Mountain-Lake Landscape

Life Within the Rocky Mountains

There are about 150 lakes in total in Rocky Mountain National Park, meaning there are lots of places for life to grow! But being so high up, how did fish get there? Some were brought by people, others may have been brought and stranded there by a flood. They come from all over the place! Many animals love to eat them too; like ducks, eagles, ospreys, herons, bobcats, cougars, black and grizzly bears, and reptiles. Elk, deer, moose, and bighorn sheep are also a big food source for big predators. Little mammals like pikas, marmots, rabbits, and mice are important for smaller predators to hunt like owls and weasels. Lots of trees grow there too. The trees are mostly coniferous, meaning they have thin, spiky leaves. We sometimes call them pine trees. Grass isn't as common in the mountains as it is in the plains, so the ground is covered is shrubs, fungus, and dirt.

How The Rocky Mountains Formed

Geologists have always thought that the Rocky Mountains have been weird because they're positioned in the middle of a generally unactive plate instead of in between active plates. It started when Rocky Mountains started forming about 55-88 million years ago in an event called the Laramide orogeny. This event is named after the Laramide mountains in Wyoming where geologists first discovered the effects of the activity.  Geologists hypothesize that thick, dense, oceanic plates coming from the Pacific, which were named Farallon and Kula, submerged themselves under the North American plate at a straighter angle; pushing themselves further East than if they were to go straight down. After a while, they did start to head deeper into the Earth, pushing up water. At the same time magma was rising with the water because of the activity and because of the Farallon and Kula plates melting in the mantle. While the cooling magma was rising to the top to try and form the mountains we know today, they kept getting buried deeper and deeper because of all the volcanic ash, as well as movement from the Western interior seaway. Millions of years later during the Quaternary Ice Age, glaciers started to shape the Rocky Mountains better into what we now know them as. These glaciers carved out some of the ash and other sedimentary deposits. Kind of a long history, but such cool mountains!

This mural isn't a direct reference to a photo or isn't based off of any real lakes inside the Rocky Mountains, but we sure tried! This is a lake basin within the mountains. 

It takes place right before a sunset happens and you can see the bright white sun going behind the mountains. You can see the sky getting dark if you look up. near the bottom-left corner of the mural we see a ledge looking off into the lake. The trees growing there are baby ponderosa pines. Can you see the hidden animal? If you can, go check out the scavenger hunt section of our website to learn more about it! If you look towards the right, we see a little pika chewing on columbines. At the bay of the lake we see various shrubs and pine trees. To the right of that we see a huge forest of all sorts of trees! Maybe, for fun, you could try and see how many there are! 

I wanted to represent Colorado and have a Colorado-like theme in the hallway of the Cottage Collective. People should know the good parts of the state! I knew that we needed a real, good-looking mural, especially one where you get to see it the second you come in. That's where this painting comes into play. It has enough of a realistic style to where you can feel yourself getting calmer and maybe even happier by looking at it. You know that someone took their time in making you, your family, your friends, and anyone walking in feel welcomed. But in an art piece meant for the mental well-being of people coming, it's all about the feeling it brings them!