To reach the Comanche National Grasslands in southeast Colorado, you’ll spend hours between a dusty windshield and a vast skyline. On the way, you’ll pass storefronts with names like “Cowpoke Feeds,” “The Buzzards Roost” and “The Historic Cow Palace Inn.”

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Jeffrey Beall/Flickr (CC BY-SA 2.0)

Once the pavement ends, there are sparse signs to guide you — just dirt roads and barbed wire fence lines crisscrossing expanses of grass. From this point on, it’d be wise to have a can of “fix-a-flat” at hand.

And, don’t forget binoculars so you can spot the shallow “V” of a hovering ferruginous hawk , or the white flash of a bolting pronghorn. Or, if you’re really lucky, the dip-dance of a burrowing owl perched atop a dirt mound.

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Richard Reading

Burrowing owls and prairie dogs have a symbiotic relationship. The owls often nest in the abandoned burrows of prairie dogs.

The Comanche is a subtle landscape.…