Where were you the first time you heard "Rocky Mountain High"?
Chances are, you weren鈥檛 in Colorado, and that鈥檚 the problem: you eventually moved here, because you wanted to see starlight softer than a lullaby.
Me too.
But as our Front Range cities grow along with light pollution and the hazy murk that haunts our horizon, that soft starlight is harder and harder to see. Has there ever been a stronger enticement to trample fragile turf? In this Rocky Mountain idyll, we鈥檙e the invasive species: we move in, and we force the beautiful animals, plants, and people we came here to meet, to move out.
And John Denver posted the eviction notice.
I was in high school in Connecticut when I first heard that irresistible opening guitar lick鈥揹reamed up by John Denver鈥檚 friend Mike Taylor. It was a siren call to the West, and lots of us heard it. Only 2.4 million of us Coloradans, out of a current population of nearly six million, were actually born here. And that鈥檚 kinda spooky. 2.4 million was the population of Colorado before "Rocky Mountain High" was released. So 3.4 million of us鈥搈e included鈥攁re now coming home to a place we鈥檇 never been before.
And John Denver threw out the welcome mat.
His classic song debuted at Red Rocks, naturally, and it was released to the general public on the day after my 16th birthday鈥擮ctober 30th, 1972. It changed my life. I joined the ecology club in high school. I protested new highways. I stopped showering. In college, "Rocky Mountain High" was my excuse to skip class and hike in the White Mountains.
You guessed it: Friends around the campfire, and everybody鈥檚 high.
John Denver was summoned before Congress in 1985 to explain that lyric, back when cannabis was a scourge rather than a business opportunity. Not that kind of high, the folkie insisted. Rather, it鈥檚 the natural high one feels in a boat on Williams Lake, near Aspen, and singing at the top of your lungs because it鈥檚 so freakin鈥� beautiful.
The only problem: That kind of high is indeed addictive. For five decades, nature boys and girls like me and my wife have been stampeding out here from California, Texas, Illinois, and my former home state, Pennsylvania.
The citizens of Colorado initially tried to keep it all to themselves, turning down the Winter Olympics in 1972. Then "Rocky Mountain High" hit the airwaves. Last winter, Colorado enticed 14 million skiers and boarders to our slopes. They tried to tear the mountains down, to bring in a couple more. More people, more scars upon the land.
That鈥檚 another prophetic lyric from "Rocky Mountain High." New Mexico鈥檚 own John Deutschendorf, Jr., both predicted the despoiling of his adopted state and fomented it at the same time. Meanwhile, Wyoming鈥搘ith similar land area and equally fabulous terrain鈥揾as five million fewer residents. Of course, nobody ever wrote an ear-wormy song called "Cowboy Mountain High" to encourage flower children to overpopulate Wyoming.
In 2007, Colorado legislators sanctified "Rocky Mountain High" as our second state song. Have you ever heard our other state song, 鈥淲here the Columbines Grow鈥�? No? Exactly. It was perfect.
Instead we鈥檝e enshrined the biggest migratory enticement since the Land Rush of 1889. Given the perilous state of our environment, the housing shortage, and the traffic jams on I-70, you could say that John Denver is our Patron Saint of Real Estate. He knew he鈥檇 be a poorer man if he never saw a $8.5 million bid fly on his house in Aspen.
Meanwhile, I have a proposal for a new state song: "The Flight of the Valkyries." Richard Wagner鈥檚 symphonic mayhem perfectly evokes this phase of life in Colorado. We鈥檝e seen it raining fire in the sky. And John Denver struck the match.
