Review by Ed Quillen
Publications – August 1994 – Colorado Central Magazine
Colorful Colorado Magazine Summer 1994 edition
Published by Colorado Magazine, LLC
P.O. Box 281246, Denver CO 80228-1246
Like its earlier incarnation in the 70s, the revived Colorado is slick and glossy, and almost as disgusting as disco or platform shoes with the commodifled Colorado that it promotes in lascivious real-estate ads and glowing montane photography.
These sleek orographic landscapes are like the women in Playboy. Real women have stretch marks, moles, and cellulite; this month’s Playmate doesn’t. Real mountains have power lines, road cuts, and tailings piles; the glamour mountains of Colorado (Playplaces of the month?) are virginal spires. streams, and meadows, just waiting to be caressed by the urbane llama-packer in this year’s Gore-Tex.
Long ago, publisher Merle Hastings deserved congratulations for his campaign against poisoning on federal land. He’s at it again. But if Hastings indeed cares so much about the welfare of wildlife, why is his magazine promoting “Colorado’s Hidden Wildlands”?
The more people who visit these “uncrowded gems,” the more difficulties for wild creatures with the misfortune to dwell in the terrain of the “Colorado Backcountry Guide” and “Mountain Biking on the Backcountry.”
If It’s evil for ranchers to kill eagles, bears. and lions, then isn’t it just as wicked for developers to destroy wildlife habitat at Lake Catamount, Basalt Mountain Ranch, and Beaver Creek, all promoted within the covers of Colorado?
What’s the point of protecting wildlife from Compound 1080 and strychnine, only to have the critters vanish on account of these upscale real-estate developments advertised in Colorado?
The editing is sloppy, too. You’d find more truth in a campaign speech than in this, about the D&RG Railroad: “engineering feats like the now-abandoned Alpine tunnel over Colorado’s Collegiate range. . .~
The Alpine Tunnel wasn’t built by or for the D&RG, but the Union Pacific. There is no “Collegiate Range.” It’s the Sawatch Range which has some “Collegiate Peaks.” A tunnel doesn’t go “over” a range, but through it.
Similar lapses pop up throughout. They’re probably not important, since the overwhelming message is that Colorado is a romantic image to be marketed.
You’ll never appreciate wilderness unless you buy a John Fielder Playplace of the Month calendar. Your soles will get sore unless you wear Kinney Colorado-brand footwear, and you’ll never experience the True West unless you visit a Colorado-certified guest ranch where they don’t poison wildlife because it all moved away about the time they developed the subdivision for environmentally-concerned Colorado readers.
