By Sarah Harvey
We began just north of Union Station, in the shadow of Coors Field, and made our way southwest along Delgany Street; it was a small stretch of land near the railroad tracks that development had missed (for now). We walked past a warehouse, past dirt lots just waiting for the right buyer. We stopped for a few minutes near an empty lot, where Robbie and Matt, our tour guides, reminded us to think about the meanings behind things we saw. At one point during the walk, Robbie pointed to an orange bottle cap in the dirt, explaining that he knew the group that handed out orange juice with just that color bottle cap. That piece of plastic on the ground was litter—but it was more than that too. It marked a place where someone had received help.
Dinosaur tracks stretch across the former basin of the Purgatoire River in southern Colorado.Text and Photography by Robert Hurst
About 50 miles south of the Arkansas River, my dad’s Toyota was blasting across the washboard, rock-strewn surface of County Road M at a highly inadvisable velocity, throwing up a space shuttle-esque rooster tail of dust while hurtling straight into a black storm of tumbleweeds and swirling haze from multiple out-of-control wildfires. It was about that time that I started to question the wisdom of the whole adventure.
“We’re sure getting out here,” I said, becoming convinced we would never make it back. I imagined opening the spare tire compartment and finding nothing, or just a shriveled prune. Baby head-sized rocks slapped and crashed against the unprotected oil pan as the Toyota charged forward at highway speed. Are you crazy dad? Do you think our phones will work out here? Can you hear me now? The incredible volume of tumbleweeds pouring over the road and piling against the fences was at once frightening and mesmerizing, like some sort of biblical event. Where are they all coming from and how could there be any left? Where the hell are we going?
But dad knew exactly where he was going. Suddenly we were cruising into Picture Canyon, protected by improbable walls of sandstone. He stopped the car. Instantaneously our ears were filled with the deafening silence of gravel not pummeling the undercarriage.
By Tim Covi
Photography By Ross Evertson
Since retiring in 1999, Braxton hasn’t dallied. He started two companies, finished his Bachelor’s degree, and is now going back to Metro State in the fall to start a Master’s of Social Work degree. With his eyes turned toward his legacy and what he can do to help others, Braxton is working with incarcerated youth in a Colorado Detention Facility. We talked to him about his second life since football and the changes he’s working to create in society.
By Travis Egedy
Artwork by Milton Melvin Croissant III
When I first met Milton Melvin Croissant III (known to his friends and family as “Buddy”) over six years ago, I immediately felt like he was the coolest guy in the room. Milton has been at the center of Denver’s experimental art and music underground since the earlier part of the decade. He was the lead singer for the local legendary synth-punk band, The Ultra Boyz, and was one of the founding members of Rhinoceropolis, a “Do It Yourself” art and performance warehouse space that for over six years has been the go-to place for all things weird, artsy, and unexplainable for Denver youth.
Rhinoceropolis has since grown to be a cultural institution both locally and nationally, seeing performances by artists and musicians traveling the world and making stops in its colorful glow. Milton is an exceptionally talented visual artist and musician who never fails to take it to the next level, whether through his bright and psychedelic drawings and paintings, his self described “wizard pop” music, his collections of hundreds of found VHS movies, or his experiments with digital media and technology which have become Milton’s main point of interest over the last year. I caught up with my old friend to talk about these interests after a picnic in a park in downtown Denver.