Ever Watchful Mother

Our ever watchful mother as seen from Waldo Canyon on a sunny Feb. day.- J.G.

Writing to Frank Waters, the author of one the finest American regionalist novels Pikes Peak, Mrs. Evelyn A. Calhoon, then living in Cortez, Colorado, observantly describes a feeling held by many of us. Her letter reflects the poignant beauty of the bare, frost-shattered hills which formed our first horizon:

..."The way those hills get to possess you in time, so that you cling to them like a child to its mother's skirts, afraid to face the competition of the outside. The way you react to the lucky escapees from that mountain spell- either a bitter, frustrated envy, or a smug prognosis that they'll be back before the snow flies. Even the doctor seems to think it a sort of treason to admit the altitude doesn't agree with some people.
"You always leave a part of you there, wherever you wander, which like an amputated limb twitches for years afterward, so that you can't forget it, ever. No matter where you go you bump into people who went to Cripple Creek once in their lives, and who inquire eagerly about men and women or the children they went to school with who are dead now or scattered from Cerro de Pasco to Baguio and the Rand. It's a fraternity with its own signs and passwords which will last until the last crumbling gallows frame on Battle Mountain falls into a water-filled shaft."