I came as a young man, refugee from the plains.

Looking for higher ground, where the sun shines through the rain.

The mountain folks & the old cowpokes found peace of mind.

I guess loving Mother Nature makes you naturally kind.

Colorado, Everywhere I go, Im in your shadow and you're calling to me.

Colorado, the sun melts the snow and makes the the river flow to the sea.

These high plains, these short grass prairies, these wide open spaces are the eastern third of the state of Colorado.

This is where the West begins.

This is our home on the range.

In this way came the buffalo tracks.

The buffalo tracks that we see that everywhere we see.

Indian people still have a very, very strong spiritual belief in the Buffalo.

They believe that God Himself, the creator, whatever you call him in Indian language, that's who put that buffalo here.

The traditional Indian people don't subscribe to the theory that they got here by coming across the Aleutian Straits, as some historians will say.

You know, the the land mass that came from Mongolia, all that business.

You talk to old traditional Indians, they say, I don't know what they're talking about.

We're here because creator put us here, and he also put the buffalo here to take care of us.

Buffalo is it's backbone of civilization here.

It's just very majestic and very powerful.

And it's very hard to describe if you haven't seen it, because it's first of all, it's it looks almost prehistoric.

Well, they are a magnificent humped back animal.

Thick horns coming out of the side of their heads, very shaggy on the head and shoulders, almost a lion like mane that fades back to the tail end of the animal.

They're an animal that's completely suited for the wild.

They really never stop moving 24 hours a day.

They will cover this entire ranch at least once a week.

And you'll you'll never know where they're going to be from one day to the next.

They spend a great deal of time eating.

They'll seek out water at least about once a day, and the rest of the time they're they're just moving.

Many of the buffalo were killed during the days when hides were cheap, when the trains came across the country and people killed them just for fun or a dollar a hide.

You know, the hide hunters.

But the herds are growing again.

And many of the Plains people now have their own tribal herds.

In the case of our tribe, the Northern Cheyenne, we have about 200 buffalo in our tribe.

The crow have a large one that I think they have about 350 or 400 buffalo.

They use them for ceremonial purposes.

But if the if the if they get beyond the point where they actually need them for their own use, more than likely they will start selling them or raising them for commercial purposes.

I'm a cow person, I guess really myself, as opposed to being a Buffalo person, but buffalo are much more difficult to deal with.

It can jump six foot from a standing position.

That's why they have to have such high fences.

and there isn't a fence made.

That's anything more than a suggestion to a buffalo.

If they want to go to Chicago, they're gone.

That's all there is to it.

And they're going to tear up everything in between here and there while they go about it.

So I'm sure there are some some big buffalo ranches that probably make a go of it and probably have certain ways of doing it, but it ain't nothing I'd care to be around.

I don't mind shooting Buffalo, but I sure don't like being around them.

Well, anybody who handles Buffalo can tell you that they can tear up things like road graders.

We've got a saying that we can herd buffalo anyplace they want to go.

You don't tend to go around things.

They go right over top of them.

I had a bull take me through a gate one day, and I got some new front teeth out of the deal, and he ran right over the top of me and dismantled the gate at the same time, Every time you go to work them, they just lose their minds right now and go crashing into things and go everywhere.

A dead run.

And I've been hit by a buffalo on a motorcycle before.

That's now.

We now have faster motorcycles.

I've been hit by a buffalo on horseback before, and so we do a better job of keeping our distance with them.

It makes you realize that after you've been around working Buffalo a little bit, it makes you realize that anybody that runs cattle is a puss.

That's all there is to it.

There's no difference between the term bison and buffalo.

They are the same animal.

Genetically, a buffalo is bison.

Bison.

If you ask people on the street in downtown Denver, if they know what a bison is, you know, half of them might say, a what?

If you ask them what the buffalo is, they're going to know.

There used to be 60 head that neighbored up again.

Me, they sold them off.

I guess Ted Turner and Jane Fonda bought them.

So they went down in New Mexico some damn place.

And I'll tell you what, I was glad to see him leave.

Those are wild animals.

There's no way you can domesticate a buffalo.

And there's no such thing as a tame Buffalo.

They are a wild animal.

And there's countless gorings at the state parks and at Yellowstone National Parks.

People will try to walk up to a buffalo and get their picture taken, and they get gored because they're a wild animal.

You wouldn't walk up and try to get your picture taken with a grizzly bear or a rhinoceros in the zoo, but people, for some reason, seem to think that they can do that with the bison, and they're truly a wild animal.

But all the plains people, the buffalo was not only the supermarket, i.e.

everything they got came from the buffalo, whether it was meat or utensils or use of bones or hides or so on.

But it also had a very strong spiritual significance.

And that's why the buffalo skull is used in what they call the altar.

In the sun dances, almost every possible part was used for something, and I believe that that is something that our company is trying to do.

Also, we obviously use all the meat.

The buffalo skulls are used for decorations.

We make the leather into many different products, including footwear, boots, purses, briefcases, wallets.

We also are trying to use every part of the buffalo that we that we possibly can.

I'm weaving and I'm weaving Buffalo hand spun buffalo wool into a rug here.

The buffalo especially is very close to me because I'm kind of probably in love with it.

Every evening as the sun goes down, they get very playful.

You'll see them running and playing, butting heads, chasing each other.

You would have to call that clearly their favorite time of day.

It really makes me think back of the old days when there were millions of them, and I always wish that I if there was some way to go back, I would love to see that the the millions and millions of head that used to roam free on the plains.

If buffalo could talk, they would very simply say, if you'll just leave us alone.

We'll get along just fine.

I meant that to be short and sweet like that, because that is the nature of the animal.

If we were to walk away from this ranch, or if people were to walk completely away from Yellowstone National Park, the buffalo would get along just great without us.

Oh, give me a home where the buffalo roam and the deer and the antelope play.

Where seldom is heard... It's part of our heritage.

A piece of our past.

The bison, the Longhorn, the Mustang.

But today, many more animals have made the range of eastern Colorado their new home.

This is home on the range for the Switzers, whose punny sign brings the desired double take.

Chris Switzer has a new book out on Spinning Yarn.

I wrote a lot of articles for llamas magazine for about six years, and I did a column, and so I put that information together and added to it, updated it, and it's all in a book called Spinning Llama and Alpaca.

I do teaching and of course, writing.

I did go back to CSU to get my art degree, a BFA in weaving.

Phil Switzer spends his own kinds of yarn and manages this ranch of theirs.

Yeah, it's a wonderful.

We don't have the the work of, say, cattle or major livestock.

But here on this grassy hillside above Estes Park, they do have alpacas.

Dozens of them, in fact, same family as the llamas, about two thirds the size, about 50% more wool and their wool is very soft, warm, lightweight.

A joy to spin.

So when you're making woven garments or knitting or something like that, you have a really wonderful fiber to work with.

It's a specialty fiber.

It's not that readily available.

Something like cashmere.

I like to do weaving things like scarves and shawls and sweater vest, and a lot of people are knitting now like hats and mittens.

Sweaters, of course.

And that's what got the Switzers into alpaca ranching a quarter century ago.

And although Chris often uses dyed yarn to weave scarves and the like, this is what alpacas are raised for wool in nearly two dozen natural colors cherished by those who are allergic to dyes.

The alpacas once roamed in the big solar home, but they ate all the houseplants you see, so to pasture they went where with next downward bent, they now mow the grass, all for free.

We treat them as pets and not as livestock.

You know, when one is sick, where it's like a family member being sick.

It can be pretty traumatic at times, but on other times there's great rewards when babies are born and when they have fun when they're out playing.

It's it's a thrill to watch them.

A young alpaca, by the way, is a cria.

That's c-r-i-a.

Use that one to stump your word game opponent.

Livestock indeed.

Yeah.

They're wonderful.

We enjoy them very much.

Yeah, we like relating to them.

Started as a family joke before we understood much about ostriches or the breeding of ostriches, or even knew there was such a thing as ostrich breeding and grew into nine ostriches and two emus.

Four years later, you never know what might happen.

And the ostriches come from Africa for the most part, emus coming from Australia.

Raising the birds can be profitable.

That's one of the reasons to do this.

Obviously, in Africa, ostriches have been used for years and years as food.

They've had a slaughter market there for a long time and a leather market as well.

And they stopped importing those products years ago, which makes the leather market here in the United States somewhat at a premium.

You could breed ostriches, I think, as a meat source, probably in an area of this size.

I don't think you'd need hundreds of birds to do that just because as a species, you get more offspring from a pair of ostriches theoretically than you do from llamas or cattle.

An ostrich hen will lay every other day, almost always at the same time of the day, and usually in the evening, which is nice for those of us that work.

And she'll lay anywhere from 40 to 90 or 100 eggs a season, which is through the summer.

The emus lay and mate in the wintertime, and don't lay quite the numbers of eggs ostriches do.

Emus lay every third day, just like you were to set a clock same time of the day, about 6:00 in the evening is this pairs time, and they'll lay somewhere between 35 and 45 or 50 eggs a season.

If you keep gathering the eggs.

The ostriches look pretty archaic to me.

They remind me, and most people that see them as something that hasn't yet gotten through the dinosaur stage.

I think they fit in the Colorado landscape just fine.

They're they're acclimated well here.

They tolerate this climate well.

They're quiet and easy to keep in a neighborhood such as this.

I have housing developments on both sides of me.

And the neighbors don't complain, but it's like they're in a time warp.

When you look at them, they look like a miniature dinosaur walking around in the pasture.

Well, it may look like a traditional ranch, but here, 8000ft high near conifer, the Green Valley Ranch is about as untraditional as its livestock.

Not a cow in sight, but llamas.

Oh, that's a different story.

These animals that meet a six foot human, eye to eye animals with a name seemingly designed to trip up spelling bee contestants and word game players.

Llamas.

Two L's, please.

And how did rancher Jack Robertson get into the llama business?

Well, I have to blame that on my wife.

It was a bright and sunny day 21 years ago, but let Jack Robertson tell it.

One day we were out at the Denver Zoo and she told me, she said, you always promised me you were going to get a llama.

When are you going to do it?

I walked into the zoo superintendent's office and five minutes later we owned a llama.

Two decades later, with 200 acres more to their name, the Robertsons have an ever changing herd of some 50 of these fascinating critters.

Robertson sells many of them as pets from Peru, their native land.

First of all, they're a wonderful pet.

They're extremely intelligent.

Now they're being used as guard animals for sheep.

And in places where it's been used, they've actually reduced the coyote loss by 90%.

But a harness and a saddle are what most of these llamas will wear as pack animals.

For High Country Treks, first trainer, Jerry Dunn, has to teach them the confidence you'd think would be natural.

A lot of it is, but I think as soon as you involve the human, then it's a different issue because the humans take them places that aren't necessarily areas that they're used to senior citizens, homes, schools, you know, a variety of places as well as out on the trail and so on goes the saddle and the saddle bags.

As Llama School begins, we start working with the animals when they're about six months and putting halters on them and teaching them how to follow the person leading them.

They're just learning how they should place their feet on the trail and around different obstacles.

And what you don't want them to do is to roll logs and trees that might injure you, but to place their feet in appropriate places so that it's very efficient, low impact, and safe.

To see a good pack animal work is really a delight.

It's like a dancer.

But llamas, it seems, are valuable not only for what they bear, but for what they wear.

Judy Cox Sample watched a llama fiber spinning demonstration several years ago.

I was fascinated with it and decided that I wanted to learn to do it.

And it was.

It's been spinning ever since and for a steady supply of wool.

Well, she bought her own llamas and I'll brush mine maybe every two weeks or so.

That gives me enough wool to, to, to use for my purposes.

I like the wool because it's easier to work with.

It's quite a bit softer than sheep wool.

It's it's warmer than sheep wool And what about the llamas reputation for spitting?

It's very much so overexaggerated the they do spit at each other more than at people.

Intelligent pets, wool producers pack animals that have carried accident victims to safety.

Is there anything bad about llamas?

Well, there is.

I don't know about it.

Okay.

We can learn a lot by living in harmony with the land.

Teaching reverence for the ecosystem called the short grass prairie, and teaching respect for the birds of prey that sustain it.

That's the work of the Raptor Education Foundation.

My name is Bambi Foyer, and I work for the Raptor Education Foundation.

I hope today that you're going to get a little bit better understanding and appreciation of our environment and how all living things are interconnected, and learn a little bit about the creatures we use as teachers.

And those are raptors.

Here she comes.

Yeah, this is the star of our program.

Why don't we give her a nice big hand?

You see raptors important to us and to the entire food web because of what they eat.

They're catching things like mice, rats, rabbits, birds, insects, things we call pests.

The way that raptors hunt and catch their prey is with these big, powerful feet with meat hooks on the end of their toes called talons.

And that's what separates them from all the rest of the birds of the world.

You see, there are the only ones that kill with their feet.

Well, now I would like to introduce you to something very beautiful, something that we're going to find right out here in the plains called Swainson's Hawk.

They gather by the thousands in the fall in what's called kettles, and they'll migrate all the way down to Argentina.

In wintertime, their food source is gone there.

Grasshoppers and that sort of thing is gone.

So they migrate down there to continue eating their food supply.

What I want to do now is compare the golden eagle with the bald eagle.

Two completely separate species.

But, you know, sometimes people get the two mixed up.

By the way, the bald eagle and the golden eagle are the only two species of eagle here in North America.

This golden eagle weighs about 11 pounds, has a six foot wingspan from tip to tip.

And it was this big when it was 11 weeks old.

The golden eagle gets its name from the golden feathers you see on the back of the head.

In the neck.

There.

The bald eagle has been our national symbol for longer than we've had a constitution 212 years.

Now it takes the bald eagle about 4 to 6 years to get that white head and white tail.

But before that time, they have a brown head and a brown tail.

And that's why sometimes people confuse them with the golden eagle.

And I think that you can see from our program that it doesn't matter whether it's a tiny little beetle in the soil or a big, beautiful eagle, we cannot afford to cause one more species of plant or animal to become extinct and disappear forever, no matter how unimportant you or I might think that plant or animal is.

Everywhere on the range, there is a chance to learn.

You sheltered me and prepared me to meet the world.

I have given you a part of myself and you have given me heritage.

Oh, I think I'd like to go back to the one room schoolhouse.

Maybe it's because that's just the way I remember it.

When I was young, it seemed like pretty good school.

And I started to school when I was in the first grade in that school building.

Then I ended up being the last teacher that taught in that school.

I think it was 1932 when I was in the first grade, and then probably 1946 when I taught there.

The laughter of our play still ricochets off your walls and echoes throughout my thoughts.

There is no better receptacle for childhood memories that is as everlasting as you.

Well, my mother came up here to teach in 1917, and she met my father.

He was on the school board when she left to go home.

They didn't have her check ready, so my father sent it to her and she wrote back and thanked him for it.

Then he wrote back and thanked her for thanking him, and they kept writing back and forth to each other.

They were married in 1920 and I have a sister older than me.

That was their first child and I was the second one.

And so on down we had two younger sisters.

When I taught school my first year, I taught one of my sisters.

She was in the seventh grade, I believe.

Then I had a cousin.

I was one of my students to and they were all pretty good kids, and everybody got more individual attention.

Of course, we didn't have electricity and running water and all of those things.

We just more or less taught the basics out of our books.

And I don't believe there was one student that got through the eighth grade in our elementary school that couldn't read.

We didn't have school busses then either.

We had to walk to school and our dad let us ride a horse sometimes, and I couldn't open the gate and get back on my horse.

I had to walk the rest away and let the horse go back home.

Nothing lasts forever, not even diamonds.

But I now realize that you are what you've always been.

A jewel on the Colorado countryside.

More precious to me now than you were when we first met.

We kind of hope we can restore it sometime.

We haven't been able to yet, but I might even wind up living in it, I don't know.

Depends on how things go.

I was born here, and I was.

I just thought maybe this was where God wanted me to be.

Out where the world is in the making.

Where fewer hearts with despair are aching.

That's where the West begins.

This is where the West begins.

The prairie, the plains, the wide open spaces.

Everyone who makes their home on the range breathes life into the spirit of Colorado.