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Colorado Explorer My Colorado


Congratulations to Daniel Ford, our first Photo Contest winner. Daniel is an amateur photographer from Centennial who took this photo with his Canon T2i camera at the treeline on a Butler Gulch hike near Empire, Colo.


The Big Thompson Flood, 1976 By George Janson


I


t was a stormy night, but far from dark. Lightning skewered the sky so frequently we didn’t need the flashlights we carried. Torrential rain battered the surrounding terrain. Unknown to us, a supercell thunderstorm had parked itself


over Estes Park and Glen Haven. That night, the North Fork and Big Thompson Rivers crested their banks—and the highway, and 144 lives, disappeared. I had moved to Colorado in 1975 and was visiting


friends in Glen Haven while still exploring my new envi- ronment. Growing up in rural upstate New York gave


me an appreciation for the beauty and savagery that Mother Nature possesses. This night was my first expo- sure to such a staggering magnitude of change. I had been smitten by the beauty of Colorado; now I was


equally gripped by this newfound beast, one of many lurk- ing within these highlands. I gained a profound respect for the darker side of nature. The lessons of that fateful night ride shotgun to my every activity since then, and I became a member of the volunteer search and rescue community. Nature is not inherently savage. It is essentially indiffer-


ent to our presence, and in the course of its daily activities it imposes challenges to our way of life, and most folks sur- vive the encounter. Despite all the heartache and destruc- tion I’ve encountered these 30+ years, the resilience of the human spirit keeps me hopeful and involved. n


My Colorado features original work by our readers that captures the uniqueness of our state. Entries must be approx. 200 words. Send to Carrie Patrick, cpatrick@colorado.aaa.com, or mail to EnCompass, Attn: My Colorado, 4100 E. Arkansas Ave., Denver, CO 80222. If we use your story, we’ll send you $60. Please include a daytime phone number and mailing address.


SUBMIT YOUR PHOTOS! Next issue, we will continue the photo contest. Photos must be horizontal and taken in Colorado by an amateur photographer. One entry per person, per issue. If we use it, we’ll send you $60. Due to the amount of entries anticipated, we can only accept entries by email. Please send the photo as a high-resolution .jpg to cpatrick@colorado.aaa.com.


50 EnCompass January/February 2011 www.AAA.com


© Daniel Ford


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