A Communion of Discovery

Dedicated to Estella Leopold, conservationist.*

Melting ice washed gravels down,
burying the mammoth—hiding it through the ages.
And I found a rock at its grave, 
with secrets deep inside.
I broke it, crushed it, sifted it;
dissolved it in a beaker, 
spun it by a centrifuge, 
and peeled back layers of time.

Now only hidden fossils remain:
Pollen grains and mossy spores—
once floating on an Ice Age breeze.

Now in that communion of discovery
these small fossils yield
the deepest glimpse through time
to the world before we came, and warn
of a future we must face—
while just outside forests change, 
species die,
and life recedes.

By Steven Wade Veatch

An imagined scene of the Ice Age mammoth
found at the Florissant Fossil Beds created
by the author using AI.

*Estella Leopold assisted me in the actual paleontological research mentioned in this poem. A sediment layer associated with the burial site of a Columbian Mammoth at the Florissant Fossil Beds National Monument was found to contain Ice Age pollen and spores. This research resulted in a paper presented at the Geological Society of America in Denver in 2013. Estella was one of the original “Defenders of Florissant” and was instrumental in the Florissant Fossil Beds in becoming a national monument. Estella is the daughter of Aldo Leopold, who wrote the Sand County Almanac. Estella passed away February 25, 2024. She was 97 years old. 

Note: this poem is an expanded version of an earlier poem by the author entitled "Mammoth." 

Time in Florissant

By Steven Wade Veatch

The valley is the way it should be,
formed over an endless flow of time.
Volcanoes erupted:
        Mudflows 
                  rushed  
                                  downhill
mixing rocks, boulders, and soil—knocking down trees, 
tossing them like twigs, snapping them apart, 
and burying them. Time turned trees into stone. 
From this destruction a lake formed.
Water skippers danced on its surface, 
caddis flies landed on nearby willows,
and fish lurked in its depths.

Consider the fossil insects and plants trapped 
in layers of time; and a sleeping mammoth
at rest on a layer of lost pollen, covered 
with Ice Age gravels. 

A few pine trees, marked by the Ute people, 
show this was once their home.

An old homestead sits by Grape Creek, 
its timbers whisper the past of struggling settlers.

This land, where life has stretched 
across time, from past to present, 
magnifies how short time is for me, 
and just when I learn how to live, 

it’s over. 

Petrified redwood “Trio” at the Florissant Fossil Beds. Original artwork by Charles Frizzell.

Grape Creek

 Florissant, Colorado

 

Rippling over small round rocks
in the chilled afternoon light
of Spring’s sunshine
the cold creek flows—
core of everything.
 
It exists against the odds
surrounded by green grass
lush from winter snows.
 
Twisting and turning like ribbon
it whorls into wonder where
birds splash, dip, flick, and flutter.
In casual poses, they gossip gamely
delivering their news.
 
The water moves beyond the birds
free across acres of time, and
releases me from disfiguring cities
and heaps of numbing concrete.

This poem first appeared in Colorado Life.

Grape Creek flowing through the
Florissant Fossil Beds National
Monument. Photo by S. W. Veatch

Homestead

By Steven Wade Veatch

Follow the trail 
to the homestead
where Grape Creek glitters
and the green grass 
waves in the wind.
A robin sits on last year’s stem
while a dragonfly buzzes by.

Here I sense the spirit 
of the pioneers who settled 
this land. Where 
is that spirit now?
I will follow their trail.

The Hornbek Homestead,
Florissant Fossil Beds National Monument, Colorado.
Photo by S. W. Veatch.