denver and the west
Aspens hold fading tales of loneliness
By Jason Blevins
The Denver Post
Article Last Updated: 03/03/2008 01:45:16 AM MST
The shepherd, stuck a century ago in Colorado's frigid southern San Juans, was clearly frustrated.
"No Luck Dam Horses Gone Snow Walking Out!"
His fellow sheepherder just south of Steamboat Springs was desperately lonely.
"You could not pay me a million dollars to come back here next year."
Their flock-guarding brother on the flanks of Lake Irwin near Crested Butte summed up his misery more succinctly.
"I hate Colorado."
Etched into the bark of aging aspens across Colorado, thousands of notes from lonely shepherds from afar linger on a fading canvas. They are lonely narratives carved carefully and passionately a century ago by Mexican, Peruvian and Basque sheepherders, delivering a blunt glimpse into their hard lives.
"They felt so totally isolated, and the trees were like their confidants," said Joxe Mallea-Olaetxe of the Center for Basque Studies at the University of Nevada, Reno. He has studied such carvings for two decades.
"It was almost like a therapy for them because they could write, and after that, they felt a little better."
Almost 150 years ago, a wave of Basque immigrants arrived in California. They scraped together small flocks of sheep, which they would safeguard through winter for eventual delivery to protein-hungry gold miners in the spring.
Their flocks grew and their numbers did, too. Over several decades, they moved east into Arizona, New Mexico, Wyoming and Colorado. And they left their marks in the paperlike barks of aspens.
Known as arborglyphs or dendroglyphs, the impressions divulge the raw isolation of men far from the warmth of family and home.
A vast majority of the carvings are simply names and dates or utilitarian notes sharing the location of a spring or warning of some danger.
But there are yearnings for distant loves. Etchings of horses, mosquitoes, snakes, crosses. Boastful descriptions of forays into a nearby bordello. In the case of a particular grove up Buffalo Pass near Steamboat Springs, a menagerie of long-haired and buxom beauties in an array of revealing poses serve as one version of pornography.
"I guess they get pretty lonely up there," speculates Mike Rawkowski, a 19-year ski guide with Steamboat Powder Cats who often brings his clients through.
Angie Krall, an archaeologist for the Medicine Bow-Routt National Forest, hopes to compile an "aspen erotica" book noting the prevalence of steamy sketches in the western portion of her forest beat.
"There are some that are just raunchy, but by and large, I think it is mostly an articulate expression of loneliness," said Krall, noting one that translates as, "How sad it is to live alone."
The educational nonprofit San Juan Mountains Association studied arborglyphs along stock trails in 2001 and again in 2003 using a grant from the Colorado Historical Society. The group found almost 1,000 impressions on 200 trees.
Lately, researchers have recognized a sense of urgency to recording the marks. Disease is sweeping through southern Colorado's aspen groves, killing entire root systems. Pests and fire-repression have damaged groves.
But mostly nature is taking its course. With a life span of 80 to 120 years, many of the older glyphs are succumbing to gravity's pull. Mallea-Olaetxe estimates that 75 percent of the country's aspen glyphs have already disappeared into forest floors.
"I would like to go back and fill in the story before it's all gone," said Ruth Lambert, cultural program director for the San Juan Mountains Association.
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