For more than 40 years, Lockley identified and mapped Jurassic and Cretaceous period tracksites in Colorado and everywhere they’ve been found. His insights substantially increased knowledge about dinosaur activities including courtship, parenting, migration and herding behaviors.

“I’ve asked other leading paleoichnologists about Martin’s influence and there’s no debate that he stood alone,” said Friends of Dinosaur Ridge (FODR) executive director Jeff Lamontagne. “As one colleague put it, Martin was the gold standard for identifying dinosaur tracks.”

Born in South Wales, Martin followed in the footsteps of his father, renowned ornithologist and prolific author Ronald Lockley. His father’s research and studies in natural science were a lifelong source of inspiration, as were several of Ronald Lockley’s famous friends, including Julian Huxley, Richard Adams and Sir David Attenborough.

Lockley moved to the U.S. to teach geology at the University of Colorado Denver in 1980 during the oil and gas boom. That was when and where his research on creatures from the Age of Dinosaurs began. It wasn’t long before his work began attracting professional attention and public excitement for the lesser-known branch of paleontology. Lockley was fond of pointing out that fossil bones don’t demonstrate how animals lived the way tracks do. He made the case in a 2022 TEDx Talk that has so far attracted more than a million views.

During his 30 years at UCD, Lockley traveled to hundreds of remote geological sites around North America, Asia, Europe, South America and East Africa. When he wasn’t in the field or teaching, he was an avid writer, publishing more than 600-plus  peer-reviewed articles, 1,000 papers, and 17 books. Lockley received numerous awards, including most recently the Korean Presidential Citation for Contribution to Cultural Heritage Protection in 2020. He was the first non-Korean to receive the award.

Lockley was driven in non-academic ways as well. In his youth, he was a star athlete and two-time winner of the All-England Schools championship in shot put. He never became an American citizen but chose to live in the Colorado foothills in a home he filled with souvenirs from a lifetime of world travels. He enjoyed the views and opportunities to hike outdoors almost daily.

In 1989, Lockley co-founded the nonprofit Friends of Dinosaur Ridge (FODR) to protect the iconic sloping tracksite on the hogback 20 miles west of Denver. He co-founded other nonprofits, research institutes and a Dinosaur Track Museum, and led efforts to establish UNESCO World Heritage sites to protect trackways in other countries. He also served as associate curator at the Denver Museum of Nature and Science and was director of science at Moab Giants in Utah.

In 2021, Lockley and colleagues ranked the top 12 dinosaur tracksites in the United States. Dinosaur Ridge in Morrison was named No. 1 based on 16 criteria, including the number of tracks, the variety of species, and ease of accessibility for public visitation. It was Lockley’s hope that Dinosaur Ridge and the surrounding area would one day be designated a UNESCO Global Geopark.

The nonprofit that manages tours at Dinosaur Ridge will rename its Discovery Center building near Red Rocks Amphitheatre the Martin G. Lockley Discovery Center in tribute to his countless contributions. The organization is working on an exhibit to feature items from the scientist’s personal collection, including his charming drawings and field notes, on a rotating basis starting in spring 2024.

Lockley is survived by his children Peter Lockley (Emily) and Katie Lockley Weller (Spencer); four grandchildren, Graham, Aurelia, Isla and Daniel; his nephew Daniel Lockley (Liz) and grand-niece and nephew, Juniper and Asher Martin. He is also survived by his sister, Ann Mark, and his long-term partner, Gretchen Minney. He was preceded in death by his younger brother, Steven Lockley, and his parents, Ronald Lockley and Jill Stocker Lockley of the U.K.

The Lockley family has suggested that in lieu of flowers, donations be made to Friends of Dinosaur Ridge at dinoridge.org.

Kristen Kidd of Littleton is director of marketing and communications at Dinosaur Ridge. She was a Colorado Voices columnist in 2010.

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Those are the first questions people in Highlands Ranch are asking each other when meeting up nowadays, a few weeks after the wildest weather event anyone can remember experiencing in the suburb south of Denver.

The next discussion is likely about how to replace what has been destroyed, mostly the trees.

On that humid Thursday afternoon, Douglas County was hit by one of those wild Colorado storms that for tens of thousands of residents in Highlands Ranch is now an indelible life moment. Thankfully, no one was hurt by the technically small (EF-1 on the Enhanced Fujita scale) but destructive tornado on June 22. Very few actually saw the twister cloaked in sheets of rain and hail as it hit Northridge Elementary School and blasted across homes and businesses for more than 6 miles just south of C-470, from Lucent Boulevard to Quebec Street

But some doorbell cameras caught the action, like this one.

The tornado was powerful enough to destroy an estimated 16,000 mature trees along major parkways and residential yards. Douglas County Office of Emergency Management (OEM) is still assessing the damage in order to request a national disaster declaration that could provide funding for repairs. Countless homeowners are in the process of filing claims with their insurance companies and finding out what is and isn’t covered.

The soundtrack of summer now includes chainsaws and wood chippers.

Beyond the expense, many are lamenting the loss of so many large trees that created shade, privacy, bird habitats and seasonal beauty. For the community to be transformed in such a striking visual way in a matter of minutes has everyone processing a sense of shock, sadness, and relief that it wasn’t worse.

“We moved here from the Midwest nine years ago and we’ve never experienced a tornado before now,” said Jennifer Smith, who sheltered in her basement with their two daughters and their pets while her husband, Matt, peered cautiously out main floor windows. “The winds were blowing in all directions,” he said. “It felt like you were inside a washing machine.

Luckily, the couple didn’t lose any of their own trees, but said a large aspen across the street was knocked over. They spent July 1 making trips to the Eastridge Recreation Center parking lot to shovel fresh mulch into buckets and cardboard boxes for xeriscaping their yard. Mountains of chipped trees are piled up in several locations around town, including near the post office on Quebec and University. Residents are being encouraged to take as much as they would like.

“We also took one of those large stumps for the garden,” Smith said pointing to a pile of pine trees that had been sliced into sections like large souvenirs, each revealing inner rings numbering more than 30. And the air around Highlands Ranch is perfumed with the pungent smell of pine sap.

Longtime local plant nursery The Gardens has been doing brisk business since the storm. Staffer Kate Kator was at work when the tornado warning blared on the smartphones of everyone inside the store. Some customers rushed to their cars and drove home, while others chose to wait it out with the employees. Kator says within 10 minutes, dark clouds were overhead soon followed by rain and hail blasting in first from west to east, then from east to west.

“One of our gazebos flew up into the trees and portions of the greenhouse and main store roofs were torn off,” she said. “Some of our fencing blew over and the greenhouse flooded.”

A large Scotch Pine just outside their gate blew down, but the next day they were able to prop it back up into place because the rootball was intact. “We’re advising our customers that phosphorous can help trees re-root, and nitrogen will help them grow. A lot of people are coming in asking for replacement trees. We don’t sell large trees, and right now we are just getting in small shrubs that we ordered weeks ago.

“People are buying annuals to replace the flowers they lost, but a lot of people are sad about their shade trees. One customer did say she’s gained a lot of extra space in her yard for the kids to play in now.”

A few years ago, the Colorado State Forest Service came out with recommendations for homeowners along the Front Range who want fast-growing trees.

The blue spruce was listed high up, along with silver maples, white oak varietals and catalpa trees, which are known for their white fragrant flower clusters and heart-shaped leaves. These could become the next generation of popular trees in Highlands Ranch.

“This storm affected more of our evergreen trees than the deciduous varieties,” noted Kator. “Those had broken branches, but the evergreens have more shallow roots and were uprooted by the winds. In Highlands Ranch, we have hard-packed soil once you get past the layer of clay, so it’s hard for roots to go deep.”

Kator said people can plant trees between March and October in Colorado as long as they are well watered for the first couple weeks to get them established. She expects the demand to be extremely high for trees like the flowering crabapples.

Kator noted The Gardens owners Steve and Michelle Smith opened their business in 1997 when Highlands Ranch had many fewer (and smaller) trees. Newcomers don’t know there was a time when the now-mature trees along the greenbelts, parks and subdivisions in the community were just saplings.

Gary Debus served as community manager of Highlands Ranch for 20 years starting in 1991. He recalls the rolling grasslands, where pronghorn and prairie dogs lived. “When Highlands Ranch began in 1981 with the first house, there were very few trees and those that were on the Ranch were native types along with some small native shrubs. Grasslands covered most of the development area.”

Debus said, “Landscape architects developed the parkway plantings and commercial areas that added aesthetics. As new homes were built and sold, homeowners started completing their own landscapes. It was very easy to tell where the newest areas were. Critics dubbed us a ‘sea of rooftops.’ But Highlands Ranch was soon designated a Tree City USA.”

Charla Kelly specializes in helping people buy and sell homes here. She lives close to the community’s original Mansion, which lost numerous large trees in the storm. She said it’s sad, but people have been outside talking with each other more.

“Neighbors have been helping each other,” she said. “People with trucks have been transporting branches to the drop-off sites.”

Kelly hopes those looking to plant new trees in their yards will remember to contact Colorado 811 before doing any digging and potentially hitting buried power lines. It’s the reason no one lost power during the storm, but it’s easy to forget that and start shoveling. Homeowners can go online to request their lines be located and flagged at https://www.colorado811.org/ or just call 811.

Dave and Laura Mutton have lived in their Highlands Ranch home for 21 years. They lost a tree that was planted by the previous owners but had grown to have special meaning for their family. This was the tree where they took annual back-to-school photos of their children from kindergarten through 12th grade. The kids are now out of the nest, and the tree that appears in so many cherished photos is also gone. Their daughter, Julia, was the one who mentioned the photos that feature her and her brother Andrew smiling and hanging on to a limb, even hugging the tree that was like part of their family as they themselves grew each year.

That kind of tree can never be replaced.

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Lighthouse Writers Workshop grew beyond their wildest ambitions and has succeeded in putting the Mile High City on America’s literary map. Not only do they now have a newly-constructed dream space with 15 employees and 1,500 members, but they’ve also built an annual pilgrimage for established and would-be authors.

Lit Fest, which ends June 16, has become a beacon for thousands of writers of all levels and genres. The event features eight days of writing workshops, seminars, panel discussions, networking opportunities, and celebrations of the written word, both in-person and virtually. And this year’s festival has coincided with the grand opening of Lighthouse’s shiny new headquarters, ta 3844 York St., on what had been an empty lot in northeast Denver.

Dupree and Henry are in the happily-ever-after days. What began in their living room systematically outgrew more than half a dozen artsy but problematic locations around Denver over the past 25 years. With each move, Lighthouse attracted more collaborators and talent until the COVID-19 pandemic brought unexpected good fortune. The shift to virtual teaching vastly expanded its reach and led to a game-changing grant.

Last year, Colorado Creative Industries awarded Lighthouse Writers Workshop $2.4 million to construct an 11,000-square-foot building dedicated to housing the literary arts. Those American Rescue Plan funds materialized like manna. “The timing was perfect for us. This building wouldn’t have happened without the grant,” Dupree allowed.

Architect Collin Kemberlin, known for redesigns of Denver Union Station, History Colorado Center and other stylish landmarks, fashioned the newly finished Lighthouse building to complement its red-brick surroundings in the historic York Street Yards complex at 38th and York Street, with an emphasis on energy efficiency and ADA compliance.

Henry and Dupree are most proud of the three-story spiral staircase that mimics the inside of a lighthouse, and a large classroom named for the late Denver Poet Laureate Chris Ransick, whose widow donated Ransick’s collection of poetry books for display and inspiration.

“Chris was a beloved teacher here. Mayor (John) Hickenlooper appointed him as poet laureate, and he was a big supporter of the literary arts,” Henry said. Ransick taught courses at Lighthouse for years in its previous iterations.

In the new building, industrial-style metal bookshelves, high ceilings, a kitchen for coffee and catering, event spaces, classrooms with soundproofing and smart TVs are features that the Lighthouse community wanted. Accent walls in shades of Jordan almonds are like smooth, candy-coated backdrops for cushy couches and comfy chairs. A cozy salon with a fireplace and numerous west-facing windows with views of downtown Denver, the Front Range, and the neighboring Coca-Cola plant frame the setting that could effectuate the next great American novel, poem, sci-fi thriller, murder mystery or memoir.

“We’ve seen eight of our book project mentees sign book deals with major publishers like Penguin Random House. A novel and a nonfiction book were published in 2022, and a middle-grade novel and a nonfiction book and story collection will be out this year,” noted Lighthouse Marketing and communications manager Alexa Culshaw.

Regular teaching programs attract seasoned professionals like Denver Post film and theater critic Lisa Kennedy, who has both taken and taught Lighthouse courses. Kennedy attended an advanced course with Nadia Owusu, whose memoir “Aftershocks” was on Barack Obama’s favorite books of the year list. “That teacher was amazing, and I was happy with the mix of other students who contributed in a rich way. I felt served,” said Kennedy, who is working on her own life story.

Children and teenagers who love writing are especially welcomed at Lighthouse, where a large room featuring black-and-purple checkerboard carpeting, a throne-like chair, and an antique wardrobe that leads to a secret book nook are meant to stimulate imaginations. A troop of passionate instructors teach in the Young Writers Program, including Assetou Xango, a community activist born and raised in Colorado who served as poet laureate of Aurora from 2017 to 2019.

Aspiring adult wordsmiths are drawn to the menu of workshops. Boulderite India Wood has taken seven Lighthouse workshops and seminars to help shape projects including her first paid magazine article, “Going Diagonal” for Colorado Life magazine. “Erika Krouse’s novel and short story workshop taught me practical creative writing tools. Joel Warner’s nonfiction workshop taught me a disciplined journalist’s approach to books and articles along with a creative spark,” Wood said.

“Now that they have this great new home, the question is will the appetite of the community support 365 days a year of literary programming? Will enough people have an insatiable passion to spend the money on courses?” Kennedy wonders if the hybrid teaching model of virtual and in-person will continue to draw students from other parts of Colorado and beyond. “Lit Fest is buzzy, which is helpful.”

The regional festival continues to attract top authors like Katie Kitamura, whose most recent novel “Intimacies” was named one of The New York Times’ Ten Best Books of 2021, and Rebecca Makkai, whose novel “The Great Believers” was a Pulitzer Prize and National Book Award finalist.

Lighthouse Writers Workshop, 3844 York St., Denver;  303-297-1185; lighthousewriters.org.

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So it was on a lark that we decided to drive from our Denver area homes to Hays, Kan., for the second annual Lek Treks Prairie Chicken Festival put on by Audubon of Kansas (AOK) in mid-April.

Yet we (and other birdwatchers we met) didn’t fully grasp what we were in for. We thought a Prairie Chicken Festival sounded amusing and novel. It was that, but also a physically challenging and politically troubling experience for the uninitiated.

Mom and I arrived without many useful things, including the wisdom of experience. For example, we had no spotting scope; no American Birding Association “life list” to track the birds we’ve seen in our lifetimes; no eBird or Merlin mobile apps loaded onto our phones; no pricey cameras with zoom lenses like portable Webb Space Telescopes slung across our shoulders. Our clothes were not nearly warm enough.

We started off by getting battered by wind during the five-hour drive from Denver on Interstate 70. Those we met who had traveled from Missouri, Texas, Arkansas, Massachusetts and New York reported the same astonishment over the intensity of Kansas wind. On the road, we passed countless towering white wind turbines churning above grassy fields. Kansas seems an obvious place for these energy generators, but their presence is a colossal source of concern for those worried about migrating and sensitive ground-dwelling birds.

In Hays, the Best Western was headquarters for the 130 people registered for the festival, 40 more than the inaugural year’s list, we discovered. Inside the lobby, it was immediately obvious who among us was serious and who didn’t know what the hell they were doing. True birders pegged us in a microsecond as being clueless schlubs. But they were once like us, so they were tolerant if not friendly. Besides, ornithologists were there to keep them honest.

A lesson in birding, geology

Over the next three days, we attended various outings, like a birdwatching walk with Dr. Medhavi Ambardar, a delightful professor from Fort Hays State University. Because Ambardar had a science class to teach at 8:30 a.m., we set out just before sunrise to spot as many avian species as we could in 90 minutes on a nature trail near the charming Sternberg Museum of Natural History.

With us was native son Dean Stramel — a former KSU science professor who now teaches classes at Fort Hays State University — whose family goes way back in Hays, including several named on impressively large tombstones in the city cemetery. Stramel provided a backstory about Hays and later led us to a residential park where dozens of turkey vultures perched in tall trees. He knows their routine, and all the great birdwatching spots in Hays as well.

This gentle beginning gave us the impression we would be enjoying mild excursions in pleasant temperatures mere minutes from the hotel. (As in, “Look! It’s a red-bellied woodpecker snickering in the treetops.”)

We were wrong.

“I tell my students it’s like they told a joke and they’re laughing at the joke and the laughter goes on far too long,”  Ambardar remarked.

That first day, we approached a spring-fed pond and heard the “tea kettle tea kettle tea kettle” call of a Carolina wren. James Swim, a birder from Arkansas, commented on how folks often confuse Carolina chickadees with black-capped chickadees. A conversation ensued about juvenile bald eagles looking like golden eagles, and birds identified as purple finches likely being just red house finches. (“Hey, look, there’s a cowbird! By the way, it’s tick season so check yourselves.”)

We also took a tour of the Kansas Badlands led by rugged geologist Rex Buchanan, director emeritus of the Kansas Geological Survey. With cold winds gusting, we explored outcrops of eroded Niobrara Chalk that have been the source of spectacular marine fossil finds from the Late Cretaceous. We also took a behind-the-scenes tour of the Sternberg Museum of Natural History, where a tray of dead prairie chickens was pulled out for our inspection.

A wake-up call

That evening, we attend Trivia Night featuring some silly birds-in-pop-culture questions along with scientific ones that were way out of our league. Lucky for us, our team included 15-year-old Molly Morford from Lenexa, Kan.

Morford has a large collection of illustrated bird books at home. She can tell a vesper sparrow from a fox sparrow, enjoys setting up wooden boxes for eastern bluebirds in her neighborhood park, and is one of about 100 students in the Olathe Public Schools who got into a special Animal Health Academy. She’s thinking of going to Kansas State or Cornell. “I’ve heard people say birdwatching is an old person thing, and that makes me sad.”

Her mother, Megan, stumbled across the event online and signed them up. “There are a lot of people not my age here,” Molly said, glancing at my 84-year-old mother. Certainly, we saw no one else wearing leopard print yoga pants or green-banded braces either. (Lots of silver hair at the welcome night gathering to be sure.)

That evening, we learned from Native American spirit dancer Dennis Rogers that Kansas Attorney General Kris Kobach had just joined Texas and Oklahoma in suing the federal government over the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service upgrading the lesser prairie chicken’s status from threatened to endangered. The lawsuit claims the designation violates property rights and seriously impacts plans for new oil wells, ranching operations and wind farms. Kobach wants the feds to stay out of it and allow states to decide how to manage the situation.

The federal government divides lesser prairie chickens into two distinct population segments (DPS); the Southern DPS is now listed as endangered and the Northern DPS is listed as threatened. Southeastern Colorado is home to the Northern DPS, where landowners and land managers have greater flexibility with land use than states where the Southern DPS prairie-chickens live.

But more than 95% of U.S. tall grass prairie has been developed, and because birds like prairie chickens don’t migrate, their shrinking habitat, exacerbated by ongoing drought, is causing their numbers to nosedive, according to the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service.

“There’s a lot of bad press about prairie chickens in Kansas and I want to be able to (provided) the opportunity of going to a lek and witnessing something that connects us to the grasslands, to our history, to our future,” said AOK executive director Jackie Augustine. With more than 5,000 hours logged studying greater and lesser prairie chickens on their native turf, Augustine has possibly spent more time at leks (places where male birds put on a display during courtship rituals) than anyone.

“A lot of my research is focused on what makes male prairie chickens sexy,” Augustine said. It was those elaborate displays that drew all of us to Hays for the chance to observe an ancient animal practice.

The birders

On the third and final morning of our odyssey into the declining world of the birds that once numbered in the millions, we rise at 3 a.m. (with the admonishment to not drink coffee because there are no bathrooms on the leks). Dozens of us climb into rented vans for the hour-long drive to secret locations on private plots where landowners have granted us access.

“I have observed that overall numbers of birds have dropped by half compared to last year,” Augustine said. “Two leks we used last year couldn’t be used this year because they only contain two or three birds. Of the six leks I studied last year, only one increased in size, and this is the one. There were 19 males and seven females here yesterday.”

Driving over dirt roads to our destination, I realize that our bleary-eyed flock has its own pecking order. Sitting shotgun is Alec Humann from Buffalo, N.Y., whose favorite bird is the whimbrel. “I like all the curlews but whimbrels have a fascinating migration route. I also band hawks in New Jersey in the fall. This is my first trip to Kansas to see the greater and lesser prairie chickens. It’s a trip I’ve wanted to go on for decades.”

Thomas Riley of Buffalo tagged along, “So I could get my prairie chicken ‘lifers.’ My favorite bird is the red-headed woodpecker.”

Tanya and Gary Spence traveled from West Texas, and have been birding for about 30 years. Her favorite bird is the chickadee; his, he says, is whatever he’s currently looking at. “Most of our vacations are around what birds can we see,” Spence said. “We’ve been taking more trips to see birds now that our kids are grown, having little expeditions and enjoying just the two of us.”

My mom, Mary, who lives in Lakewood, says the Western tanager is her favorite. They turn to me, expectantly. I say mine is the black-billed magpie, the first bird I ever recall noticing and thinking was a parrot. That gets a laugh. (Hey, I was 3 years old.)

Julia Givens from New Jersey now lives just outside Boston with Dan O’Brien. “I’m a fair-weather birder,” she said, adding that her favorite is the cedar waxwing. “Love summer birding and beach-combing.” O’Brien says the common grackle is what hooked him.

The big day

As we approach our destination, a pair of black-tailed jackrabbits scamper into the headlights, almost leading us to our stop. We park and clamber over a barbed wire fence into a pasture dotted with dry cow patties. Nearby, a pack of unseen coyotes yip and howl, perhaps at the crescent moon rising, blood orange, just above the flat horizon. Overhead constellations appear as fuzzy white blotches watercolored onto the inky black sky. The Milky Way is postured for admiration, but a biting, frigid wind urges us to hurry and erect the camouflaged blinds that we will huddle in for the next four hours.

#LesserPrairieChicken putting on an impressive show for the ladies! Sadly these wild birds are rapidly losing their native habitat and have been listed as an #endangeredspecies The #PrairieChickenFestival put on by the @audubonofkansas is meant to raise awareness. pic.twitter.com/tqkBobzhgT

— Kristen Kidd (@kiddstories) April 17, 2023

Our group divides into three side-by-side blinds. We sit on camp chairs, wrapped in blankets, awaiting the show. The temperature isn’t cold enough to see our breaths, but high humidity and a windchill factor ensure it is punishing to remove a glove and aim a camera barehanded for longer than a minute. My nose and toes go numb. I worry about how my mom is doing as she hides all but her eyes behind a blanket.

At 6:50, Augustine orders us all to be quiet. Within minutes, a dreamlike noise starts up, growing in volume. It’s like a Hollywood movie sound effect: an echoey, bouncy bwopping chorus, cartoonish like rubbery bubbles popping. The sounds, punctuated by rooster-like cackles, come closer and closer in the dark. We strain to see shapes moving on the ground before us.

The sun rises slowly behind our blinds, casting long shadows across the lek where 18 males and 16 females have converged. In Swedish, the word “lek” is a verb that means “to dance or play.” It’s fitting, although there is also fighting. Males square off, leaping and running at each other.

“The males stomp their feet like 20 times a second,” Augustine had said while describing a lek. “While doing that, the wings spread out and the tails go up, the pinnae up, these are feathers behind the head. The whole thing culminates in a pop vocalization, and air sacs inflate at the same time, helping project that vocalization.

“The air sacs are bright reddish magenta because they are lesser prairie chickens. If they were greater, it would be orange. Lesser prairie chickens also have huge yellow combs above their eyes. They’re fleshy and they engorge with blood and get really big when they’re excited.”

The instinctual performance is comical and fascinating to view from our hidden perches. Almost robotic, like wind-up toys.

Heading home

Chickens are most closely related to dinosaurs, which went extinct about 66 million years ago following a catastrophic asteroid collision with the Earth. On Dinosaur Ridge in Morrison (and other ancient sites), paleontologists have studied marks in Cretaceous sandstone made by the three-toed claws of theropods scraping left and right on a prehistoric lek. Dinosaurs performed courtship rituals, too.

At that time, a vast inland sea covered what is now Colorado, Kansas, Utah, Texas and Wyoming. As the North American continent uplifted, the seaway drained, leaving what would eventually become fertile grasslands where the surviving descendants of dinosaurs and many mammals including bison thrived. The remains of marine animals buried below became people’s fossil fuels.

Before European settlers arrived, Native American tribes lived and hunted here. Business-savvy settlers commercialized the prairie chickens and shipped them east for food by the hundreds of thousands. “We have fewer than 30,000 lesser prairie chickens left” in the U.S., Augustine noted. “I feel (that by) coming and sitting on a prairie chicken lek, you still have a piece of that history left. And I’m just so worried that we’re going to lose it.”

During the COVID-19 pandemic, an Oklahoma festival that focused on lesser prairie chickens shut down. When organizers thought about restarting it, there weren’t enough birds left to guarantee people would see them.

At the time, Augustine was new in her role but didn’t hesitate to act. “I was like, ‘Well, OK, this is the time to start it here then.’ And the Oklahoma Audubon Council was so helpful. That first festival we got a lot of people who were planning to go to Oklahoma but then they came to Kansas because we had the opportunity and they didn’t.

“I felt so privileged being able to study these birds. My second date with my husband was at a prairie chicken lek.”

That evening, our drive home was less windy, and our minds less settled. At her door mom summed it up, “We probably won’t look at birds the same way anymore will we?” I don’t know how anyone who had this experience could. And now we too will worry that our photographs and memories might outlive this priceless species.

Kristen Kidd of Littleton is the communications director at Dinosaur Ridge, part of the Morrison-Golden National Natural Landmark. 

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Eggers’ most recent book appears to be a throwback to the days when books were our most treasured possessions: tangible entertainment in the form of beloved stories, memorable characters, settings that enchanted us, stylish writing that rewarded us for being bookish.

The accomplished author (“Zeitoun,” “A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius,” “The Circle”) and artist — who has his own publishing house, McSweeney’s, as well as a nonprofit youth writing center, 826 Valencia — has become an influencer in an intentionally non-social-media manner. As a 53-year-old husband and father of two teenagers, Eggers is interested in creating experiences for readers of all ages, while helping young writers develop skills that are fully human in this time of ChatGPT.

His newest novel, “The Eyes and The Impossible,” simply looks unlike anything else on a contemporary bookshelf. A bamboo hardcover laser cut to create the fringe of a forest framing a golden meadow where an unleashed canine bounds joyfully sets the tone. The pages have rounded corners and gilded edges. (Who does this in 2023?) At an inch thick and with child-holdable dimensions of 8-by-6 1/2 inches, Eggers describes the book as “heavy in the hand.” That’s the feel he wanted after spotting a fancy bamboo greeting card in a post office lobby.

“I’ve been publishing for 25 years now, and I’m always looking for new techniques or resurrections of old techniques,” Eggers explained. “So I sent the greeting card to the printer and asked, ‘Can we do this?’ We went back and forth for two years on this design.”

Large, 19th-century typeface supports the old-fashioned aesthetic. The crowning touch is a series of classical landscape paintings by artists of centuries past, chosen to adorn the cover and endpapers, making cameos throughout the book about every 25 pages. Artist Shawn Harris embellished the paintings with images of the main character, Johannes, within each pastoral scene.

Johannes the fast-running canine is known as “The Eyes” of an urban park that he and his animal friends inhabit. It is his job to give daily reports to a trio of bison corralled in one ranger-controlled section of the park.

The wild animals, with names like Sonja, Freya, Sharif and Bertrand, are wary of human activity encroaching from the surrounding city. Captivity is to be dodged daily and escaped from. This becomes the seemingly impossible mission that Johannes adopts with the help of his furry and feathered friends.

“I had more fun writing this story than any book, maybe ever! There was no research to do or facts to check,” Eggers said of the adventure one might assume was dreamed up for children. (Amazon advertises it for ages 8-12.) It wasn’t Eggers’ intent. “There should be a category of all-ages where you could be 8 or 78 and ideally the story delights and entertains. My goal was to make an every-age book.”

Advanced vocabulary words like “concavity,” “cavorting” and “chartreuse” pepper every page like knowing winks at bookworms who appreciate clever word-smithery. This book is begging to be read aloud to oneself and to others. You’ll want to use your most special bookmark and find an honored place to keep this gem.

Eggers’ most recent novel for adults, “The Every,” published in 2021, also addresses the loss of freedom and will have you chuckling at the absurdity of a cultish tech monopoly’s rise to power, and squirming while you ask yourself whether human survival could ultimately depend on surrender to a tech-guided future. Is resistance futile? The follow-up to his 2013 novel “The Circle” works as a standalone, but builds on the trajectory established in the world where personal privacy was aggressively being usurped by a tech company’s power-hungry leadership.

“Every so often, I have to tell a story that scares people into remembering we are animals not meant to live indoors staring at screens,” Eggers said. After “The Circle,” he kept taking notes on developments until he felt he had enough material for another book. “I tried to give this one more satire and jokes to keep it light.”

Eggers’ longtime collaborator Dion Graham performs the audiobook version of “The Every” to perfection. “I do love the audiobook form; it’s in such a renaissance state,” Eggers said. Graham has recorded all of Eggers’ books since “What Is the What” came out 15 years ago.

Will there be a sequel to “The Every”?

“This is the only follow-up I’ve ever done. My wife, Vendela, who is also a writer, said some of the saddest words in the English language are ‘planned trilogy,’ and she’s right,” Eggers laughed. “I don’t know what’s next. I’m surrounded by tech here in San Francisco; it’s in the air I breathe and the water I drink. It keeps getting weirder.”

Dave Eggers will be at Boulder Books for a book signing on May 7 at 5 p.m. He is the final author in The Denver Post Pen & Podium’s sold-out, five-part lecture series wrapping up on May 8. If you are interested in becoming a subscriber for the 2023-24 season, get information at penandpodium.com and sign up for Early Bird Advanced Ticket Information here.

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If you have read even one of Ian McEwan’s 17 books — perhaps the contemplative “Atonement” (2001, Jonathan Cape) that was adapted into an Oscar winning film in 2007 — you know the British novelist brings an insightful and eloquent style, often with a dark edge, to his storytelling.

“Machines Like Me” is a ruminative mix of science fiction, romance and alternate history set in 1980s London. The political backdrop is built around the loss of the Falklands War. Londoners are in shock after the military defeat, alarmed by high and growing unemployment, and conflicted about a proposed withdrawal from the European Union. This unsettled larger context frames a personal story marked by the tensions that come when wading into unknown territory.

“I’m always a little bored of sci-fi set in the future,” McEwan said in a telephone interview in mid-April. “I rather wanted Alan Turing to be alive, and also considered how the present could so easily have been otherwise. The Falklands War could’ve been a terrible failure. I wanted to conjure a world of politics and reality that is sort of familiar, but different.”

In this divergent timeline, self-driving cars transport people around a country where Margaret Thatcher’s embattled Tories and the rising Labour Party, led by a popular Tony Benn, are grappling over what to do, including the possibility of taxing robots based on the number of human workers displaced.

And so the stage is set for single, broke 32-year-old Charlie Friend, who impulsively uses his mother’s inheritance to purchase an Adam, one of 25 newly launched artificial humans quietly made available to private buyers around the world. Charlie had hoped for an Eve, but was nonetheless excited to see how one of the planet’s most advanced machines might improve his life.

Despite the branding of these pioneering creations named after the first man and woman depicted in the Bible, McEwan said the story is not meant to be an allegory.

“I suppose it overlaps with some religious themes but it wasn’t in the forefront of my mind,” McEwan said. “If we want to play God and make a humanoid creature so that we put ourselves in that Godlike position, it would be a big step for us. At the same time, we will be casting ourselves out no longer as the cleverest things on Earth.”

Even so, these modern-day Adams and Eves were designed to be decent and wise as well as our physical and mental superiors: “There was hope that our own creations would redeem us.”

Charlie and Adam’s relationship is soon strained by the complicating factor of Charlie’s budding romance with his upstairs neighbor. Miranda is a university student with a secretive past that Adam quickly uncovers through his access to online public records. From that moment forward, the three struggle with undefined rules of engagement and feelings of trust, loyalty, love, jealousy and how to view justice and morality.

Charlie and Miranda worked together in choosing the personality traits for Adam after his delivery as a sort of blank slate packaged within an attractive and lifelike mature caucasian male body. (Adams and Eves, like their namesakes, do not get to experience a childhood.)

Even as he is attempting to pass as human, Adam is constantly studying and assessing human behavior, and finding it lacking. Other people come into play, including Miranda’s ailing and once famous father, an abused boy, a violent ex-con, and the aforementioned Alan Turing. In our reality, the late mathematician is now widely considered to be the father of artificial intelligence who died by suicide in 1954.

In this story, Turing’s work with A.I. has largely contributed to the creation of this first iteration of  Adams and Eves, and he is following their experiences with a keen, behind-the-scenes interest. These are not the monsters or machines of popular entertainment, but the most sophisticated of consumer electronics built to last 20 years before having their data transferred to fresh new devices for an immortal and ever-improving evolution.

McEwan believes it may be another 50 years before artificial humans of the type imagined in his novel are viable, but he believes the time is ripe to start deciding how we are going to adapt to their inevitable existence.

“We’re not thinking about it enough. They will start taking our jobs and we are really going to have to reorient ourselves away from work. Stop defining ourselves by work. This could be a great opportunity for mankind,” McEwan said.

And this is why McEwan chose to center his 18th book on the consequences of artificial intelligence for humankind, rather than leaving it up to the movies and popular television series like “Westworld” and “Humans.”

“There have been many robots in the arts, but I always feel they don’t examine closely enough what it’s like to be in an intimate relationship, or what it’s like to have a creature like Adam in your house. And what it means to be human as opposed to being a machine. This needs the close examination a novel can provide,” McEwan said.

This thought-provoking cautionary tale based on McEwan’s sharp observations of our flawed human nature is detailed with a vocabulary that will have you reaching for a dictionary at least half a dozen times.

The story ends on a note that leaves the reader thinking ahead and wondering what might come next. Of course, the possibilities are endless, and impossible to direct. As McEwan noted, “The one thing the internet has shown us is it might be us who devises the technology, but we’ve got no control over it as a human invention — it runs with a mind of its own. We really are hopeless at predicting our own future, and that’s the thing that really fascinates me.”

IF YOU GO

Ian McEwan will discuss “Machines Like Me” with author and journalist Helen Thorpe at New Hope Baptist Church in Denver, hosted by Tattered Cover bookstore, May 1 at 7 p.m. Tickets are available online and include a pre-signed book.

Robin Sloan is taking the long way to Denver for his book signing event at the Tattered Cover this week — by railroad. Traveling the scenic route from San Francisco by rail fulfills a longtime wish for the tech-savvy author, who has a fascination with the old ways of doing things.

Sloan will read from and sign copies of his sophomore novel, “Sourdough,” a follow-up to his bestselling debut, “Mr. Penumbra’s 24-Hour Bookstore” (Picador, 2012), with some themes that will feel familiar to fans.

Both stories are set in the San Francisco Bay area and follow young tech-industry professionals who find themselves the unexpected keepers of ancient and mysterious secrets — stories involving the kinds of scenarios that any reader who loved “The Hobbit” or enjoyed “The Da Vinci Code” will appreciate.

In “Sourdough,” burned-out robotics programmer Lois Clary finds herself the unwitting owner of a crock of sourdough starter when her favorite dinner delivery service abruptly closes and the owner gifts his “Number One Eater” with a portion of his special ingredient. Having subsisted largely on a slurry of nutritive gel before the Clement Street Soup and Sourdough menu appeared on her front door, Lois is determined to keep the starter alive and learn how to bake fresh sourdough bread for herself.

However, she soon realizes this starter is no ordinary mix of flour and water. The wild yeasts and bacteria that live within the glutinous mix respond to a certain ethnic music (Mazg) and form telltale shapes in her baked loaves.

When Lois finds her newfound baking skills in growing demand, she puts her programming knowledge to use in designing a robotic arm to mix dough and automate the process. As the pressure to produce rises, Lois seeks help from an increasingly odd cast of characters, including fellow members of the local Lois Club, a group of women who all share the name that peaked in popularity in 1929 (according to babycenter.com).

With “Sourdough,” Sloan has written the kind of story you might expect from a 37-year-old self-described “library kid” who is equally into dabbling in machine learning and artificial intelligence as he is his new venture of producing extra virgin olive oil.

“I am comfortable combining the old and the new,” Sloan said. “It’s an interesting space to play in, and in putting the old thing in a new setting I hope to show how the old is actually really high tech as well.”

While San Francisco is arguably the North American mecca for sourdough bread lovers, Sloan is looking forward to tasting the Rocky Mountain version when Golden’s Grateful Bread Company co-sponsors his book signing with samples of their own celebrated sourdough for people to taste while they wait for an autograph.

In shifting from a background of journalistic writing for the likes of The Atlantic and Motherboard to fiction, Sloan, who also worked for Twitter, is playing with ways to make the process of writing novels a mix of imagination and automation with a software he is developing. He’s perfecting a program that operates like an AI co-writer, offering suggestions to writers much the way texting apps offer words to help speed up the process of phone messaging.

“I will be able to use it, not in my next couple of stories, but maybe in book number five,” Sloan speculated. And if those stories play out the way his first two have, they will feature a  blend of fantasy and reality, with a juxtaposition of contemporary and vintage technologies in starring roles.

“I like to take little bits of my own experience and remix them into some kind of fictional storyline, using some things that are straight up real, some that are exaggerated, and some invented together in a way so people can’t really tell what’s made up and what isn’t.”

Oh, the possibilities.

If you go

“Sourdough” author Robin Sloan will be at the West Colfax Tattered Cover in Denver on Wednesday, Oct. 4, at 7 p.m. Go to tatteredcover.com for details.

Jefferson County Open Space officials had declared high levels of E. coli from dog waste. That, plus parking problems, forced them to permanently close Elk Meadow Dog Park.

A week later, at one of four well-attended dog parks in Highlands Ranch, a visitor commented that the size of Elk Meadow, 107 acres, was bound to lead to issues with unscooped poop. After all, off-leash dogs can race out of owners’ views. Admittedly, that can happen in small dog parks, too.

Kyle Hurt and his 6-year-old son, Mason, lounged on a bench watching their energetic boxer, Jersey, duck and weave around a feisty Australian shepherd in the Hound Hill dog park near Quebec and Lincoln streets.

“Why is it shutting down?” Mason asked his dad, referring to the Evergreen park.

“Because of the poop.”

“Why don’t they pick it up?”

Hurt, giving pet owners the benefit of the doubt, shrugged. “I don’t think it’s intentional.”

Hurt then admitted that the moment he takes his eye off Jersey is often the moment the little rascal decides to do his business.

Dog parks have become an integral and even expected part of many communities as dog ownership grows. Next year may be the year of the dog in China, but in the U.S. it’s shaping up to be the century of the canine. In 2000, Americans kept 68 million dogs as pets. We are now closing in on 90 million, according to the American Pet Products Association’s 2017 National Pet Owners Survey. (The U.S. Census Bureau counts the number of children at 73.7 million, meaning American households now have more dogs than kids.)

No wonder dog parks are the fastest-growing segment of city parks in the United States. A 2015 City Park Facts Report lists 644 off-leash dog parks in the nation’s 100 largest cities, a 20 percent increase in five years.

Naturally, with more dogs and dog parks comes more doggie downsides.

“There are over 20 different bacteria, viruses and parasites in dog feces that can infect other dogs,” said Michael Lappin, the Kenneth W. Smith Professor of Infectious Disease at Colorado State University.

Lappin is himself a dog owner who frequents dog parks, despite the findings he and fellow researchers discovered in a pair of recent studies they conducted at dog parks in Colorado and California.

In 2012, Lappin led one of the first studies to discover whether dog park visitation is associated with an increased prevalence of parasites. Lab results showed dogs that visit dog parks were more likely to test positive for two common parasites (giardia and cryptosporidium) than non-dog park-attending dogs. The strains of these parasites were those that infect dogs and not people, and none of the dogs or their owners fell ill. Similar results were found in the more recent California study.

“When you have a higher concentration of dog feces in a contained area, you can expect to increase the likelihood of exposure to these agents. Even if the feces are cleaned up promptly, there are still the presence of these microbes in the environment,” Lappin said. And some of those infectious disease agents can persist for prolonged periods in the environment, posing an increased exposure risk.

But if the dogs are healthy with normal stools and are on parasite-preventative products, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says dog parks pose a minimal risk. People who become sick from these agents are usually the very young or very old and those who are immune-compromised.

Still, all that poop gives pause. What’s the attraction for dog parks, anyway?

“I’m a dog park proponent,” Lappin said. “My perception is that there are many more benefits for the psyches of dogs and their owners that are able to exercise and socialize in dog parks than there are downsides from infectious disease risks, provided simple precautions are followed.”

And it helps if the areas can be maintained.

Martha Scott Benedict Memorial Park, originally called Ohlone Dog Park, in Berkeley, Calif., is recognized as the first dog park in the world, created in 1979. The nonprofit Ohlone Dog Park Association partners with the city to maintain park quality, much the way the newly formed Friends of Evergreen Dog Park group had hoped to serve Elk Meadows.

Volunteers there had organized an effort to clean up the park and proposed other solutions, including a membership system that would require owners to register their dogs and include DNA swabs, so owners of the offending stealth bombers could be held accountable.

But Jefferson County decided to close the park on April 4. The area, officials said, was a victim of its popularity: Some 4,000 people were using the park each week; last fall volunteers collected 500 pounds of dog waste during three days.

Businesses that offer poop-pickup services are popping up online, claiming to dramatically decrease dog waste in apartment and condo complexes and communities with HOAs. They are marketing themselves to dog parks also.

Longtime Evergreen resident Kris Johnson stopped taking her dog, Finn, to Elk Meadows in part because of the waste issue. “There were only one or two trash cans on the trail, so you’d have to walk for long periods holding the bag of poop. In all fairness, I don’t think they foresaw how popular this park would be.”Hopefully it can reopen at some point and others can also be created.

Nick Adamson, natural resource manager for Highlands Ranch Metro District, said he’s learned about the importance of regular maintenance and clear signage. “I think it’s cyclical mostly. During winter when snow is on the ground, we see more dog waste in the parks and on trails, but it’s not a huge issue here.”

The Metro District pays four technicians and a supervisor through funds generated by property taxes to maintain area trails, ponds and open space. Every Monday and Friday, techs refill the dog park bag dispensers and empty the sturdy metal trash cans (a.k.a. “poop ovens”).

Lappin likens dog parks for four-legged friends to children’s day care centers.

“Feces is part of our life. You just have to use common sense and good hygiene practices.”

If you are interested in taking your pup to a dog park, CSU Professor Michael Lappin recommends:

• Keeping your dog’s vaccinations up to date

• Following a deworming protocol

• Don’t bring young puppies, very old or ailing dogs to dog parks

• Wash your hands after visiting dog parks

The ASPCA supports community dog parks as a means for urban dogs in particular to exercise off leash and socialize with other dogs.

Ralph Johnson, CEO of the Colorado Veterinary Medical Association, said the CVMA does not have a policy specifically on dog parks, but veterinarians advocate responsible pet ownership, which includes proper waste disposal. For more information, click here.

Denver Dog Parks

• Berkeley Dog Park Berkeley. Sheridan & West 46th
• Railyard Dog Park Union Station. 19th St. & Bassett St.
• Little Box Car Dog Park Five Points. Broadway & Lawrence St.
• Sonny Lawson Dog Park Five Points, Park Ave West & California St.
• Fuller Dog Park Whittier, W. 29th Ave & Franklin St.
• Parkfield Dog Park Gateway-Green Valley Ranch, E. Maxwell Pl. & Idalia St.
• Green Valley Ranch East Dog Park Gateway-Green Valley Ranch, E. 45th Avenue & Jebel St.
• Greenway Park Dog Park East Colfax,
• E. 22nd Avenue & Syracuse St.
• Lowry Dog Park Lowry Field, E. 4th Place & S. Yosemite Way
• Kennedy Dog Park Kennedy, E. Hampden Avenue & S. Dayton St.
• Stapleton Greenway Dog Park Stapleton, E. 22nd Ave. & Syracuse St.

Suburban Off-Leash Parks

• Beaver Ranch Bark Park Conifer, 11369 S. Foxton Road
• Homer’s Run Dog Park Golden, 17651 W. 10th Ave.
• Grampsas Dog Park Golden, 4471 Salvia St.
• West Arvada Dog Park Arvada, 17975 W. 64th Ave.
• Little Dry Creek Dog Park Westminster Hills, 105th Ave. & Simms St.
• Trail Winds Dog Park Thornton, 13385 Holly St.
• Happy Trails Brighton, 1111 Judicial Center Dr.
• Grandview Dog Park Aurora, 17500 E. Quincy Ave.
• Cherry Creek State Park Aurora, 4201 S. Parker Road
• Bayou Gulch Parker, Fox Sparrow Road
• Devon’s Dog Park at Greenland Open Space Larkspur, 1532 E. Noe Road
• Matney Park Castle Rock, 5790 Lantern Cir.
• Glendale Farm Open Space Castle Pines, 12300 S. Havana St.
• Fido’s Field Highlands Ranch, 1042 Riddlewood Rd.
• Rover’s Run Highlands Ranch, 3280 Redstone Park Circle
• Digger’s Highlands Ranch, 3385 Astorbrook Circle
• Hound Hill Highlands Ranch, 9651 S. Quebec St.
• David A. Lorenz Littleton, 8560 S. Colorado Blvd.
• Wynetka Ponds Bark Park Littleton, 5875 S. Lowell Blvd.
• Centennial Park Englewood, 4630 S. Decatur
• Forsberg Dog Park Lakewood, 15900 W. Alameda Parkway
• Chatfield State Park Littleton, 11500 N. Roxborough Park Road

April 1 is National Sourdough Day. No fooling.

The curators at NationalDayCalendar.com mark occasions to commemorate every day, and Saturday is sourdough’s turn. (Today, you could toast lemon chiffon cake, manatees and mom-and-pop business owners, for instance.)

Of course, mom-and-pop business owners Jeff Cleary and Kathy Mullen pay homage to sourdough every day at their artisan bakery, Grateful Bread Company, in Golden.

This Saturday, the bread-mongers will step up their ongoing tribute to sourdough with a large variety of fresh baked breads and pastries featuring the special ingredient they’ve been carefully cultivating since Y2K: their all-natural sourdough starter.

Seven days a week, they bake for local chefs, but on Saturdays Grateful Bread also opens to the public from 10 a.m. to 2:30 p.m. Perfect timing for National Sourdough Day.

“We make both milder flavored and stronger San Francisco-style sourdoughs using in-house stone-milled organic flours mixed with bread flour from King Arthur,” said Cleary, Grateful Bread’s founder and head baker. “The lavender sourdough we make for chef Jennifer Jasinski’s restaurant Rioja has a stronger sourdough flavor, and our peat-smoked barley has a more subtle tang, for example.”

The bakers at Grateful Bread also make eight types of pastries with sourdough, including a dazzling dark Belgian chocolate babka. All are made with natural and organic ingredients, largely from local sources like Motherlove Organic Farm in Fort Collins, Vivian Farms in Littleton, and Beeyond the Hive honey farm in Elizabeth.

The bakery’s 23 trained artisans are busy bees themselves, working around the clock in three shifts, 365 days a year making sourdoughs and other breads for more than 80 chef-driven restaurants in Denver and Boulder. Cleary launched the company in 2005 in a tiny cabin in Evergreen, working to gain enough clients to hire help and lease the current 8,000-square- foot space off West Colfax Avenue.

A team of delivery truck drivers transport Grateful Bread’s fresh-baked loaves, baguettes, epis, rolls and boules twice daily to restaurants like Acorn, Fruition, Guard & Grace and Tables in time for lunch and again for dinner service in a bee-line pattern efficiency experts would frown on.

“Our guiding principle is quality above everything else,” said Mullen. “From the beginning, we committed to results over profits. So rather than finding the fastest, cheapest ways to produce and sell bread, we chose artisan techniques for a business approach we can take pride in.”

To that end, Cleary imported a custom-built artisan stone mill from Austria in 2015 for even more quality control. Employee Luke Holland was inspired to learn the milling process to become the company’s head miller.

“I love it,” Holland said. “I get to be one of the few artisan millers in Colorado, using this beautiful pinewood stone mill to make the best flours in town.”

The person entrusted with one of the most important jobs in the bakery is Ashlee Brinkerhoff — or “Mrs. B,” as Cleary calls her. Brinkerhoff came to Grateful Bread as an intern from Johnson & Wales University’s baking and pastry arts program six years ago, and never left. She is one of the few who tends to the bakery’s nine large buckets of sourdough starter, the source of the magic.

Bakers speak about their starters as living characters with exacting temperaments. They strive to keep them well-fed and warm, and they listen to them, because “the starter tells you when it’s happy.” Cleary said the smell of a starter changes throughout the year due to weather conditions. “At its best, it smells like green apples.”

Starter is a simple mix of unbleached flour and filtered warm water that has attracted wild yeast spores from the surrounding atmosphere. The spores are microscopic living organisms that feed on the mix, causing it to ferment and, over time, with proper care and feeding it will eventually sour. Carbon dioxide bubbles develop in the mix when the process is working. At that point, a portion can be taken and added to more flour, water and salt to start a sour bread dough that will rise. Without starter, you get flat bread.

Grateful Bread keeps two types of starter: a wet starter for milder products and a firm one for stronger flavored breads.

Brinkerhoff meticulously charts temperatures to calculate the precise formulas needed to maintain the starters’ optimal ratios. Using large mixers, she creates the dough for orders that will bake in three days, following a disciplined routine of mixing, resting, turning and ultimately dividing the dough for bakers to shape by hand into hundreds of individual pieces. Good Mixers like Mrs. B have solid math skills, strong focus, endurance and an artist’s touch.

Finishing breads has become second nature for a.m. head baker John Groundwater, who gives each raw loaf a final dusting of flour and maybe a few quick decorative slashes before pushing them into the deck oven. At just the right time and temp, he deftly slides them back out with a long handled wooden peel, making it look easy.

“It takes a lot of repetition and practice to get good at it,” Cleary said. “Baking is a science. You experiment until you find the right balance and then you stick to the formula.”

Science has yet to confirm the claims of those who believe sourdough breads are as good as gluten-free for people with sensitivities to the proteins in wheat products. Anecdotally, Mullen says numerous customers have told her sourdoughs don’t bother them the way other breads do. Speculation centers around sourdough’s longer fermentation time, suggesting the process results in a healthier product.

“Sourdough is an area of enormous controversy,” states the King Arthur Flour website, not only regarding its nutritional benefits but also in terms of the best techniques for making it. America’s oldest flour company has a hotline for home bread-bakers, sourdough questions being a top subject they address daily at kingarthurflour.com.

Denver Wellness and Nutrition Team dietician Jessica Crandall, RDN, advises her gluten-sensitive patients to watch serving size, and remember everyone has a different tolerance level. “Low processed foods are great, fermented foods can be beneficial, but bread is still bread,” said Crandall, who believes the oven likely kills whatever good bacteria exists in sourdoughs. While she doesn’t view sourdough as a health food, she personally loves it for the flavor. “It’s delicious!”

Sourdough has been around since biblical times, when it was just called bread. The lack of it has caused riots over the centuries, and inspired poets like Neruda and Browning and quotes from the likes of Julia Child, who Cleary had the privilege of cooking for in 1995. Child famously asked, “How can a nation be called great if its bread tastes like kleenex?”

Grateful Bread seeks to answer that challenge daily, training a new generation of bakers and millers in an ancient practice to make American bread great again.

Freelancer Kristen Kidd  is working on her master’s in marketing at DU and can be reached at kiddstories@gmail.com.

Creating a sourdough starter requires time and attention. Here’s how Grateful Bread’s Jeff Cleary recommends doing it:

What you need:

• Whole wheat flour
• Unbleached bread flour
• Filtered water
• Glass jar or non-reactive container

Directions:

1. Mix flour (preferably organic, freshly milled) and water together by hand or with a stand mixer on low speed until well blended. Leave for 24 hours at room temperature in a food-safe container such as a glass jar.

2. Discard half of the mixture and stir in another 4 ounces of water, then add 6 ounces of unbleached bread flour and mix thoroughly. Let sit for another 24 hours.

3. Reserve 4 ounces of the mixture and repeat the process of adding 4 ounces of water and 6 ounces of bread flour. Continue “feeding” the starter every 12 hours, repeating the same amounts of flour and water each time.

4. After 1 week, the starter should smell slightly acidic with a noticeable amount of bubbling.

5. Mix 2 ounces of the starter with 5 ounces of water and 8½ ounces of bread flour. Store on a door shelf inside the refrigerator to mature for 3 days (the back of the fridge can be too cold).

6. After this, the starter should be ready to use in your bread formula. Always reserve enough starter to feed for your next batch or you will have to create a new one from scratch. To maintain the starter, feed it 1 cup of unbleached bread flour and ½ cup of filtered water about once a week going forward.

NOTE: Several variables will affect how a starter performs: temperature, humidity, and brand and type of flour. No baker can tell you exactly how to make your starter perform best. Experimentation and experience will be your greatest teachers. Try different combinations of variables to find what works best in your kitchen.

King Arthur Flour offers a staffed hotline for answers about starters and bread baking 855-371-BAKE (2253) or online at kingarthurflour.com.

Bread-baking tips from the pros

Jeff Cleary began baking bread in Pennsylvania where he ran his first bakery out of an old train station at the age of 15. In Denver, he saw a need for good breads in the growing restaurant scene and launched Grateful Bread to be the top choice of the city’s best chefs, before adding a retail component.

“With cooking, you can improvise and substitute ingredients, change things on the fly,” said Cleary. “Baking is formula-based, and if you alter the formula it usually doesn’t work out. It’s rare to get bread right the first time you try, and it takes years to develop a feel for all the variables and how they work together.”

Cleary’s top tips for home bakers:

• Use a kitchen scale vs. measuring cups for true accuracy

• Take notes when you bake so you can repeat successful results

• Patience! Good baking can’t be rushed

• Practice, practice, practice

• High altitude has greater impact on quick breads like banana bread, but you may need to increase water, reduce yeast and/or shorten proofing time when baking breads in Colorado.

Steve Redzikowski is the chef/owner of Denver restaurants Acorn and Brider and Boulder’s Oak at Fourteenth, and is a 2017 finalist for the prestigious James Beard Foundation Award for Best Chef Southwest region. Redzikowski chose Grateful Bread’s country sourdough to serve at Acorn as table bread, diced and toasted in a summer tomato panzanella salad as well as savory bread puddings served with chicken.

“Bread is one of the hardest things to get right because of all the little touches in the process,” said Redzikowski. “It’s simple in that it’s just flour, water and a starter or yeast. Seems like something with so few ingredients should be easy, but it’s not!

“I’m from New York, and I love a good golden brown crusty sourdough that doesn’t look like it came out of a machine. Everyone eats with their eyes first.”

Redzikowski’s tips for home bakers:

• Get good at just a few breads; don’t try to make them all at once

• The temperature in your kitchen will impact proofing time; watch the dough

Grateful Bread Company’s San Francisco Style Sourdough

Ingredients

• 2 pounds, 4¼ ounces King Arthur Bread Flour
• 22 ounces water
• 10¾ ounces Ripe Sourdough Starter (can order from King Arthur)
• Weigh out, and keep 1 ounce sea salt or kosher salt separate

Equipment

• Stand mixer with a dough hook
• Cast iron pan
• Bread-proofing basket (often called a banneton)
• Bread peel
• Baking stone
• Razor blade

Directions
Mix the bread flour, water and sourdough starter, ideally using a stand mixer with a dough hook, for 2 minutes. Leave the mixing bowl and hook on the mixer and cover the bowl with plastic wrap; let rest for 30 minutes. (This process is called autolyse, which allows the water to hydrate the flour and the enzymes to break down the flour’s proteins.)

Add the salt and mix on low for 2 minutes, then increase to medium speed for another 2 minutes. Remove the bowl and hook from the mixer, leave the dough in the mixing bowl, and cover with plastic wrap. Rest for 20 minutes.

Take the dough out of the bowl and place on a floured surface. Turn the dough in on itself a few times until it forms a ball (don’t overwork). Place the dough back in the mixing bowl and cover, set a timer for 20 minutes, then repeat twice for a total of three turns and two rests.

Place dough back in the mixing bowl to rest for about 2 hours. (This is called bulk rest.) Divide the dough into two 2-pound pieces and shape into a boule (ball-like shape).

Place in a lightly dusted bread proofing basket (banneton) and proof (let the dough rise) for about 12 hours. It may take several attempts to find the best place for sourdough to proof.

If using a thick baking stone, set oven temperature to 450 degrees. With a thinner baking stone, set to 500 degrees. (Home ovens are all slightly different, so finding just the right temp may take a few tries.)

Preheat a cast iron pan on a lower rack in the oven until it’s hot. Just before loading the dough into the oven, toss 3 or 4 ice cubes in the pan to create steam. This will prevent the dough from forming a crust immediately, and allow it to expand while baking.

Lightly dust a wooden bread or pizza peel and turn the sourdough boule out of its basket onto the peel. With a razor blade, slash the top of the boule several times and slip onto the baking stone.

A 2-pound loaf will take about 45 minutes to bake. When it reaches the color you like, remove with the flour-dusted peel and cool before slicing.

As the Colorado Rockies season winds down, many fans are missing a favorite Coors Field character, a figure as familiar as Dinger and welcoming as a seventh-inning stretch: Captain Earthman.

An ER visit revealing two grade-IV glioblastoma multiforme (GBM) brain tumors cut short beer vendor Brent Doeden’s season in the stands, which would’ve run through the team’s final home game Oct. 2. His last appearance at Coors field was Aug. 31.

Becky Scharfenberg thought her husband was having a stroke when he began saying strange things that day. “Things that were stranger than usual for him, because he often says some pretty strange things!” Scharfenberg joked from the waiting room of Good Samaritan Medical Center, where Doeden was undergoing a follow-up biopsy a week after his diagnosis.

An IT professional at Spinnaker Support, Scharfenberg is the tech savvy one of the two, and she’s handling all communications right now. She shared the troubling news on Facebook and launched Caringbridge.org and GoFundMe accounts to give well-wishers a way to send good thoughts and contributions.

Hundreds have already done so. “The outpouring of love has been amazing. I’m printing out the messages for Earthman to read,” Sharfenberg said.

The GoFundMe she initially set with a goal of $10,000 has surpassed that amount and been upped to $25,000. “I would like to make sure I can take Earthman to any concert he would like to attend, whether it is here in Denver or in another city,” Scharfenberg, his wife of 28 years, posted on her Facebook page.

Taunaz Tavern, in the couple’s hometown of Arvada, at 10480 Ralston Road, is hosting a silent auction and bake sale on Sunday, Sept. 25 from 2-6 p.m. Michael Fruitman, owner of Mike’s Stadium Sportscards in Aurora, donated four autographed 8-by-10 photos of Denver Nuggets and Broncos players for the cause.

“I first met Captain Earthman in 1988 when I started working security at concerts,” Fruitman said. “He’s one of the more colorful characters, and someone who has outlasted just about everyone in this work.”

The couple would like to do some traveling after Doeden’s planned six-week chemotherapy and radiation treatments and attend as many concerts as possible. Earthman is a “music maniac” who has collected thousands of classic rock and blues vinyl records over the years, Sharfenberg said.

“He’s not feeling any pain or symptoms other than being a little tired and having some speech issues. The doctor said the fact he’s in such great shape from all the stair climbing is in his favor.” Scharfenberg said. They’ve been told the location of the tumors make them inoperable, but the hope is that treatment will prevent them from growing.

At age 60, this was Doeden’s 21st season hustling up and down the steps at Coors Field, lately in sections 150-151, with a 60-pound load of ice cold beer and a tube of yard-long licorice. The wiry denizen of Denver area sports and entertainment venues has made a career out of amusing fans with his wacky outfits and fuzzy grey Fu Manchu mustache since 1986.

Earthman’s only other interruption vending at Coors Field since its opening came in 2013 when a disagreement with Aramark, the company that runs concessions, led to his early departure. “That was a really rough time,” said Scharfenberg. “He loves what he does and loves the people he serves. He’s watched kids grow up at Coors Field. Kids he used to handcuff with Red Vines would get a kick out of buying their first ballpark beer from him when they turned 21.”

Much to the satisfaction of season ticket-holders who called for his return, opening day 2014 saw a happy Earthman back on the job.

He told The Denver Post’s William Porter in a 2012 article how he acquired his moniker as a teenager, “We’d be hanging out doing dumb things, I’d used to say, ‘If it’s from the Earth, man, I’ll do it.’ That’s where it began.”

Captain Earthman’s GoFundMe: https://www.gofundme.com/cptearthman

Caringbridge: www.caringbridge.org/visit/earthman

Silent auction and bake sale in support of Captain Earthman at Taunaz Tavern, 10480 Ralston Road in Arvada, from 2-6 p.m. Sunday, Sept. 25.