Little Gate on the Prairie

_DSC8697-Editclick to enlarge

Much of the time spent photographing the high plains area in Northern Colorado is spent on shooting the ‘Big’ stuff, things like the mountain ranges from a plains viewpoint or huge sweeping vistas of rolling hills and grasslands, but like any other place you’ve been to, the details are what give it it’s personality. That personality is more often than not created by the folks that live here and a lot of that personality is highlighted by the ingenuity and common sense details that they have established. This little gate for instance is located quite some distance from any habitation and appears to have been put there so one can cross the fence without ripping the bottom out of their jeans. Straddling the fence, holding the top wire down, keeping the barbs out of your hands, trying to maintain some dignity while you teeter back and forth if your legs are too short or worse, you get the barb stuck in the seam of your pants and you can’t let the wire go because it took too much pressure to hold it down so you could swing your leg over, and now you’re stuck, all of these things are eliminated by this simple little gate. So is crawling under the bottom wire, our rattlesnakes prefer that you use the gate also. The by-product of this useful bit of convenience is a very cool bit of western charm. There must have been ladies living near here, and as they have the same type of difficulty crossing fences that fellows do, but not liking to look undignified even more than the menfolk, they may be a bit quicker on suggesting solutions to some of the smaller inconveniences we deal with out here. However it came to be here there is no denying the extra character it imparts to an already character saturated western scene.