Destination: Pikes Peak: Backyard Observations by Atwood Cutting

by Atwood Cutting (Photographer)

At an elevation of 14115 feet, Pikes Peak is the southernmost of Colorado's famous "Fourteeners." The monolith of rare pink granite juts up out of the Front Range of the Rockies seven miles west of Colorado Springs. A natural "weather maker," its unmatched profile protects the city from prevailing winds, and the crags often seem to reach up to snag the rain or snow-soaked clouds and hold them at bay. Mesmerized by the way the sun played on and over the mountain-particularly at dawn and dusk- I quickly fell into a love affair with "America's Mountain." This book is my tribute to Colorado, to Pikes Peak, and to the skies above the Front Range.

50 pages, Paperback

Published April 17, 2022

About the author

Atwood Cutting is the daughter of Tim and Kate Peters, pioneers in Alaska during the 1970s and '80s. That was before there were cellphones, four-wheelers, or solar panels. It took years for electricity and water to come.

The Peters family left the homestead in 1988, when Atwood was nine. Her mom said they'd "seen the elephant" up close, and it wasn't worth it to stay. After that, Atwood listened intently as her mother told the stories she had stored up from all those days back on that mountaintop. Also, it helps that Kate Peters kept a journal and pretty-much made a photographic record of life out there in the bush.

Atwood puts two and two together, and a new American saga is born!