Opinion: Climate change puts these readers’ rural towns at risk. Why they want to rebuild
Photo: Steve C. Smith
The rain is pouring down in the highlands near Fort Collins, Colorado. An orange and yellow school bus circles the school on its way to pick up children at the high school.
The bus turns onto a dirt road, then up a long hill to meet up with a second school bus that waits there in the rain. The children in the back of this first school bus have taken shelter in the high school gym as raindrops continue to fall. They are wearing orange coats and rain boots.
The second school bus arrives with more students and more rain coats. The first school bus’s children are running inside the gym, and are wearing rain suits that they have brought along to protect them from the rain.
“We’re going all the way to Lincoln for the big race,” a student says.
They are there for the annual Lincoln High School Mountain Relays. Two weeks before the race, the students and their families are bused to the high school. In the basement of the high school, they have placed the same two school buses, one for the girls and one for the boys. The school buses drive over the same route where the schoolchildren will run the race when the final race is held.
“We’ll be running the race tomorrow morning,” the girl says.
The rain has put a damper on the high school’s basketball practice. The gym is filled with the sound of dozens of girls wearing their rain coats. But some of the basketball players aren’t wearing rain gear. In fact, most of the players are wearing short sleeves, and most of the girls are wearing long sleeved shirts. The basketball players are practicing in short shorts, while the girls are practicing in long sleeved shirts.
This is part of what is called the “weather-chic