Letter by Clay Warren
Wildlife – May 1998 – Colorado Central Magazine
El Niño must have killed Winter Mosquito Hunt in the marshes near Saguache
Editors:
Man! I’m out of it for a little while and everybody goes and gets delusions. First off, Ken Olsen crosses that range we’re all gonna have to cross someday, and don’t even ask if it’s okay with everybody. But then that did sort of fit with his observations about his neighbors.
Then the Nature Conservancy goes and moves to Saguache. That’s just what them Valley skeeters need, New Blood. Speakin’ about that subject, it seems like Riff Fenton might’a been right about the potential effects of hunting on the winter time Saquache mosquito population.
This winter’s sheeter shoot was such a prospective dud that we held her in Leadville and kilt two birds with one stone (no pun intended). Coldest damn winter skeeter shoot, and highest too. Which helped to keep the protesters to a minimum, but we did get a better class of ’em cause we wuz so close to Summit County and they wuzn’t any Royals around for them to go fawn over. As far as the hunting went there wud’nt that many flyers up thar either, but what there wuz were real trophy class.
O’course I blame the lack of lowland critters on El Niño, and there is some real scientific evidence to support that contention, like hit was warmer and drier than normal over in the Valley. I mean they was complaining that it nearly broke freezing one day in February! A real scorcher to hear them old timers tell it. An’ they got a whole inch o’ moisture too.
And then somebody goes and calls us the Paris o’ the West, or some such nonsense. W’hell, ah been to Paris and even if they do get around to building that pyramid over to Crestone, why hit still won’t begin to compare to the Eiffel Tower, nor will that big gold bullseye in the Chuki Sea they was soliciting for last year.
An’ I notice Christo didn’t propose to drape the Tower neither, got them Gemmans who like to show off their money to let him do a building. O’course draping the Tower might have been a tad too suggestive, even for the average Frenchman, if you git ma drift. Maybe a blue ribbon committee could convince him to build the pyramid and drape that, instead o’ the river. A traffic jam in Moffat won’t bother nobody, and the Downtown Merchants Association of Hooper would probably even offer him some sort of enterprise zone tax break.
Finally, Martha goes and breaks with Ed on a philosophical matter and then writes about it in public. Ah’ll say that they’s sumthin’ lurking in the water all right. Hit’s Gardia!
But even that don’t condone Lindell Cline roughing up Riff Fenton’s liberal philosophy, ’cause I reckon any man what can earn a living playing with clay must be on to something that the rest of us ain’t. Ah mean show me some whose best days weren’t in kiddygarden.
Yers til the River muddies up,
Clay Warren Pseudonymous in Poncha
P.S. Blotch, ma dog, says his vision is finally clearin’ up.