Adventuring - The Bear Creek Commentaries

--- Door to door ---

Coyote and I have been doing volunteer work for a person who is running for governor in Colorado. We like him because he seems to be serious about improving life for the citizen instead of packing wealthy peoples' pockets with more money.

We're knocking on doors. It provides another learning experience. Most folks in this area are not at home on Saturdays (the time that we are out knocking on doors) but the people we catch at home have consistently been friendly and interesting.

And it's not just the people we meet at their homes. We talked a while to an elderly lady at the Baha'i Center. The people we do see are mostly on the streets with friends or their dogs.

The most disturbing thing is the number of homeless people in a neighborhood where so many houses are unoccupied. The irony is painful.

We encounter homeless folks selling the Denver Voice, a paper published specifically to provide an income for homeless people (https://www.denvervoice.org). These people will talk to you if you're interested and I've never been asked for a donation. I donate anyway. They're good sources for what's going on in the area.

Our beat is the area called "Cap Hill'. It's near the Capital and is an old/new part of town, providing an interesting mix of residential architecture. Modern apartments have grown up among mill village houses and larger residences that have been converted into duplexes, triplexes....

The people in that area also seem to like gardening. This time of year it's a riot of color.

This time of year is also hot. There are some big differences between this kind of work and hiking. On the trail, I stop often to take pictures, make measurements, take notes, or just rest and hydrate. You can't just sit down in someones yard. So, my part in this campaign is coming to an end. The primary is coming up, anyway.

It's interesting that Colorado is opening the primary to independents. An individual can only vote for one party, but they don't have to commit to that party. I wonder how that will affect the practice of voting for the "wrong person" in a primary to sabotage the party, a common practice in the Southeast.