| Just north of the border between Colorado and New Mexico, the desert slashes in from the west, blunting the southern nose of the Rockies, cutting the mountains off and pushing the Continental Divide to the east. Change here is sharp and abrupt: in some places, little more than 30 miles separate glacier-fed headwaters from bone-dry arroyos, separate elk herds from scorpions. A red-tailed hawk can sail off a rocky and icy ridge above timberline, then glide south on the crown of thermals that surge up out of the steep canyons, and finally make the hot desert floor almost without a single movement of wing. |
| Wild rivers spill out south and west, gouging canyons and cutting walls, laying open the plys and veins that tell the story of all the tides and volcanos that made the land. It's much harder to see now, but this confusion of layers carries silver and copper and zinc and lead. Even traces of gold nest in those rocks, although the gold runs mostly in flakes, buried in the river gravels. |
| Those wordsgold and silverspoken a few times loudly, have always drawn anxious crowds. Particularly in the late 1800s. With outstretched bands and poorly-focused eyes, swarms of the hopeful clawed their way into those rugged canyons. And near the sources of most of those furious riversthe San Juan, the LaPlata, the Dolores, the San Miguel, the Uncompahgremining camps were cut into the meadows and hillsides, wherever the land would sit still for it. Ragged and wild, optimistic well beyond good sense, these towns and their people prospered during the early years, taking the easy stuffdeposits on the surface and veins that were simple to follow and scrape clean. |
| But as the holes in the mountains grew deeper, and as the holes in the |
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