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Editor's note: This is the final installment in a four-part series of classic Bill May writings. The series concludes today, as does May's weekly column, which has been published in various forms in the Pilot since at least 1989. The entire Steamboat Pilot & Today community wishes to thank May for his years of colorful writing and his tireless dedication to preserving the history of Northwest Colorado. Bill May is truly one of a kind.

The following poem appears in the first volume of May's "Over the Bridge" series, a collection of short stories and poems about the ranching lifestyle that defines May's life.

Our mountains once so wild

Where the Indians used to roam

And lived alone with nature

In the place that they called home

Saw our Daddy come to settle

And plow the fertile loam,

Tame the virgin wilderness

And make the desert bloom.

They saw the miners wash the placer

And the trappers ply the stream,

The drovers herd the cattle

O'er the range so fresh and clean.

The mountains still are pretty

But their serenity is gone;

Lost to "recreation,"

A discontented human throng.

Mountain slopes are crowded

With "condos" row on row

Where once the elk did wander

And the columbines did grow.

These mountains once so happy

As they looked out o'er the plain

And saw the fertile valley

Filled with fields of waving grain

Now view a scene of desolation

Abandoned farmsteads everywhere.

Fields gone to thistles

With no one left to care.

Wagon trails once so peaceful

Now filled with rushing cars.

Smoke from countless chimneys

Smogs the air and hides the stars.

And the mountains must be asking

"Has the human race gone mad?

That they worship recreation

And think raising food is bad?"

And the way things are "progressing"

When all is said and done

Perhaps that selfsame mountain,

After man is dead and gone,

Will again look on a wilderness

With "condos" fallen down

After man has starved himself to death

Because he had to have his fun.