past the carbon copied suburban houses, over the white picket fence, through the sparsely populated golf course, and down unto the stream. Here the whir of traffic and bored movie goers dulled, if only for a second. What we called Sand Creek is this passage, unearthed by machines of an era bygone, where the runoff from suburbia flows south.
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2018—
2024