Colorado Sunday | Opportunity on ice

Good Colorado Sunday, everyone!

Here’s hoping that wherever you are, the sun has done its work and melted away the ice on your street so you can venture forth like a normal person and not skitter around like you’re some kind of ice-clown wannabe auditioning for the Ice Follies.

We have a fraught relationship with ice here. We revile it for its obvious domestic and driving perils, but love it just the same for its thrills (check out the Hugh Carey photo story down in The Reading List) and the pure athleticism that gliding around on a sheet of ice demands, whether skating for pleasure or for sport.

This week’s cover story by Kevin Simpson is an elegant profile of one Colorado skater who is smoothing the path — is it too much to compare her to a cultural Zamboni? — for women hockey players looking to find a professional outlet to extend their playing careers.

A Colorado women’s hockey hero in a league of her own

Minnesota goalie Nicole Hensley stretches for the puck off a shot by Ottawa’s Daryl Watts during the second period of a PWHL hockey game on Jan. 17 in Ottawa, Ontario. (Adrian Wyld/The Canadian Press via AP)

It’s always fun to learn about sports heroes’ very early days, when their innocence and aspirations were boundless. In hockey, there’s the famous story about three-time Stanley Cup champion Sidney Crosby firing shots in the basement of his childhood home that left the family clothes dryer a scuffed and dented mess. Add to that the tale of eventual U.S. Olympic gold medalist Nicole Hensley, tentatively trying out hockey for the first time as a young kid in her Lakewood cul-de-sac. But while Crosby could follow a well-worn path to professional stardom, Hensley and generations of elite women players found their careers cresting in international play, with little in the way of economically reliable pro options awaiting them.

That all started to change a little more than six months ago, with the convergence of a rock-solid investor (he’s also owner of the L.A. Dodgers) and a collective of women players tired of failed leagues and convinced that their game is ready for prime time. (Billie Jean King also makes an appearance.) The Professional Women’s Hockey League launched Jan. 1, and Colorado’s own Hensley, one of the game’s top goalies, plays for the Minnesota team as part of an undertaking that has had some early success and has potential to be a literal game-changer. This is the story of how she got here.

READ THIS WEEK’S COLORADO SUNDAY FEATURE

In case you missed it, we’ve curated our own visual feed of reporting to catch you up. Here are a few of our favorite snippets of everyday places, people and moments from every corner of Colorado lately.

Pikes Peak BOCES executive director Pat Bershinsky walks on land he hopes to turn into an education business park Wednesday in El Paso County, east of Colorado Springs. (Mark Reis, Special to The Colorado Sun)] Climber Corey Buhay ascends the ice during the UIAA Ice Climbing Continental Open event Jan. 20 at the Ouray Ice Park. (Hugh Carey, The Colorado Sun) Katie Gill and Don Baumgardt walk along Bear Creek Monday in Lakewood. Environmental activists oppose increasing water storage in the Bear Creek Reservoir and cite the potential impacts of reducing the park’s grassland acreage. The Bear Creek Dam and Reservoir Project was completed in 1979, to be used for flood control at the time. (Olivia Sun, The Colorado Sun via Report for America) Sandra Sharp attends a statewide virtual support meeting of family members of adults with serious mental health conditions Jan. 17. Sharp’s son, Drew, is in his early 30s and has schizophrenia. Drew was 19 and two weeks into starting college when he had his first psychotic break. Sharp, who works as a State as a Model Employment Development Specialist with Colorado’s Department of Labor, attends the group weekly with about a dozen others who seek more access to quality mental health care and solutions. (Olivia Sun, The Colorado Sun via Report for America) Ken Cline, right, instructs Austin Root how to check for hidden screws on a circuit board of a television at Tiger Recycling, an electronics recycling facility, on Tuesday at Cañon City High School. Students from the school earn credit for dissembling electronic components and prepping them for recycling. (Mike Sweeney, Special to The Colorado Sun)

Going with John Fielder’s flow

A tree above the Yampa River. (John Fielder’s Colorado Collection, History Colorado Center)*

John Fielder’s photos of Colorado have influenced Congress. His work has connected people with nearly every mile of the state. It has compared the landscape of 1870 to that of 2000 and challenged viewers to decide whether they’re happy with how the state has changed.

Now, the History Colorado Center has set up a new exhibit highlighting Fielder’s work on the overstressed workhorse of the West: the Colorado River.

The Colorado River — yes, the one that provides water to 40 million people across the West — starts in northwestern Colorado and its tributaries crisscross the western half of the state. It’s an economic engine, a recreation magnet, an electricity generator and a home for critters, big, small, treasured and invasive. Its future is also threatened by overuse, prolonged drought and climate change.

The new History Colorado exhibit, “Flow: On the River with John Fielder,” opened Thursday and brings viewers face-to-face with scenes from the Colorado, Yampa, Gunnison and Dolores rivers. Some photos show places that seem impossible to reach. Some are 4-feet wide, so big it feels like you can step right into them, the center’s staff said.

Fielder’s photography of Colorado’s wilderness influenced passage of Congress’ Colorado Wilderness Act of 1993. He published over 50 photography books and traveled to the most rugged and remote parts of Colorado, on foot and by boat. He was a founder of the Great Outdoors Colorado Trust Fund and a GOCO board member.

History Colorado is the repository for thousands of photographs made by Fielder, who died in August. Wanting him to be able to speak for himself in the exhibit, the center staff displayed quotes from his writings alongside the photos.

“It is one thing to see pretty pictures of nature in a book, entirely another to smell it, taste it, touch it, and hear it, as well as see it,” Fielder said in “John Fielder in Focus,” a biography of the photographer written for children. “Only if people have experienced firsthand the sensuousness of nature will they become advocates to vote to protect nature.”

“Flow: On the River with John Fielder”

On display for the next year at History Colorado Center, 1200 Broadway, Denver. $15 adults, free for children and museum members.

Mistrust amid solar flares forecasts trouble in “The Oort Federation: To the Stars”

EXCERPT: As illustrated by this piece from Robert Williscroft’s sci-fi novel “The Oort Federation: To the Stars,” the author’s curiosity about advancements in science and the ways they could affect our lives far into the future play a prominent role as humans make their way toward distant galaxies. The attention to detail almost creates a plotline in and of itself.

READ THE SUNLIT EXCERPT

THE SUNLIT INTERVIEW: Williscroft notes that while he extrapolates to create the advanced technologies described in his books, there’s a lot of actual science behind his science fiction. Here’s one slice of his Q&A:

SunLit: Tell us about creating this book. What influences and/or experiences informed the project before you sat down to write?

Williscroft: “The Oort Federation” continues the story started in “Icicle: A Tensor Matrix.” Its subtitle, “To the Stars” points to where the book is headed — away from the Solar System and out into the Galaxy. For humankind to do this realistically, we must develop some form of Faster Than Light (FTL) space drive. In the last several years, NASA and several private researchers have taken the first concrete steps toward a genuine warp drive that will eventually enable us to reach the stars in our lifetimes. Part of “The Oort Federation” tells the story of how we might actually develop such FTL drives following two different paths.

READ THE INTERVIEW WITH ROBERT WILLISCROFT

A curated list of what you may have missed from The Colorado Sun this week.

Climber Lindsay Levine scales the rock portion of the wall during the UIAA Ice Climbing Continental Open event Jan. 20 at the Ouray Ice Park. (Hugh Carey, The Colorado Sun)

🌞 This week in the political do-si-do, Republican state Rep. Mike Lynch survived a no-confidence vote by his caucus but then resigned as House minority leader and was replaced by Rep. Rose Pugliese, a first-term lawmaker from Colorado Springs. Gov. Jared Polis removed Bernie Buescher, a Democrat, from the state Board of Equalization and replaced him with a Republican, shifting control of the panel that blocked a Douglas County attempt to deliver property tax relief to homeowners. U.S. Rep. Lauren Boebert, who left the 3rd Congressional District that elected her to try for a new seat in the 4th, faced her first political test in the new district and it got a little salty.

🌞 For almost as long as wolves have been back in Colorado, ranchers have asked for a definition of “chronic depredation” that would clear them to kill a wolf even if it wasn’t caught in the act of attacking livestock. State lawmakers stepped in and demanded Colorado Parks and Wildlife present a draft definition or explain why they can’t, Tracy Ross reported. Just as wildlife officials were being grilled by elected officials, CPW released a map showing where the 12 collared wolves they monitor have been ranging, far and wide.

🌞 Some of the thousands of Central and South American migrants who have landed in Colorado in the past year are choosing to continue to camp out, even in arctic weather. Jennifer Brown went out with volunteers to meet them and learned many more people will likely join the camp as the clock runs out in city-funded hotel stays.

🌞 In our latest installment of The High Cost of Colorado, Erica Breunlin talks with young adult renters who are doing their best to balance their budgets, but still sometimes have to ask their grandparents for help keeping the lights on.

🌞 Colorado thought it had three years left to spend $1.5 billion in COVID recovery money. Turns out that funding expires in about 11 months. Brian Eason explains the mad dash to keep from leaving federal dollars on the table.

🌞 It’s hard to hire a hospital CEO — harder still in a town that has limited resources. Just ask the 24-year-old Colorado State University grad leading the hospital out in Julesburg. Aiden Hettler told Gabrielle Porter that if these were easy jobs to fill, he wouldn’t have even gotten an interview.

Thanks for spending the morning reading with us, friends. We appreciate you! See you back here next Colorado Sunday!

— Dana & the whole staff of The Sun

Corrections & Clarifications

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