The Fence

West of the Air Force Academy, Colorado 1984.
Late spring and early summer in Colorado must be one of the best and most beautiful places for hiking that I have ever run across. The air was still crisp, but most of the snow was melting and the creeks were full of pure, clear water. We had started at sunrise with enough rations to last us both for a day. This was not uncommon for us; we would choose a direction and hike for about five hours, then turn around and get back before night fall. This day we had chosen to follow a creek.
If this creek had a name, we never knew it, but it was a healthy waterway, and at about seven feet across it was rushing at its fullest with ice cold snow melt.
We took our time, looking at the wild flowers and birds, steadily ascending in elevation as we climbed further into the incredible Rocky Mountains. The forest was thin here, with a lot of scrub sage bushes, and the ever present boulders that make up this mountain range. We happily made our way with no sign of humanity for a few hours, covering maybe five miles of terrain. And then we came to the fence.
We had seen it in the distance because it was on top of a hill, so it was not until we actually reached the great span of chain-link that we realized that we were cut off from the stream we were just following. The silver fence was enormous…at least eight feet tall, and maybe even ten, and it stretched to our left and right, dissappearing into the trees. I think we must have stood there for a good minute, staring uncomprehensively in front of us. It was so unexpected that we could not even suggest a possible reason for it. We walked a ways to the left, always looking for a sign on the fence, or what might lay on the other side of it, but the forest and bushes and creek simply continued. We went to the right, again hoping to spot some identifying sign as to the owner or reason, and we were relieved to find ourselves at the outside corner of the enormous enclosure. The fence stretched upward, in the direction we had been headed, running parallel with the creek which we could see to our left. We had planned to hike out for five hours, and we still had time, so we decided to keep going; we began to follow the fence.
Walking along side the chain-link barrier was actually easier on us, since the machinery that had erected the fence and created a path, so we made even better time than before. It seemed we must certainly have gone a mile with this fence with no road to meet it, no gate to allow entry and no sign to identify it. This only made us want to continue. We had been gaining elevation rapidly at the start of this day, but now the hills were spreading out and the creeks little water falls were less and less. We came to a rise that flatten out to a valley off to the left and to our suprise the creek turned suddenly to meet it, disappearing into the woods. And yet the fence kept going.
We couldn’t believe it…we felt defeated. This day had begun as one of hiking for its own sake, to see what we would see and with this fence it had become something different; finding the fences owner had become a goal, a test even, and a mystery to solve. It could not have been easy to build such a structure, and it much have cost a small fortune; the only people I have seen to build such barriers were the military, and there was no reason to expect to find them here, but then there was no reason to expect to find this fence here. We were mad and frustrated and running out of time. We knew that we would have no choice but to turn around soon or risk a night in the mountains, but we could not stand the idea of leaving without knowing the reason for the fence. We decided to climb, in hopes that we woud be able to have a better view.
I’m no professional climber, but I have hiked my share of various terrains and the Rocky Mountains are tricky to climb. They are literally rocky, and much of this rock is loose. So it took our remaining hour just to make it to the top of our look out, but huffing and puffing, we were rewarding the vista we had hoped; not only couold we see the creek continue on it path, we also clearly saw the owner of the fence, since we were looking at one of its great white buildings as it straddled the creek. The name was proudly written in huge letters on the side of the structure: Coors Beer.
I still cannot imagine why Coors felt the need for such a huge fence and while trying to find this place on a map, the brewery’s website shows only one plant, and that is up by Denver.
The discovery made us smile in spite of ourselves; it seemed to us that the creek had been taken hostage by the beer maker, but then, Coors’ whole campaing has always been Rocky Mountain Spring Water and hey, they were living up to it!