A September of Pueblo

Mississippi kite moments before release

Just move there already, my friend urged.

Moving south to Pueblo sounds good, the possibility of cutting my cost of living. But the grass is always greener when you visit a place. The people are friendly, there’s plenty to do and the mountains are still pretty close. 

Through September it almost felt like I lived there. I realized quickly in late August that I would spend some part of every September weekend in Pueblo. If I wasn’t moving there, I was coming close. 

I decided to make a full day of my Labor Day Saturday. Parking at City Park, I walked down to the Arkansas River and took the greenway to the Raptor Education and Discovery Center River campus, a peaceful spot along the Arkansas surrounded by desert hills. 

I got a good share of wildlife before I went a mile down the path. Along with blue herons and other waterfowl, I spotted a group of turkeys and mule deer in the same frame. They celebrated International Vulture Day at the center, highlighting their own vulture ambassador and the many birds who are permanent residents. The day was free, but I gave the center a donation. 

Freed kites

While the Pueblo campus was fine, the center had taken a terrible blow from the wildfires 20 miles away. Its revenue was heavily dependent on its mountain lodge in Beulah, a popular wedding and event space. Only the chimney of the wooden lodge remained, the rest turned to ash by the fast-moving Aspen Acres fire. 

In October, the verdict came – the fire began when branches landed on an electric wire. That simple act caused 100,000 acres and several hundred homes to burn, mostly in Beulah. That didn’t dampen the excitement around the Pueblo campus, as the center tries to time Vulture Day with releases of rehabilitated raptors. 

The center released nine Mississippi kites, a small hawk species. These particular kites had never flown in the wild. Everything was new for them. Yet with each release, they flew off. Some loitered on nearby trees and telephone poles. 

I walked back along the Arkansas path and contemplated a stop at the zoo. But I needed to renew my membership and needed some credit cards payments to post before I could spend like that. 

That week, zoo officials posted that Mashavu, their 20-year-old female lion, had entered hospice protocols. As the day reached the high 90s, I felt the three-mile roundtrip from the park to the river campus. I bet the lioness would hang in for another week. 

The last time I saw Mashavu 

I guessed wrong, as she declined to where the zoo euthanized her that Wednesday. She was one of my favorite animals to photograph at the zoo, from the days when she watched us visitors from the outcrop in her enclosure flanked by her two daughters, who transferred to other zoos. One had cubs at the Phoenix Zoo, making Mashavu a grandmother. 

I cheated myself of one last visit but had plenty of visits to recount. At home, I went through years of pictures that included many good shots of her - tearing apart a refrigerator box or other enrichment activities, sitting next to her longtime male companion Taz Jafari in his last days, and getting accustomed to Khari, the new male lion who arrived in September 2024. 

One Saturday later I renewed my membership and took a quick spin through the zoo. Her younger male companion Khari seemed a little less rambunctious with the lion exhibit all to himself. No roaring, just lounging. Lions are social animals, so I was not entirely surprised that he felt some dimension of loss headed into Pueblo to support the zoo in another way. 

The Abriendo Inn hosted a kickoff for the zoo’s capital issue campaign, a sales tax levy intended to fix some long-term funding issues made acute by a mayor set on cutting their city funds. A night of music and drinks in the bed and breakfast’s yard/event space. The cover band played 80s and 90s rock crowd-pleasers, as we seemed to be the age group most represented. 

I spoke with people I never met before, and no one cared that we were previously strangers. That’s why I like the town. You can’t do that elsewhere. But in Pueblo strangers supporting a common cause can find new friends. 

The next weekend seemed logical for a break. The Pueblo Chile and Frijole Festival required me to ignore that urge. I drove down early and headed into the festival when it opened Saturday morning. It’s a weekend-long party, and I can usually handle about two hours if alone. The city closes down and fence off Union Street, and hundreds of vendors line the street. 

Pueblo’s pepper farms have roasting operations spread across the festival area, so the scent of blistering pepper skin never quite leaves you. Inhale deeply through your nose at your own risk – you might get a stern whiff of hotter peppers in the roasting barrels. 

I ran into some zoo volunteers I met before, and they asked me if I would help advertise the zoo’s ballot issue. Since I couldn’t vote on it, I spent a little longer than usual wandering around the festival area, advertising for the sales tax. I doubt I influence anyone’s vote, but at least people would see the shirt. 

The last Friday in September brought me back for the raptor center. The venue and dress were much different, as this fundraiser was held at Pueblo’s Union Depot, the stately and beautiful restored train station. 

The dinner would help boost the center after the loss of the lodge. On the patio they held bird demos. Several owls, a falcon, and more stood patiently while staff and volunteers told visitors about them. Every bird was a permanent resident of the center, and each had a personal story that led there. 

During the dinner, the loss from the wildfire was capture from many perspectives. There were stories from the center, from firefighters, and residents. Fire came down from the Wet Mountains quickly and forced an immediate evacuation. One firefighter lost his own home while trying to hold back the blaze. Along with more than 200 homes, the lodge was left as ashes. The 90-year-old lodge held countless memories. Rebuilding would be tough, even with insurance. 

A quiet man I knew from Beulah stood up at the top financial pledge tier. He was the only one. It was a brave act by a quiet man who was intricately tied to the small mountain community. 

The Pueblo area had a rough summer. In September, Pueblo had come out the other side, battered but still standing. Seeing that its sense of community didn’t falter was refreshing.

Liftoff at a distance

On Labor Day Saturday, I lucked out and looked east while driving down Nevada Avenue. 

From Memorial Park, hidden by two miles of condo buildings, I saw the balloons beginning to rise on the Labor Day Liftoff’s first morning. 

The rush of standing on the field came back. Ballooning does that. 

At the city's Nevada garage, I had an idea. Seven stories high with an open roof, it was the tallest building that far east in downtown. Colorado Springs lacks many tall buildings, choosing to preserve the view of Pikes Peak for most. 

The Liftoff might be free, but you have 50,000 of your closest friends crowded around the balloon field. Memorial Park does not have the system of the Balloon Fiesta Park, where visitors know to get clear when the balloons begin filling with hot air. 

For $1 an hour, I opted for the garage and ran up several flights to the open roof. The roof doesn’t show much of Pikes Peak or its neighboring mountains. The garage puts visitors at eye level with the clock tower of the El Paso County Pioneers Museum, the county’s historic courthouse, and provides unobstructed views to the east. 

Two other people sat up top. I said hello, they looked at me as thought I just dropped in from Mars and left after a few minutes. Their loss, not mine. 

I quickly forgot then as the armada of balloons drifted up from the horizon. Most of the 75 balloons of the Liftoff had crested ground-level obstacles and rose to the east. Space is at a premium at Memorial Park, so the balloons inflate in two waves. I recognized several special shape balloons from past balloon festivals. 

I have not returned to any balloon event since my last Albuquerque fiesta in 2024, but I needed that renewed taste of the ballooning spectacle. Moved by the wind, they rise majestically, even if landings can turn rough. The festival got a good first day, with no heavy winds and balmy weather. A bank of clouds obscured enough of the sun to cast the morning ascent to throw some different light on the balloons. 

 

This would be the only full liftoff for the weekend. Balloon ascents always depend on weather. Sunday morning brought a series of winds that prevented the second wave of balloons from going up. The winds resulted in early cancellation of the Monday morning session. 

The balloon ascent is such a majestic, ephemeral moment that I had no choice but to stop, even if it flooded me with memories of past ascents. Still, none looked like this, and I was grateful for a fresh angle.

The slow feel (forest bathing in Mueller State Park)

 

I feel like a latecomer to foresting bathing. Colorado’s state parks often hold sessions. Despite my interest, it took me a long time to bite. The forest bathing exercise brought an opportunity to see a place I knew relatively well in new light. 

I try to get up to Mueller State Park on Pikes Peak’s north slope once a month for a 2-4-mile hike. Outside of peak leaf season, it is rarely crowded, and the scenery always stuns. The quiet drive from Colorado Springs fit the meditative mood that forest bathing seeks to inspire. 

Little did I know I would get an ample dose of new light by showing up 90 minutes early. Past the visitor near Elk Meadows, I braked for a cluster of five mule deer bucks who crossed a few hundred yards ahead of me. I pulled off to watch them graze. 

The bucks were wary, but I kept my distance. Other cars slowed when spotting me with my camera but no one stopped. Until they grazed out of view, I had them to myself. 

I get the disinterest; mule deer are common. I see them on my street all the time and the neighborhood has a quartet of robust boys. Sometimes they eat my shrubs. 

But I could not write these deer off. These healthy boys were in a phase I had not seen. All had well-developed antlers completely draped in velvet. Soon they would begin rubbing the velvet into bloody strands as their hormones build for the rut, which follows the elk rut. The boys might graze peacefully in August, but soon enough they’ll shift into competition for females. They took turns looking back at me, then each returned to their grasses. 

When the sun emerged, the real treat arrived - its angle made the antler velvet glow. I had never before seen a sight like that. 

 As the moved deeper into the forest, headed to Elk Meadows. I wandered a trail for another 30 minutes. It rained heavily the night before, and the cloudy morning kept the moisture from burning off. The rain opened every plant in the forest, and the odors of pine and other high-altitude foliage were relentless and magnificent. 

Here I had to cut the hike short or risk missing the forest bathing session. 

Forest bathing and a vigorous hike don’t really cross oaths. In two hours, we covered just half a mile. But that was the point. Think of it as a great slowdown. You walk slowly, take multiple stops, stay silent, close your eyes and the wilderness of the park opens up. 

We stopped often and took an extended sit atop a group of rocks above the trail. You touch objects in the forest. Bark of a tree, a bed of pine needles, a rock’s surface. You keep your phone holstered. I still took some pictures with my camera but also let the pauses without tech or talking linger. 

We broke from the trail onto a spit of land covered in soft soil and pine needles. The facilitator invited us to wander and find a spot for our focus. I sat at the foot of a dead, soaring pine. I chose it as a focus due to its brown needles and the life it still supported. A gray jay ruffled among the high branches. Below a woodpecker probed for meals under the bark.  

For a different perspective, I saw under several pines where a dead tree formed a mini-ecosystem. The trunk had rotted to where it formed a cave of sorts. The mouth never received sun, and the cavity teemed with life, with patches of lichen and a few seedlings reaching for sunlight. 

The session leader conducted a tea ceremony at the end of the bathing session. We walked the same trail back, but now the rocks and little crannies on the mountainsides were not a blank slate. Through the exercise of forest bathing, we melted into the landscape, became less obtrusive and more attuned to the natural world around us, if only for a short time. 

Elk Meadow

Chasing Alferd Packer (Littleton edition)

 

Having come to Littleton, I had to find one last point of interest. 

Among its hilly terrain looking west to Colorado’s Front Range, I cam upon the sea of headstones inside  the Littleton Cemetery, the final resting place of Alferd Packer, better known as the Colorado Cannibal. 

Packer's story is a well-known chapter in Colorado history. If Packer is known elsewhere, it’s largely due to Cannibal: The Musical, the early live-action film by South Park creators Matt Stone and Trey Parker. They play Packer’s stories for laughs and occasional horror in a Rogers and Hammerstein-style musical. The locations are all in Colorado including some tied to Packer - Parker and Stone stealthily filmed their courthouse scenes in the Hinsdale County courthouse in Lake City, the oldest continually operating in Colorado. 

I had the block number of Packer’s grave and wandered the cemetery in search. I felt a little like Eli Wallach’s Tuco hunting a grave filled with gold in The Good, the Bad & the Ugly. Of course the grave I would find in Littleton was a lot more prominent. 

While there are bigger monuments in the Littleton cemetery, Packer clearly remains the most famous resident. Cement covered the grave in the 1970s to deter would-be graverobbers. A historical marker explains Packer’s infamy - He remains the only person ever convicted of cannibalism in this country. 

A Union veteran of the Civil War, Packer went west like many men searching for easy riches. Packer led a prospecting party from Provo, Utah to Breckenridge that ended up in the San Juan Mountains of southwest Colorado. That alone made Packer a pretty poor guide through Colorado. Near present-day Montrose, his party came upon the camp of Chief Ouray, leader of the Tabeguache (Uncompahgre) band of the Ute tribe, who resupplied them but advised against crossing the San Juans in winter. 

Some of the party wintered with Ouray but Packer and five others headed off in February. Sixty-five days after heading into the San Juans, Packer alone emerged at Saguache, looking too well-fed for someone who nearly starved and claimed to have eaten his shoes. 

Packer’s story fell apart and the bodies were discovered. He was jailed, despite asserting he only killed one man in self-defense. As for the others, he had eaten their flesh, but only after they died. The locals charged him with murder. 

While awaiting trial, he escaped from jail and spent nine years on the run until a former acquaintance spotted Packer in Cheyenne, Wyoming. After two trials that ultimately spared him the gallows, Packer served 18 years of his 40-year sentence at the Colorado state penitentiary, receiving parole in 1901, but not a pardon. 

By all accounts, Packer lived a quiet life in Littleton after his release. He died in 1907 and received a veteran’s stone for his service in the Civil War. Various historical groups have improved the grave that brings traffic to the otherwise quiet cemetery. 

Despite many efforts to figure out the truth, we will probably never know what really happened in the mountains in winter 1874. I believe that harrowing situation in the San Juan Mountains probably led Packer to some desperate decisions. 

What information we have about the man does not mark him as a murderer. After his recapture and awaiting trial, the man built a dollhouse in jail. 

Packer’s influence runs across Colorado. The draw of a gold or silver claim and beautiful scenery has always populated Colorado with colorful characters. Despite the cannibalism, he fits in with the state’s assembly of eccentrics. Even as the state has grown, the spirit of strangeness still endures. 

At some point, I must travel to Creede and Lake City in the Colorado mountains. Packer was tried in Lake City and the courthouse still stands, while a nearby memorial marks the gulch where the bodies of his five compatriots were recovered months after he reappeared. The Hinsdale County Museum has the largest collection of historic items tied to Packer’s mountain party. 

The cemetery shows that Packer died free, even if his name will never shed the infamy of his unfortunate record as a guide and prospector. And of course, the cannibalism. 

 

A tale of two farms (The Littleton Museum)

1862 farmhouse recreation

Original 1892 farmhouse

A historic farm can lure a creature of the city. Don't just remove me from traffic and constant gadgets, take me back a century or more. 

The Littleton Museum boasts two farms on one site. The free museum details the city’s history, but its living exhibits bring together two ages of farming in the Mountain West separated by just 28 years. 

With my Denver days ending, I needed that little field trip to Littleton.Settlement came to Littleton and its prime spot on the South Platte River in 1859, during the Pikes Peak gold rush and shortly before the 1861 formation of Colorado Territory.  In the 1950s suburban boom, Littleton became firmly enmeshed in metro Denver. 

The city will always be connected to the 1999 shooting massacre at Columbine High School that didn’t occur in Littleton proper. But the name still resonates decades later. 

While the farm buildings have been moved to the site of the Littleton Museum, they still operate as farms, growing crops while raising various livestock. One farm reaches back to 1862 and the other to 1890. They use methods of the time, and volunteers are also period appropriate. 

A sheep shed and schoolhouse moved to the site also date to the 1860s, although the ice house dates to 1910 before refrigeration grew widespread. The 1862 farm had sheep, cattle, goats, pigs, donkeys, and horses. 

The 1862 house feels like a product of the frontier. If it were original, it would have been built from trees that grew on the floodplain of the creek that feeds the small nearby reservoir, Kedring Lake. The cornstalks in the vegetable garden also carried a drought-weary look. A dry winter and record-setting summer had no mercy on these crops.. Drought sapped the creek dry this year, while the reservoir ran painfully low. 

Hemmed by several large trees, the McBroom Cabin seemed comfortable enough for a family that would spend most daily hours working the fields and tending to livestock. In 1862, farmers made their own clothes or bought them from a independent woman in the village who made them (as the reenactor explained to me, that partially led to the term spinster). 

The original cabin has moved indoors for preservation reasons, while the rebuilt cabin is still welcoming, as were the volunteers. We can imagine the people who populated this farm – they would have crossed the Great Plains on ox-driven wagons, the dry country too tough for horses. 

 A root cellar sits a short distance from the cabin, close to the replica barn built with period tools in the 1980s. Even on a 90-degree day, one can imagine a wintry dash from the house to the root cellar. 

A herd of sheep roamed a large paddock, lambs springing around the edges of the group. A large male grunted and called from a corral separating him from the others. 

When reaching the 1892 farm, the different is stark. The exhibit includes a working blacksmith shop. With the clouds gone and the heat soaring, I stayed far away.

The 1890s Bemis Home looked almost contemporary. By that time the railroad brought materials from the east. Clothes could be shipped from eastern textile mills, as could building materials. 

Some farm staples went unchanged – a cow grazed at the feed bin with a watchful eye on her two-week-old calf. Mom finally gave me the stink eye and I moved on. 

A windmill turned slowly at the 1890 farm’s edge, a symbol of the homesteading farms that would dot the west after the Native tribes were driven to reservations. Colorado’s tribes were expelled after the White River War in 1879; only the small Southern Ute and Ute Mountain Ute lands in far southwest Colorado remain. 

Both farms represented a life immeasurably more difficult than what prevails in 21st century Colorado. Something in that life remains attractive. Those would have been grueling days. Farming not just to bring something to market, but to ensure your own survival. We have no concept of the risk involved, that a few bad winters could wipe out anyone. 

With open terrain and wild animals all around, those could have been terrifying nights. Wild animals and wide-open lands all around. Grizzly bears still lived in Colorado, and mountain lions would not have been relegated to the mountains. 

The farms provided ample opportunity the let my vision blur out and dream a about a hard, fruitful life on the mile-high frontier. 

Between the pastures

Quicksand avoids all pitfalls

An unusually rainy evening seemed the perfect time to step indoors at the Black Sheep and catch up with a 90s alternative favorite thriving in its second run. 

Quicksand was one of the mid-90s also-rans, when major labels swooped to sign every punk, hardcore and post-hardcore band in hopes of finding the next Metallica, Nirvana, or Green Day. Critically lauded, Quicksand's sales did not follow. Quicksand put out two albums of engaging heavy rock (Slip and Manic Compression) before breaking up in 1995. 

Twenty years later, they resume the band and have put out three records in the decade since, including 2026’s Bring on the Psychics, the reason for this tour. These days Quicksand plays as a trio, sacrificing none of its intensity. 

The less said of the openers, the better. Two were relatively innocuous hardcore bands, while the third could only be described as “What if Michael Rappaport fronted a punk band?” That was not a question I wanted or needed answered. I'll leave the band names out of the blog. 

After nearly three hours of openers, Quicksand could not emerge soon enough. When they did, not a note disappointed. In a little more than an hour, Quicksand belted out 17 songs, including all of Bring on the Psychics with songs from their two 1990s records peppered in. 

Their energy and technique pulled the show back from its dampening start. They set out with a blistering pace and never eased up. They get labelled as post-hardcore, but to me they play the brand of grunge-influenced 90s rock that defined my teen years. They would fit comfortably on a bill with Helmet or Local H. 

That they could still bring that noise convincingly after a 20-year hiatus and seamlessly blend in new material was a testament to Quicksand’s skillful playing. 

 There was no encore, but none was necessary after Quicksand’s scorched earth song choice.

The Toledo Zoo's endless encounters

It would be impossible to visit the Toledo Zoo & Aquarium and leave without experiencing some level of sensory overload. A zoo, an aquarium, and a natural history museum all land on the same admission. The latter two could easily stand on their own. On summer nights, an amphitheater opens for concerts. 

My Pueblo Zoo membership earned me a discounted admission ($16 instead of $30). The ticket clerk had never heard of it, but they go off a list, and there it was. I will take a zoo discount any day. 

The zoo kicks into gear quickly with Arctic Encounter, where a lively polar bear splashed in its pool and flung a bucket around. An indoor blind allows visitors to see how huge the bear really is. The massive bear showed off his size and speed after leaving the pool and moving around the enclosure. In the adjacent exhibit, the harbor seals and California sea lions had no idea how lucky they were, an apex predator just one exhibit away. 

Many of the African animals can only be seen from a great distance without getting tickets for a train ride. We opted to feed lettuce to the giraffes – staff requires you to stop if six-month-old giraffe Eugene approaches, but even with three giraffes our lettuce leaves disappeared in seconds, their giant prehensile tongues showing no hesitation. At that point the zoo felt a little slight. I didn’t realize the rest was across the highway. 

Our tour guides – Meg’s nephews – showed us to the pedestrian bridge. There’s also a tunnel that runs under the street. From the bridge we descended into the big city zoo I expected. We passed the cassowaries and entered a large aviary that offered a cross-section of species from across the globe. 

Among newer exhibits, the Works Progress Administration construction of the 1930s zoo buildings still stand tall. Many have been renovated but the stone facades were incorporated into their new looks. 

The zoo includes several attractions that could stand alone. One is the aquarium building, which hosts enough creatures and galleries to fill an hour. A sea turtle with paralyzed rear fins propels through the tank solely by her front fins. Numerous small sharks cruise the tanks – leopard sharks, bonnethead sharks, and nurse sharks. The bright silver scales of a tarpon glimmer. A sturgeon moves slowly, barbed face hiding a gentle demeanor. 

No aquarium attraction draws as much attention as the saltwater touch pool, where rays, skates, and other fish cruise around. I bumped a few rays’ heads and grazed fingers on their squishy backs. 

Bonnet head shark

 

Sturgeon

Japanese crabs in the dark

But the giant Japanese spider crabs break out furthest from the other exhibits. Giant crabs move silently in a darkened tank. They are conserved in Japanese waters to prevent overfishing. With their oversized limbs they move methodically across their tank, alien and unknowable. Crustaceans don’t often get a spotlight, but these crabs deserved their large, delicately lit tank. 

The zoo’s other standalone is The ProMedica Museum of Natural History, founded as the Toledo Science Museum. It’s a stately WPA building, with taxidermied remains of numerous animals spread across two floors and a rainforest exhibit we ran out of time to visit. 

Reconstructions of extinct Ice Age species tower on the main floor, from the short-faced bear to the giant sloth to Irish elk. One gallery gives visitors an ant’s eye view, with mushrooms, toads and other ground coverings pushed to massive proportions. 

Walking through this gallery, I spotted another touch pool in a distant chamber. This pool had no line and no visitors. I washed my hands and dipped my fingers into the freshwater, hoping to run them along the back of a sturgeon. 

More than a dozen sturgeon cut through the pool. They favor the pool bottom and did not make touching easy. I caught of the backs of a few larger ones. Bony fish is no joke, as my fingers traced their vertebrae down to the tail. 

Sturgeon touch pool

 The most recent WPA building to receive an overhaul was the Reptile building. The stone and brick core of the original building remains, but the Toledo Zoo has refreshed the exhibits with steel and glass, giving the animals more room to move. Viewing areas also displayed the American alligators and a separate pool for a massive saltwater crocodile estimated at 60 years old. Along with its eyes and snout above the water, the pool viewing window revealed its armored tail.  

Dwarf caiman

But the smallest member of the crocodilian family stuck with me most. A dwarf caiman occupied a much smaller exhibit than its cousins. They tend to top out at five to six feet, and sport bony plates across their body that prevent them from being easy prey. They are a keystone species across much of South America, including the Orinoco and Amazon watersheds, their presence the indicator of a healthy ecosystem. In a zoo where no one could see everything in one visit, the little crocodiles and sturgeon pool are the things that stuck most with me. 

The last stops spotlighted the zoo stalwarts, the animals that make a visit incomplete if we don’t see them. The African elephants leisurely grazed in their yard, a calf following its mother and sometimes hiding beneath her legs. Tigers hid in the midday heat, as the takins seemed unfazed by the 90-degree afternoon despite their Himalayan roots. 

Bears have no trouble retreating to the water when the heat grows too strong. A trio of brown bears splashed and lounged in their exhibit’s pool. The signs identified one as a Kodiak bear. The Kodiak subspecies can grow twice as large as standard brown bears, even as large as polar bears. It was not hard to figure out which one hailed from the Alaskan island, as its head was way bigger the other three brown/grizzly bears. 

Unlike the solitary polar bear on the zoo’s other side, the brown bears didn’t seem to mind each other as the water warded off the heat. 

Just like that, three hours breezed by, the Toledo Zoo’s almost limitless animal encounters filling every second.