The Calm Before the Storm — A Couple of Days in Denver

The Calm Before the Storm — A Couple of Days in Denver

There's a particular kind of itch you get the day before a big trip properly begins. The gear's checked, the bags are packed, and the storms I'd flown all this way to chase were still a few days off, sulking somewhere out over the Plains and biding their time. So rather than pace the hotel room and refresh the forecast for the hundredth time, I did the only sensible thing — grabbed the camera, laced up my boots, and gave myself a couple of days to warm up. Shake off the jet lag, get the eye working again, and remember which way round the Hasselblad goes.

Denver, it turns out, is a wonderful place to do exactly that.

RiNo — coffee, concrete and colour

I started where I always seem to start in a new city: wandering. The River North district — RiNo to anyone who actually lives here — is a tangle of old industrial blocks, loading bays and back alleys, and almost every inch of it has been painted. I'm not going to start reeling off artists' names, partly because half the work is unsigned and partly because that's not really the point. The point is the feeling of the place. Faded brick, rusting downpipes, a tatty green telegraph pole with a squirrel halfway up it, and then — splashed across all of it — these enormous, gorgeous, slightly unhinged murals. Snarling cartoon creatures, wild lettering, and one extraordinary woman's face glowing in the morning sun, teal hair tumbling down weathered cinder block, the light cutting a hard diagonal right across her cheek. I stood there far longer than I'd meant to.

When the caffeine levels dipped, I ducked into Crema Coffee House on Larimer Street — a proper grungy-cute little spot, exactly the sort of place you hope to find in a neighbourhood like this. The coffee was genuinely excellent and the breakfast even better. If you ever find yourself wandering the RiNo walls, do yourself a favour and start the morning here.

Union Station — a cathedral for trains

From the scruffy romance of RiNo to something altogether more polished. Denver's Union Station is a beauty, but it was the platforms out the back that really got me. There's this vast white canopy stretched over the tracks like a great billowing sail, the steelwork curving and arching overhead, and a perfect oval of blue Colorado sky punched out of the middle of it. I planted myself dead centre between Track 4 and Track 5 and just let the symmetry do the work — the tracks running away to a vanishing point, the city rising on one side, an old brick water tower poking up on the other. Architecture photography is usually patience and geometry, and this was a gift of both.

Naturally, more coffee was required, and Snooze did the honours. Denver clearly takes its coffee seriously, and who am I to argue.

A chance find — a hundred years of motorcars

This is the bit I love about travelling with a camera: the things you don't plan. Drifting back across town I stumbled, more or less by accident, onto a car show being held at Lincoln Tech — and what a thing to fall into. A century of motoring, more or less, lined up within their workshops. But it wasn't the bodywork that pulled me in; it was the interiors. Climbing in close on the dashboards, I was completely lost — banks of chrome-rimmed dials, a speedo optimistically marked all the way up to 160, a polished gear lever catching the light, that deep glossy lacquer reflecting the room back at itself. There's a craftsmanship in those old cabins that speaks to anyone who works with their hands. 

Out to Limon — the first taste of the big sky

Then, finally, a proper drive east to Limon — out where Denver lets go of you and the Great Plains take over. This was my trial run, a chance to feel the rhythm of being out under those enormous skies before the real chasing kicks off. And the sky did not disappoint. A great brooding cell sat right out on the horizon, dragging grey curtains of rain down to the earth, the whole structure spreading out overhead while a thin gold seam of clear sky glowed away to the right. A lonely dirt track ran straight into the heart of it. I stood by the car for a long while, just watching it breathe. If this was the warm-up, the main event is going to be something else entirely.

Dawn at Roxborough

I saved the best light for last. An early — early — start got me out to Roxborough State Park just south-west of the city as the sun was coming up. If you don't know it, picture great fins of red sandstone tilted up out of the ground at a mad angle, the same fiery rock you'll find at Red Rocks and Garden of the Gods, but quieter and far less crowded. As the first light hit, the whole ridge lit up like it had been switched on from inside — molten orange against the cool green of the foothills and the soft layered hills running away behind. Bone quiet apart from the birds. Worth every minute of lost sleep.

Warm-up done

And that was it — a couple of days, a city explored, the eye well and truly back in. Gritty alley art and gleaming station steel, chrome dashboards and brooding storm cells, and a red rock dawn to round it all off. Not a bad way to shake off the flight.

Now for the real thing. The storms are waiting.