Thoughts On Ward Colorado

I went for a drive this past Tuesday along the Peak to Peak Highway, which runs from Interstate 70 to Estes Park, Colorado, an official "scenic highway" providing views of the Front Range Mountains. I eventually decided to turn off at the town of Ward and head back down the mountain to Boulder. I remember years ago watching a series of short films at one of the Denver Art Museum's Final Friday events, and one of them was by a woman who moved to Ward and featured the community in her film. Watching it, the place seemed pretty small and run down, and I can confirm that it still is, as seen in the photograph on the left that I took of it's main street. 

As I recall, the film was mainly about the people who lived there, mostly in modest, often very rustic homes and cabins, choosing an alternative lifestyle up in the mountains of Colorado. And on the way down to Boulder, I must say, I passed a lot of those types of residences, and really admire what still appears to be a resilient pioneer spirit up there. Allegedly, there are a lot of moose in this area. I have never actually seen a moose before, and was secretly hoping to see one walking down the main street of Ward, just like in the opening credits of Northern Exposure, a long ago television show about a small town in Alaska. Fort Collins Magazine once featured a story that said there were now so many moose in Colorado that Coloradans were in great danger from them. I myself have concluded that moose do not actually exist in this state. It is just a myth spread by the Colorado tourist industry to attract visitors, damn them.