Colorado Sunday | Ranchers in search of new pastures

Good Colorado Sunday morning, friends.

I’m writing to you on yet another day when the high is barely above freezing. I’m Colorado grown, so hardy. But, honestly, I’m growing weary of wearing a hat and down coat indoors because the utility company has put the fear of god and free-market economics in me and I’m afraid to turn up the heat. The anxiety about getting a supersized bill next month — which we all will — is unexpectedly elevated, perhaps because there is literally nothing I can do about it. It is cold everywhere and that’s jacking up the cost of heat everywhere.

This trouble beyond my control, though, is a minor inconvenience when I consider the people Michael Booth has written about for this week’s cover story. Duke Phillips and his multigenerational family in open bidding lost their State Land Board lease on the 86,000-acre Chico Basin Ranch. Name sound familiar? You may have read about the ranch in this newsletter two years ago when we profiled the family’s commitment to conservation and to training the next generation of ranchers. So where will the Phillipses — and their 1,500 cows — go next? Literally no one knows.

Ranch family prepares to say goodbye to Colorado

Duke Phillips pets a cat in the leather shop at Chico Basin Ranch. Phillips is the founder and CEO of Ranchlands, a conservation-modeled cattle operation that has leased the 86,000-acre ranch owned by the Colorado Land Board for the past 24 years. But he was outbid by another ranch for its upcoming lease and will have to move elsewhere in 2025. (Mike Sweeney, Special to The Colorado Sun)

I go through a half-dozen stages of grief just losing a major limb from a backyard tree.

I’ve cared for that tree and watched it grow for 25 years — the harsh reality of change prompts denial, anger, blame, sadness, resignation.

So it is and it isn’t possible for me to fathom the stages of grief the Phillips family will be going through for the next 11 months as they contemplate their world getting upended. It’s a bit more than one branch on one tree. It’s losing hundreds of thousands of acres of beloved land in Colorado after putting decades of work into the soil and animals. Moving hundreds of cattle and horses and three generations of family across the country.

It’s saying goodbye to everything from Pikes Peak to the antelope to a stubborn barn cat. And goodbye to thousands of visitors who came to Chico Basin Ranch or Zapata Ranch to get in touch with their Western roots, and left daydreaming of ranch life.

Our Sunday story is meant to appreciate the hard work it took to preserve and enhance a sprawling ranch that we, the public, own. And for the public to own the decision to let go the family who watched over it for 25 years.

If you know of a listing for a 300,000-acre fixer-upper with sweet water and 100-mile views, let the Phillipses know. It’s the least we can do.

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.

Young participants prepare to take the stage for a ceremony at the 40th annual MLK Jr. African American Heritage Rodeo on Monday at the National Western Stock Show in the Denver Coliseum. The rodeo tours through six cities: Denver, Memphis, Oakland, Los Angeles, Atlanta and Washington, D.C. “For so long, Black cowboys and cowgirls were overlooked,” rodeo producer Valerie Howard-Cunningham said. (Olivia Sun, The Colorado Sun via Report for America) Skiers make turns at Breckenridge ski area Tuesday in Summit County. (Hugh Carey, The Colorado Sun) Debra Faulkner, historian and archivist of The Brown Palace Hotel, reviews a guest registry from spring of 1911, when President Woodrow Wilson visited the iconic downtown Denver hotel. Faulkner, the hotel’s historian since 2008, manages tours, curates displays and maintains and researches artifacts. (Olivia Sun, The Colorado Sun via Report for America) Eric Escudero, communications director for Denver’s Department of Excise and Licenses, views statistics showing an increase in the number of applications for residential licenses by landlords Monday in Denver. The department received more than 5,000 applications in December 2023. (Olivia Sun, The Colorado Sun via Report for America) Jose Giovanis, nicknamed Valencia after the Venezuelan city he’s from, checks his phone as he shows his heated tent in a migrant encampment where he and about nine other migrants were living, despite the frigid weather, Monday in Denver. The group refused to leave for a variety of reasons, including proximity to regular work (Eli Imadali, Special to The Colorado Sun)

Every Frozen Dead Guy has his day

(Peter Moore, Special to The Colorado Sun)

Clearly, Nederland was too small for the Frozen Dead Guy. He needed a grander stage, and the patron saint of polar plunges has it: a cryogenic crypt in the lobby of the Stanley Hotel in Estes Park. Move over, Jack Torrance: There’s a new crystalline zombie walking “The Shining” maze!

The FDG relocated Jan. 9, and temperatures cratered three days later. Coincidence? We think not. When Grandpa Bredo Morstøl exited the Tuff Shed in Nederland, his frosty spirit was loosed upon the world!

It hit minus 15 in Estes Park on Monday morning, which, for the rest of us, was a good reason to pull the duvet over our heads. For the FDG, it was an invitation to step out of his liquid-nitrogen bath and see the town.

Hours later he was spotted on the Alpenglow lift at Eldora Mountain Resort.

The FDG also hit the après-ski scene at the Indian Peaks Lodge at Eldora. Evidently, he takes his whiskey neat.

SEE MORE OF HOW THE FROZEN DEAD GUY’S WEEK UNFOLDED

Intro to “Journey to St. Thomas” launches poetic tales for our time

EXCERPT: Chaucer’s 14th-century “The Canterbury Tales” sets forth 24 stories, mostly told in verse, of people from diverse walks of life en route to the shrine of St. Thomas Becket. For author Josiah Hatch, that inspired the template for an updated version, with the storytellers’ pilgrimage echoing themes in contemporary society while taking the form of a Caribbean cruise. Already a fan of poetry, Hatch adapted his stories to iambic pentameter and the result is some marvelous — and humorous —wordplay.

READ THE SUNLIT EXCERPT

THE SUNLIT INTERVIEW: Hatch, who studied Middle English in college, is a fan of Chaucer’s storytelling technique. Adapting the poetic style to the current social and political landscape wasn’t easy, but Hatch felt it was worth the effort. Here’s a slice of his Q&A:

SunLit: What were the biggest challenges you faced in writing this book?

Hatch: Stamina and doubt were challenges. Rhymed couplets of iambic pentameter are not necessarily acceptable to modern audiences unless the reasons for their use are clear. I was kept working by the strong love of all sorts of poetry and the wish to share and to remind readers of the virtues of an approach that is seldom used in our time.

READ THE INTERVIEW WITH JOSIAH HATCH

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

In high-cost Colorado, we do have choices. Though few of them are good. (Drew Litton, Special to The Colorado Sun)

🌞Speaking of our High Cost of Colorado project, let John Ingold tell you the one about that time his kid got sick and he took her to urgent care. They left with a $2,000 bill and a Bomb Pop. Events like this are a shock to the household budget, but the reason health care feels so expensive is a lot more nuanced.

🌞 A quick statehouse dispatch: Lawmakers are set to debate new rules that would legalize the sale of raw milk without customers having to buy shares in a herd. The venerable Colorado Recreational Users Statute could get a few adjustments intended to make landowners less anxious about allowing strangers to recreate on their property. And news of Senate Minority Leader Mike Lynch’s arrest for DUI back in 2022 leaked out — even though he asked the trooper who pulled him over not to notify the press. “This will be a big deal,” Lynch said in video footage from the arrest that Jesse Paul obtained under a Colorado Open Records Act request.

🌞 El Paso County is having problems hiring first responders, so it did what many inventive organizations do and started growing its own. Erica Breunlin went to Calhan, where she sat in on a class where high school students are getting the skills to make them eligible to work as emergency dispatchers.

🌞 The price of a pound of uranium hit a 16-year high a few days ago, but that’s not the only reason an Australian mining company is nosing around claims in remote Fremont and Routt counties that were proved up decades ago. Sue McMillan reports from a neighborhood west of Cañon City fighting to keep new exploration activities out of its meadows.

🌞 Mark and Julie Nygren are Johnstown farmers who didn’t mind sharing space with oil and gas. At least not until 2019, when a leaking natural gas pipeline contaminated their home so severely that it had to be demolished. Mark Jaffe reports on the reluctant activists who mostly got their way when new pipeline safety rules were passed last week.

🌞 The state of Colorado dangles plenty of tax incentives to lure new businesses to town or encourage existing companies to grow. Turns out, though, that only a small percentage of the credits get claimed. Tamara Chuang sifted through a lot of data to find out why.

🌞 Does managing recreation around America’s Mountain require the services of Colorado Parks and Wildlife? A coalition mulling the question for a few years thinks so. But its leaders told Jason Blevins this is not a plan to turn Pikes Peak into another state park.

🌞 No, we absolutely could not stop talking about snow and avalanches and frigid temperatures this week. Shannon Mullane reports that the weather-based mayhem helped revive a paltry snowpack, and that has water watchers feeling optimistic.

Thanks for spending time with us again this fine Colorado Sunday, friends. We know you have plenty of choices when it comes to quenching your thirst for information, and we’re quite grateful that you support us with your time and your subscription. If you know someone who should be in our little information gang, please forward them this newsletter and this link to join up: coloradosun.com/join

— Dana & the whole staff of The Sun

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