The summer of 2006, the Shadow Creek Ranch wanted to restore old ditch systems in their highlands and asked the other ranchers int he Blue River Valley who was the best person for the job. Hands down, they said the irrigation master was my father, Peter Leonard. We spent June in a small cabin, perched in the forest above the Lazy Shamrock Ranch, with a view of the hayside and Green Mountain Reservoir beyond. Dad would go out every day with a ditcher and shovel and pull lines of water across fields, broadening the flood irrigation across fields established nearly a century ago by homesteaders. I would walk around the upper forests that flourished along the south facing, moist from snow melting from Elliot Ridge in the Eagle’s Nest wilderness.

The huge aspen bore scars from many years of elk forage in this slope that gently rolled down to the ditches below. There was one hollow in particular that I was drawn back repeatedly during our stay. Huge tangled piles of fallen trees, carried and stacked by the flow of time. One evening, a young elk got entangled and bugled for hours as the evening fell to dusk. A mournful cry echoing through the highlands.

Oil & pencil on card – created en plein air at the Shadow Creek Ranch, Colorado – each roughly 5″ x 8″