Colorado

Of all the boxy western states, Colorado and Wyoming are the boxiest – almost perfect rectangles – and when I was a kid and wanted an idea of my state I could do no better than to picture a box of Neapolitan ice cream. Just as a block of such ice cream is divided into three equal portions of strawberry, chocolate and vanilla, Colorado consists of a high semi-arid plateau in the western third of the state; the heaped summits of the southern Rockies in the centre; and in the east the plains rolling away towards Kansas. It’s mostly the mountainous central part o fhte state, however, that people have in mind when they think of the place, and as it happens it was there in the real Coloradan part of Colorado that I grew up. At first we lived in a cabin my parents had built up Salt Creek, outside of the town of Eagle, with the help of other long-haired recent transplants – it was part of that movement of hippies ‘back to the land’. And once I was of an age to walk around the world unattended, I don’t believe I had any trouble understanding why my parents had been drawn to this land in particular, or why adults should pronounce the word ‘Colorado’ with a certain inflection of romance and pride.

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