Since I moved to Colorado, the past seven months constituted the longest gap in visits to Florissant Fossil Beds National Monument. I visited in 2008, again in 2015, and made it a regular stop as soon as I lived in driving distance. But this winter and spring I tailed off. I needed to remedy that.
Just 45 minutes up and across Ute Pass. I have raved and continue to marvel at the green coat on everything in my Rocky Mountain backyard.
The green belt does not extend far – western Colorado and most of the West faces arid conditions, record temperatures and severe wildfire risks. So far this summer, the Pikes Peaks region and the eastern Plains shimmer with a green only possible from ample rains.
The morning was cool, with the alpine winds roaring above the trees. Even in the middle of summer, those winds bring the sound of autumn to the high country. Pine pollen seemed high as the late spring arrives in the mountains, and in some groves around the monument, it grew almost stifling.
Once I left the visitor center and central fossil field for the tree-covered hills beyond, I found myself quickly alone. No one ventured beyond the giant tree stumps some 34 million years old. I recently found out that Walt Disney plucked one for display in Disney Land in the years before Florissant received its belated federal protection. If only the park service could serve notice to Disney and reclaim that tree.
At a few points on the loop, I heard red-tailed hawk cries, distant but still majestic. I was completely alone on this trails, save for one family I passed in the last mile of a five-mile series of trails. I stuck to the outer part of several loop trails on the park’s west side and had them to my lonesome. Not that I felt lonesome; this patch nature felt too rich for somber thoughts.
The tiny mountain creeks that cross the Florissant acreage all had lush grasses surrounding them. It had looked this way in 2019, when snow fell into June and the creeks didn’t dry out till early autumn.
Even with the green, fauna was slight outside of the birds. There was plenty of scat for elk, mule deer and even black bear along the trail, but few signs of anything.
Most mammals don’t stay within the park boundaries, making it more of a wildlife corridor. The limited hours always frustrate me, because aside from ground squirrels, chipmunks and prairie dogs (the latter living in a massive colony on the Twin Rocks Trail), it’s hard to see more elusive residents like badgers during a 9-5 window.
Chipmunks hissed their tiny warnings from the trees, but seemed more concerned with each other than with me. Back around the visitor center, people swarmed, traversing the short trails in thin pines that lead to the various fossilized redwoods. No one seemed to move past a certain point, robbing them of the fields of wildflowers and the solitude of the national monument.
The park rangers were talkative this Saturday, and brought some good conversation about the quiet trails and Florissant’s recent classification as a Dark Sky Park, the closest one to the Front Range. Despite being less than 40 miles from the sprawl of Colorado Springs, Florissant sits in a basin, the ancient lakebed that is lower than Ute Pass to the east. So the basin affords Florissant protection from light pollution it would not get if it sat on higher ground.
I had a last stop before I left Florissant for the day. The bird sung loudly in the trees and the renewed marsh at the monument’s Barksdale Picnic Area, trailhead for another series of paths.
The little creek gurgled anew after spending most of the last year completely dried out. Here it was fringed by a green band of grasses cutting out in the meadow below the small ridge that guards the picnic area. Astronomy nights might become a new favorite up here.
Had I more time, I would have hiked up the ridge and over to my favorite pond that’s not on any maps, where blackbirds call from the reeds and hummingbirds dodges in and out. I suspect with this amount of rain, the pond will hold up just fine.
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