Protect canyon’s jaw-dropping beauty The front page of Sunday’s Colorado Springs Gazette reported that the U.S. Army plans to fire test artillery shells during a month-long exercise beginning this weekend at the Piñon Canyon Maneuver Site. According to the article, the Army acknowledges the testing will cause permanent damage to historic sites in Piñon Canyon, yet is proceeding anyway. This is an irresponsible travesty. In October 2012, I earned my private pilot’s license. During cross-country training earlier in the year, my instructor routed us from La Junta to Trinidad, Colorado—a flight that took me over Piñon Canyon for the first time. From the air, it was breathtaking. Not long before, I had read Riders of the Purple Sage by Zane Grey, and what I saw below looked exactly as he described: rugged box canyons and a vast, untamed Western landscape. It was some of the most stunning countryside I had ever seen. When I got home, I told my wife about the surreal beauty just south of our Colorado Springs home.…