Rebels for food freedom.

I installed my first package of bees back in May! I’ve got a funny little Hive made by Summer Hawk.

It is cute, and smaller than the standard Langsworth. (Smaller by 2 inches!$) but it serves its purpose. Housing my bees. I got the hive back in 2018. But it sat empty for almost two years until this year I SWORE I was going to have bees this spring!

Most humans will rarely encounter a bear. And that is a good thing. Here in the southern Colorado Rockies we have the Native Black bear. Now don’t be fooled by the coloration in the name.

Black bears can be white, blond or in the case with my two stooges, an adult cinnamon with a shoulder that reached my lettuce hoop, and a new kid. Typical, black and white markings on his chest.

For the sake of clarification, we are going to call the big Red bear, Yogi, and his young accomplice Boo-Boo.

Boo boo was the first to arrive for the backyard party. I was awoken to a crash, and my boxer Jack, growling at the end of my bed. I was on my feet and at the back door in time for Jack to fly out past me, and flush a bear out of the side yard. And here came Boo-Boo staring wide eyed over his shoulder at me as he climbed my fence, with a pullet in his jaws!

I sounded the alarm with a few rounds of my 20ga… and he moved on for the morning.

I came out to what looked like a crime scene with the Hulk gone mad. Feathers for days, metal fencing bent and twisted like it was a soft noodle. And the chaos of frightened bewildered survivors.

So we set to cleaning up the pullet yard and tightened security, wove the fencing with bailing twine (might as well be mithrel the way I wove it) moves motion lights to the back, and got back to daily chores.

That evening sitting at the dinner table around 2300 watching a new Netflix binge of the week, the back motion light came on.

Three nights , two different bears.

Life in the mountains is serene, a disconnection from the over modernization of our world. Clean air, blue skies and open land… comes with a price.

When I moved to the San Luis Valley almost five years ago it was an open wild place with horses roaming as they had for the last 10,000 years.

Elk , deer and antelope once played plentiful on these lands. Now 5 years later I’m seeing unabated and devastating growth that is adversely altering the ancient path ways of Colorado wild life, forest and desert 🌵.

Open land is being fenced and scraped, creeks are being polluted and pumped to serve the illegal needs of many that have moved into the mountains with little resources and big dreams of becoming cannabis growers.

Trash upon trash fills the open lands, dumped over the years. Bed frames, car parts, poached elk, refrigerators, tires upon tires upon tires…

So what do we do as a community? As a people? As keepers of this planet ?

Do we quietly clean it up and say nothing, stewing with resentment or do we educate? Or eradicate the offenders?

Since taking out the human trash isn’t always an option, becoming aware of ones county codes and reporting the violations is one option, slow but effective.

The best way to end the cycle of environmental abuse is by taking folks out into the wilds and showing them the beauty and installing a sense of pride with in them.

Having a sense of ownership of the environment helps create visceral connections, joy, happiness and uplifts the spirits of those all present. By changing the way we see and feel about open land will benefit us all.

Fox, deer and human.

Colorado is one of the last bastions of wild frontier, and its being sold away parcel by parcel.

Currently Costilla county is working on building a wildlife corridor from the Sangre Di Christo Mountain ranges to the flats or “ant hills”. West of the Rio Grande.