Stone: A warning from the mountain gods
Every year, in early summer (yes, I’m a few weeks late with this letter — I’m lazy), as the snow melts off Mount Sopris, an unmistakable sign appears in the bowl below the mountain’s eastern peak.
The winter’s snow gives way to gray rock, while the base of the bowl itself remains brilliant white, as do the four vertical gullies leading into the bowl from the summit ridge, while a fifth stubby snow-filled gully points off to the east.
The result is clear to see: a hand raised, fingers extended, the international signal for Stop!
Clearly, the Mountain Gods themselves are looking out over the Roaring Fork Valley and declaring, “Enough is enough!” Stop the reckless expansion! Stop the mindless building! Stop the madness!
And year after year we ignore that message from above.
Living as a midvalley refugee from Aspen’s white-hot core, I look up at Sopris this year and see that Stop! is focused directly on the rapidly metastasizing Tree Farm development (yet one more project named for the feature it has obliterated). Multi-story building blocks — looking like the shipping crates the apocalypse was packed in — sprout along the highway, with hundreds of alleged homes promised to follow.
The mountain’s plea that we Stop! is beginning to seem desperate. But perhaps we should consider what fates we are tempting when we drive the mountain gods to desperation.
Geologists tell us that Mount Sopris was formed millions of years ago by an “igneous intrusion,” a pool of magma, molten rock trapped beneath the surface of the Earth to cool and eventually be revealed by erosion.
Such an igneous intrusion is also known as a “pluton,” named after Pluto, God of Hades (also Mickey Mouse’s dog).
And so, that sign from Sopris demanding that we Stop! our Mickey Mouse madness, also carries a message of the hellfire and brimstone that the gods are prepared to rain down on our intrusions.
We have been warned. I will say no more.
Andy Stone
Missouri Heights
