Mountain Ranches of Western Colorado

“The ranches where Michael Crouser so affectionately captures these scenes tell a story of staying power, of joy in the beauty of the world, of gratitude for the working animals—the dogs and the horses—of midwifery and husbandry, of seeing the seasons through. . . . It is a pleasure to be brought into this out-of-the-way part of the world with such understated passion.”
—Gretel Ehrlich, from the foreword

We have a special room set aside in the Main House at Buffalo Peaks Ranch. Named after the founder of the ranch, the Marie Guiraud Ranching Library will house books on the history of ranching, along with volumes on ranching practices worldwide. We’re excited to add Michael Crouser’s new book, Mountain Ranch to our always growing collection!

The mountain ranches of western Colorado preserve a way of life that has nearly vanished from the American scene. Families who have lived on the same land for five or six generations raise cattle much as their ancestors did, following an annual cycle of breeding, birthing, branding, grazing, and selling livestock. Michael Crouser spent more than a decade (2006–2016) photographing family cattle ranches in Colorado, intrigued “not by the ways their lives are changing but by the way they have stayed the same.” He was, he says, “most interested in the traditional elements of these traditional lives, . . . what they call ‘cowboying.’”

Mountain Ranch’s duotone images capture the raw and basic elements of a hard and basic life.

For more on Michael Crouser’s work, be sure to visit his website. We hope you enjoy this book trailer on Mountain Ranch as much as we do!

Michael Crouser will be discussing and signing copies of his new book at Denver’s Tattered Cover Book Store (Colfax Avenue Store) on Monday, August 21st, 7pm.

Click here for more information!

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Poetry & Place at Buffalo Peaks Ranch

This workshop will focus on the significance of place in poetry. Place may be defined as a geographical location, an internal state, or perhaps a poetic meeting of the two. The workshop will center around how to structure and develop poems and the creative process that is involved. Jodie will share how she began writing poetry, as well as what writing habits have helped her writing process. She will go into what structure she uses when starting to write a piece, and use her own poetry as well as celebrated poets as examples.

Poetry and Place with Jodie Hollander

Saturday, August 5th, 10am to 4pm,  $50 class fee

CLICK HERE TO REGISTER

Jodie Hollander was raised in a family of classical musicians. Her work has been published in journals such as The Poetry Review, PN Review, The Dark Horse, The Rialto, Verse Daily, The New Criterion, The Manchester Review, Australia’s Best Poems of 2011, and Australia’s Best Poems of 2015. Her debut pamphlet, The Humane Society, was released with tall-lighthouse (London) in 2012; her full-length collection, My Dark Horses, was just published by Liverpool University Press. Hollander is the recipient of a Fulbright Fellowship in South Africa, a National Endowment for the Humanities Grant in Italy and is currently the editor for Garo, the arts journal of the Rocky Mountain Land Library.

Jodie Hollander’s My Dark Horses on display in the UK!

Getting to Know the Headwaters

At first glance, South Park appears to be a never-ending expanse of shortgrass prairie. But the waters of this high mountain grassland are rich and varied.

We are thrilled to have Denise Culver back this summer to share so much of what she has learned about wetland plants, after a lifetime spent in the field. We will amble along the banks of South Park’s streams (including the South Platte River), and explore the ranch’s fen, a very special peatland environment with many globally rare plants. Please join us!

WETLAND PLANTS OF SOUTH PARK

Saturday, August 5th, 10am to 4pm,  $50 class fee

CLICK HERE TO REGISTER

Fen plants tend to be tiny. Here’s Denise, last year, leaning in to identify a grass.

Denise Culver is a botanist & ecologist with the Colorado Natural Heritage Program. She has been happily mucking across Colorado’s wetlands for over 20 years. Denise is also the co-author of the wonderfully comprehensive Field Guide to Colorado’s Wetland Plants.

Buffalo Peaks Ranch

 

Foraging Across the Ranch: a Land Art Workshop

Foraging Across the Land: a two-day Workshop with Rik Sargent

Join us and be a part of an immersive, on-site creation at Buffalo Peaks Ranch. Accompanied by artist and sculptor Rik Sargent, we will collaborate on a yet-to-be-determined story inspired by the ranch, the surrounding land, and the South Platte River, whose flow has always defined the story of this historic high mountain ranch.

The emerging  narrative will then be assembled into a landscape piece, using the ranch’s materials to help tell a story of land and people, South Park and beyond.

Spend a weekend (July 29-30) at the Ranch camping, foraging, and collaborating on a project that will become part of Buffalo Peaks Ranch’s always changing, always evolving story!

Saturday, July 29th thru Sunday July 30th, $100 class fee

CLICK HERE TO REGISTER!

At the beginning of the workshop weekend we’ll start with the “local” material:

Like any working ranch, Buffalo Peaks Ranch has accumulated what some might think of as refuse, but what others see as artifacts of shape, texture, color, and design.

Not to mention, artifacts of work, daily lives and struggle.

And then, there’s always wire, lots of wire!

Barbed and baling wire aplenty.

With all the local elements in place, and the landscape as our guide, who knows what will be created at Buffalo Peaks Ranch on July 29-30th??

Rik Sargent has created incredible pieces of public art equally emphasizing the sculpture itself and the environment it rests in. His voice has lent wonderful insight around the Land Library’s table, and now up at Buffalo Peaks Ranch.

For more on Rik Sargent, and his work, be sure to visit his website!

Cyanotype Impressions of a High Mountain Ranch

In the Footsteps of Anna Atkins: Simple Photographic Botanical Illustration

a day-long workshop with Jacqueline Webster

In 1843, British author and botanist Anna Atkins published the first book illustrated with photography, called British Algae: Cyanotype Impressions. Using a simple iron-based photographic process invented by Sir John Herschel, Atkins made beautiful, simple blue print photograms of specimens with handwritten identification labels that she self-published in three volumes.

Buffalo Peaks Ranch

Join photographer Jacqueline Webster for a day of creating your own cyanotype botanical illustrations using the same process Atkins employed nearly 175 years ago. We’ll start the day learning the basics and history of the cyanotype process, then move on to some basics of plant identification and collection. Finally we’ll work on creating our own photographic records of the flora found onsite at Buffalo Peaks Ranch.

Saturday, July 29th, 10am to 4pm,  $50 class fee

CLICK HERE TO REGISTER!

The Rocky Mountain Land Library is excited to offer this workshops at a 20% discount (just use Discount Code: PHOTO20 when you register)!

Buffalo Peaks Ranch, by the Lambing Barn

Jacqueline Webster is a photographer and arts educator who has been working in historic photographic processes for more than 30 years. She has shown her work at galleries and festivals around the country, and is currently a faculty member at the Art Students League of Denver.

Jacqueline Webster, Three Silos, cyanotype.

 

For more on Jacqueline Webster, be sure to visit her website!

And for much more on the pioneering work of Anna Atkins, this article in The Guardian is a good place to start!

Google doodle on the occasion of Anna Atkins’ 216th birthday

How Can You Write a Passage that Reads like a River?

Join us on the banks of the South Platte River for Buffalo Peaks Ranch’s second writers workshop in collaboration with Lighthouse Writers Workshop!

Nature in Ekphrasis with Courtney Morgan

Ekphrasis is a description or depiction of another work of art—capturing a painting in a poem, for example. In this workshop we’ll take this technique and apply it directly to the art surrounding us in nature. How do we write a passage that reads like a river? What about a stone? Using the landscape around us as a jumping off point, we’ll employ the environment as an influence on both the subject and the form of our writing (what we write about, and also how we write it). We’ll compose responses/reflections to the world around us—fiction, poetry, essays—moving across the landscape and writing a conversation with and through it.

Courtney E. Morgan received her MFA from the University of Colorado, Boulder, where she has also taught creative writing workshops for five years. Her collection of stories, The Seven Autopsies of Nora Hanneman, was a semifinalist for the FC2 Ronald Sukenick Innovative Fiction Prize and is forthcoming from FC2 Press in Spring 2017. Her writing has also been published in Pleiades, The Red Anthology, American Book Review, and others. She is a recipient of the Thompson Award for Western American Writing, and was longlisted for the Diana Woods Memorial Award at Lunch Ticket and Glimmer Train’s Short Story Award for New Fiction. Courtney is the founder and managing editor of The Thought Erotic, a journal on sexuality and gender. She currently lives in Denver with her son and is working on her next novel.

We are pleased to work with Lighthouse Writers Workshop in bringing Courtney Morgan to Buffalo Peaks Ranch!

Saturday, July 22nd, 10am to 4pm,  $50 class fee

CLICK HERE TO REGISTER

Middle Fork of the South Platte River, Buffalo Peaks Ranch

Pack your Camera, the Ranch Awaits

With three photography workshops in July, we are celebrating by offering a 20% discount on each class. Read on!

The Rocky Mountain Land Library owes a debt to so many photographers over the past many years. With great insight and craft, they’ve shown the world what a unique place Buffalo Peaks Ranch is. This growing body of work has astounded us, from Michael Ciaglo’s stunning New York Times image:

to Larry Glass’ quiet mist-filled morning:

and Sarah McLaughlin’s other-worldly photo at dawn:

No matter the time of day, Buffalo Peaks Ranch has inspired so many excellent photographs. This July, the Land Library will be hosting these Photography/storytelling workshops, taught by three outstanding artists.

To celebrate the great art of Photography (and the way it has always helped us to tell our own individual story), The Rocky Mountain Land Library is excited to offer each of these workshops at a 20% discount (just use Discount Code: PHOTO20 when you register)!

Storytelling with Image and Text with Andrew Beckham

“Andrew Beckham is a lot of things, but I would consider him a visual poet, using language both written and visual to construct nuanced work that is compelling, fragile, and poignant.” — Aline Smithson, Lenscratch

Join photographer and author Andrew Beckham for a day of literary and visual exploration. While the worlds of literature and visual art have traditionally been seen as discrete disciplines, Mr. Beckham’s dynamic approach to storytelling has long sought to bring text and image together as a unified aesthetic whole. This workshop will provide a wealth of ideas and approaches for combining your own text and image ideas, with time in the field to explore, photograph, write, and contemplate how our own stories arise from experiences in the natural world.

Saturday, July 8th, 10am to 4pm,  $50 class fee

CLICK HERE TO REGISTER

This image represents all that is exciting and new yet repetitive and grueling.  I spent last summer commercial salmon fishing with some good friends in Southwest Bristol Bay, Alaska.  Nushagak Point to be exact….This image is a reminder of how bad things can be in the most exciting times of life. — Terry Ratzlaff

Documentary Photography, Developing Long Form Personal Narratives with Terry Ratzlaff

This photography workshop will explore how to construct a long form narrative from inception to execution. From brainstorming, researching and starting something new, to progressing through the struggles and resistance one might find while working on a project that might be stressful, difficult or controversial. Terry will provides tips and methods on facing resistance and criticism, and how to find one’s voice while dealing with these situations. Terry Ratzlaff is a photographer and multimedia artist. His photography draws inspiration from brief encounters with people and situations that are overlooked by others or which are disapproved of as unsafe or uncomfortable. In his work, Terry Ratzlaff hopes to bring more attention to the overlooked.

Saturday, July 15th, 10:00am to 4:00pm, $50 class fee

CLICK HERE TO REGISTER

In the Footsteps on Anna Atkins: Simple Photographic Botanical Illustration with Jacqueline Webster

In 1843, British author and botanist Anna Atkins published the first book illustrated with photography, called British Algae: Cyanotype Impressions. Using a simple iron-based photographic process invented by Sir John Herschel, Atkins made beautiful, simple blue print photograms of specimens with handwritten identification labels that she selfpublished in three volumes. Join photographer Jacqueline Webster for a day of creating your own cyanotype botanical illustrations using the same process Atkins used nearly 175 years ago. We’ll start the day learning the basics and history of the cyanotype process, then move on to some basics of plant identification and collection. Finally we’ll work on creating our own photographic records of the flora found onsite at Buffalo Peaks Ranch.

Saturday, July 29th, 10:00am to 4:00pm, $50 class fee

CLICK HERE TO REGISTER

Remember to use Discount Code: PHOTO20 when you register for any of these workshops!

photo by Berry Oliver