Old pressing tools

Usage examples of flatirons.

I awoke in camp that morning to find the highway to Boulder gone, the sky empty of contrails, and the aspen leaves a bright autumn gold despite what should have been a midsummer day, but after bouncing the Jeep across four miles of forest and rocky ridgeline to the back of the Flatirons, it was the sight of the Inland Sea that stopped me cold.

Where the stone-box towers of NCAR, the National Center for Atmospheric Research, had risen below the sandstone slabs of the Flatirons, now there were only shrub-stippled swamps and muddy inlets.

Using the twenty-power sight, I scanned the gulleys leading down between the Flatirons to the swamps and shoreline.

The slabs of Flatirons now rising above me would exist only as a layer of soft substrata.

Some large raptors circled over the Flatirons, but the city was dead still.

Occasionally I paused, looked back over the ramparts at the Flatirons gleaming in the Colorado sunshine, and listened for her footsteps above the lap of lazy waves.

I sat on my apartment terrace, watched the summer sun set behind the Flatirons, and thought.

Where the Flatirons should be, tidal flats and lagoons reflect the sky.