Rocky Mountain High: Denver Up In Smoke

We’re on an American road trip this summer, visiting US cities.  Last week, Atlanta.  Next week, Long Beach.  Today, the Mile High City.

Denver, ColoradoDenver is going up in smoke, inflicting both pain and pleasure.

Smoke Filled Denver SkylineDenver’s skyline is thick with wildfire smoke from 112 blazes raging across Colorado. Probably will be all summer.  The Black Forest Fire, most destructive in state history, has already destroyed over 500 homes in nearby Colorado Springs.  The fast moving West Gulch Fire is threatening the outskirts of Denver, the capitol.  The state is still recovering from last year’s record setting fire season; this week insurance companies raised their estimates of claims from last year; over $567 million.

So if you’re coming along on our road trip, pack a gas mask.

And a bong.  Some of that Denver smoke is from citizens enjoying their recently legalized marijuana.  Last November voters joined Washington State in becoming the first US states to make it legal to grow and enjoy marijuana for recreational use.

So Denver may become an American Amsterdam, Mecca of cannabis tourism.  Already  one can book package tours with trips to pot farms, rock concerts, home growing workshops and cannabis cooking classes.  A new 15% sales tax on cannabis sales is expected to generate $60 million revenue annually, helping the local economy, not to mention booming sales of munchies.

Gives a new meaning to “Rocky Mountain High.”

That’s the title of a beloved pop song by Colorado icon folk singer John Denver.  Born Henry John Deutschendorf, he changed his name in honor of the state he loved.  The song, which extols the natural beauty of the Rockies, with its clear night skies of dazzling starlight and meteor showers, was so popular the state legislature quickly adopted it as the official state song.  The chorus goes:

John DenverColorado Rocky Mountain high
I’ve seen it rainin’ fire in the sky
Friends around the campfire
Everybody’s high
Rocky Mountain high
Rocky Mountain high

But Denver, who was cute and looked nothing like a pothead, was accused of promoting drug culture with that phrase “friends around the campfire, everybody high,”  during the 80’s Reaganite so-called “war on drugs.  The Federal Communications Commission had ruled that songs could be banned if they seemed to promote drug use.  Some radio stations stopped playing the popular song.  Denver objected and testified before Congress that the “high” referred to the inspiration he found in the mountains:

This was obviously done by people who had never seen or been to the Rocky Mountains, and also had never experienced the elation, celebration of life, or the joy in living that one feels when he observes something as wondrous as the Perseid meteor shower on a moonless, cloudless night, when there are so many stars that you have a shadow from the starlight, and you are out camping with your friends, your best friends, and introducing them to one of nature's most spectacular light shows for the first time.

There is much more to commend Denver (the major metropolis, not the singer) than wildfires and marijuana.  Founded in 1858 as part of the nearby Pike’s Peak gold rush, it grew into a market and transport town for minerals from the resource rich mountains and cattle across the plains. A wagon and then railroad hub, it’s a natural meeting and transition point from the purple mountains majesty above that old fruited plain.  Today Denver continues to play an important role in the physical center of the nation.  Like all American cities it has business and industry, racial diversity and conflict, pride in its region and landscape, and in this case, great cowboy culture and western cuisine.

But one wonders what archeologists or Martians in 3013 will find in the ruins of the Mile High City.  Those wildfires may very well ultimately annihilate Denver and much of the American West. Explorers will realize that it was climate change that led to all those fires.  More and more people lived closer and closer to steep forested canyons. And so many trees were killed by the mountain pine beetle, which had become more prolific and active in the higher temperatures of the 21^st century.  All they will find is ashes.

And what will they think of the charred cannabis greenhouses and cooking schools?  Will they unearth the remains of happy Coloradans, who smoked and munched, while Denver burned?

Copyright © 2013 Deborah Streeter