TWENTY YEARS LATER
Colorado Trail
2017
fiber, needle-felted wool
24x18 inches (27x21 inches framed)
$840
In 1996, this section of the Colorado Trail, just a couple days’ walk from Denver, was ravaged by a wildfire. When I hiked through it two decades later, I found a healthy meadow ecosystem, with saplings growing beneath charred trees. We often think of landscapes as static; this ecological transformation reminded me that nature is ever-changing.
In this felting, I remembered the beauty I found when I turned back to look at the area I’d just walked through. In the foreground, a skeletal tree is trailside, and weathered boulders and rocks are scattered all around. A green rainbow of vegetation—emerald grasses to gray-green sage—color the hills. A thin ribbon of trail snakes to the horizon, where a stand of trees, silent witnesses to the fire, grow.
