W is for Windmills

Earlier in the year, we traveled to northern Colorado to scope out an imaginary town for Viridian Farms, the intentional community created by my book protagonists, and the setting for life... and a few deaths... in my murder mystery. I expected to see a lot of cattle since this is ranch land, but I didn't anticipate quite so many wind farms. I knew they existed, but driving through the depth of them, rather than just along side a row along the highway, was a rather dramatic and intense experience. See that shadow on the road above? That's from a windmill blade. They all move toward you, creating a surreal feeling of vertigo as you travel. It felt incredibly unpleasant.

Modern windmills are massive in size. My mindset about them before driving through this metal forest was definitely positive. After all, wind energy is more efficient and kinder to the environment. Right? I started questioning that premise when I viewed, up close, the incredible size of those metal towers, and the astounding amount of energy it must take to manufacture as well as transport them to their final locations. Wow. Just wow. 

There could be another book in my Morristown series related to the wind energy industry. It might not be the bucolic answer to fracking (another burgeoning energy industry in Colorado) I thought it might be. More research is required.

More importantly to the first book in the series - would my book characters want to live in the moving shadows and intense energy of these turning giants? Would you?