Dearest Colorado, 

It is Valentine’s Day, a day to profess my love for thee. But where to begin? 

Where our love story begins, of course, almost 10 years ago. I was wandering in a way that some of your earliest settlers had wandered across the country. Except they came by wagon, and I in an old Toyota Camry. The clunky car was not suited for winding, rugged Dunckley Pass in your northwestern Flat Tops. My destination was Trappers Lake. I was terribly lost. But you were forgiving, allowing me passage before nightfall. 

I fell in love with your stars that night near the shores and site of a more important visit long ago. In 1919, the Forest Service’s Arthur Carhart visited Trappers Lake, where he was inspired to write words more romantic than I can conjure here: “There are portions of natural scenic beauty which are God-made … which of a right should be the property of all people.” 

It is only fitting, dear Colorado, that you inspired the Wilderness Act, which preserved vast swaths of the nation’s beauty where “man himself is a visitor who does not remain.” But how tempting it is to just remain in your embrace!

In your largest wilderness area, the Weminuche ー almost the size of Rhode Island! ー and in Maroon Bells-Snowmass Wilderness, another dreamscape of stream-fed forests, wildflower-laden meadows and that scene of twin peaks looming over the lake and aspen-coated slopes. Not long after Trappers Lake, I drove to that scene in my ill-equipped car. And I thank you again, Colorado, for your grace along Independence Pass, over the Continental Divide. 

Some years later, closer to my home on the Front Range, I visited another historic Carhart site. This was around Pueblo Mountain Park, near Beulah. Around the same time of the Wilderness Act-inspiring memo, Carhart also designed campgrounds as we know them now, starting here with Squirrel Creek Campground. There you went again, Colorado, sparking a nationwide love of the outdoors.

And now I’m thinking of other nights under your stars. How could I ever forget your diamond-studded canvas over the Great Sand Dunes? And how ever did you spawn such a creation, North America’s tallest dunes set against those jagged Sangre de Cristos? I’ve come to adore the surrounding San Luis Valley, this riverland steeped in history and mystery. And the cranes! How grateful I am for the flight and song of those regal, ancient migrators.

I am most grateful for Pikes Peak, greeting me every morning when I wake. I am grateful for the colorful mosaic you painted around my home, Colorado Springs. Again, I must borrow words, these of the poet Helen Hunt Jackson, who in the 1870s remarked on this place “laying due east of the Great Mountains and west of the sun.” She wrote of “a symphony of yellow and red” ー Austin’s Bluffs and Palmer Park in one direction, Garden of the Gods and Red Rock Canyon in the other ー and of the “deep blue wall” of the Palmer Divide and the plains “which have all the beauty of the sea.” 

Your plains! I could go on about them as much as your peaks, the 14,000-foot likes that are bunched here more than any other state. 

On the southeast plains, you wove canyonlands that stir the imagination, marked by petroglyphs left by natives and tracks left by dinosaurs. Northeast, I once ventured to your Pawnee Buttes. And I understood why John Fielder ー the photographer who envied you most ー called it one of his favorite places among every square mile of you he said he traveled. 

I have more traveling to do ー so much more I long to know about you, Colorado. Only recently did I get to know Mesa Verde and the story of ancestral people who call those cliffs home. It was autumn in your San Juan Mountains, the season and region dear to me. My spirit soars when your leaves shine.

And later your snow falls like powder, glistening. And later your rivers swell, or at least I hope. I’m recalling that glorious trip down the Dolores, which is rarely raftable in your southwest desert canyons. You provided then, as you endlessly do, Colorado.

You were named by Spanish explorers ー “colored red,” they deemed you, for your geology that matches my blushing. So of course it is called Colorado National Monument, this realm of red rock cathedrals and spires. An early champion of the national monument, John Otto, knew the place as “the heart of the world.” Surely it is another place in my heart. 

As is the Grand Mesa, elsewhere on your Western Slope. Here, Colorado, is your flat top mountain of a scale unmatched worldwide. I must return to admire more of your lakes there ー hundreds! 

Shall I go on about your alpine lakes? About Hanging Lake and that magnificent waterfall in Glenwood Canyon? About more waterfalls and more canyons that run deep, namely Black Canyon of the Gunnison? Your hot springs run even deeper ー in Pagosa, deeper than anywhere else on record.

But my love runs deepest of all, dearest Colorado.