Telluride Magazine Summer/Fall 2019

SUMMER/FALL 2019

4.95 | priceless in Telluride

$

MOUNTAIN FREAK • LIFT-SERVED LOVE WHEELS UP • ON WITH THE SHOW

Three Buying Options / 37 to 84 Acres Parcels A-1, A-2, A-3 - Specie Mesa Priced from $575,000 to $1,075,000

ID YL LIC SE T T I N G

4 Beds / 4.5 Baths / Ski Access Aspen Ridge Unit 11 - Mountain Village $1,895,000

C ORNER UNIT

STUNNING VIEWS

RIV ERF RO N T C A B I N

FA M ILY ESTATE

BOX C ANYON VIEW

3 Beds / 60+ Acres / Pond / Fly Fishing 45078 West Fork Road - Dolores $1,850,000

4 Beds / 56.9 Acres / Pond 192 Top of the World - Specie Mesa $2,741,700

7 Beds / 6.5 Baths / On 14th Green 131 AJ Drive - Mountain Village $4,795,000

1.89 Acres / Building Plans Available Lot 101 Basque Blvd - Aldasoro Ranch $630,000

STEPHEN CIEC

Te l l u r i d e A r e a Re a l E s t a t e . c o m

CIECIUCH [ Chet-chu ] Branded in Trust.

TE L L U RIDE C H I C

4 Beds / 5 Baths / Prime Location 121 N Spruce Street - Telluride $4,780,000

3 6 0 ° V IEW S

4.29 Acres / Incredible Views / Perched Site Lot 73 Josefa Lane - Aldasoro Ranch $675,000

CIUCH (Chet-chu)

Director

RIVE R RANC H

L UXURY S K I

321 Acres / 13 Beds / 1+ Mile River Frontage Red Rock River Ranch - Dolores River $10,300,000

7 Beds / 1.97 Acres / Ski Access 133 Victoria Drive - Mountain Village $7,595,000

H I S TORIC REMOD EL

KNOL L -TOP VIEWS

4 Beds / 3,578 s.f. / Stunning Transformation 233 S Oak Street - Telluride $4,250,000

stevec@tellurideproperties.com | 970.708.2338 237 South Oak Street @ the Telluride Gondola Team [Chet-chu] Anna Henderson Broker Associate Ellen Williamson Broker Associate

4 Beds / 4.5 Baths / 3 Car Garage 307 Basque Boulevard - Aldasoro Ranch $2,995,000

HA S S L E -FR E E O W N E R S H I P

Whole ownership with ski/golf, car service, spa, & much more.

The River Club - Telluride $795,000 - $1,325,000

A U BE RGE R E S O RT S

3 to 5 bedrooms enjoy private ski access, concierge, spa, & more.

Auberge Resorts at Element 52 - Telluride $2.925M - $6M

MOD ERN L OG H OM E

Enjoy perfect ski access & mountain views from this 5-bed home.

120 Snowfield Drive - Mountain Village $6,800,000

C H OIC E AME NITIE S

Steps to ski/golf/gondola with 2 masters, game room, sauna & more.

184 Country Club Drive - Mountain Village $5,950,000

ONeillStetina.com

O’Neill Stetina Group

LEADERS IN TELLURIDE AREA REAL ESTATE FOR 20+ YEARS

I N T HE HE ART O F D O W N T OWN

A combination of 8-beds steps from skiing, restaurants & shopping.

403 West Colorado Avenue - Telluride $5,995,000

T IM E L E S S D E S I G N

Timeless 6,364 s.f. home with stunning views. Walk to the gondola.

166 Country Club Drive - Mountain Village $7,595,000

ULTIMATE L UXURY

Luxury 3 to 5 beds with views & convenience to everything in town.

Transfer Telluride - Telluride $2,950,000 - $9,000,000

P RIVATE FISH ING

Over 393 acres with 1.6+ miles of the Dolores River & a 3-bed home.

26510 Highway 145 - Dolores $8,300,000

TOGETHER, WE DO MORE FOR YOU. Brian O’Neill, Director I 970.708.5367 I brian@oneillstetina.com Marty Stetina, Broker I 970.708.4504 I marty@oneillstetina.com

18 7 S AN J OA QU IN. COM

1 0 1PALM YRA.C O M

8 Bedrooms / 7+ Bathrooms / 7,881 s.f.

Mountain Village $3,990,000

5 Bedrooms / 5.5 Bathrooms / 4,946 s.f.

Mountain Village $3,580,000

1 58 T E L E M A R K . COM

7 9 5 NT RO UT LAKE.C O M

3 Bedrooms / 3.5 Bathrooms / 2,585 s.f.

Mountain Village $2,099,000

3 Bedrooms / 2 Bathrooms / 1,721 s.f.

Trout Lake $675,000

108GO LDHILLC OURT.COM 6 Bedrooms / 6.5 Bathrooms / 6,468 s.f.

Mountain Village $4,977,000

HIDDENBEARRA N CH .COM 2 Homes, 2 Cabins, & Barn / 40 Acres Hastings Mesa $2,690,000

Te l l u r i d e A r e a H o m e s . c o m

LIVE T H E G O O D LI F E!

GOL DCREEKT ELLURIDE.C O M 115 Sublime Acres, 5 Artisan Structures, Sparkling Springs, Creek, Pond, Meadows, & National Forest.

1451-1455 Alta Lakes Road, Alta Lakes $16,900,000

5 6 8 3LAS T DO LLAR.C O M Enormous Panoramic Views, 36.14 Acres, 20 Minutes to Telluride, Adjacent to Public Lands, & No HOA. 5683 Last Dollar Road, Deep Creek Mesa $1,290,000

Ready When You Are. SHIMKONIS PARTNERS Personal Touch, Expertly Crafted Mike Shimkonis, Director I 970.708.2157 I shimmytelluride@gmail.com Asa Van Gelder, Broker Associate & Appraiser I 970.708.1220 I asavangelder@gmail.com

MORE

Expertise Productivity Diligence

YOU DESERVE MORE FROM YOUR REAL ESTATE BROKER. As market leaders since 1986, Telluride Properties’ brokers average 12 years of expertise in Telluride Area Real Estate and average more sales per broker than other companies. Representing your best interests in a forthright, professional manner is our standard of service throughout your transaction and beyond.

Contact us today to get MORE out of your buying and selling experience.

970.728.0808 I TellurideProperties.com I 237 S. Oak Street I 560 Mountain Village Blvd., Ste. 103

TELLU

RIDE

WOW WEEKENDOFWELLNESS

13th Annual

June 25 - 28, 2020

201 W. Colorado Ave. Ste. 200 Upstairs in the Nugget Bldg schedule at: tellurideyoga.com (970) 729-1673

JUNE 11 - 14, 2020

TELLURIDEWOW.COM

DROP-INS WELCOME

PURCHASE TICKETS AT

TellurideYogaFestival.com

TE LLU RI DE ... It’s as cool as it sounds.

T OP- O F-T HE -T O W N

Historic home on large lot with big views.

Approved plans for a 3,600 s.f. remodel.

321 N. Willow St. - Telluride $1.65M

R E M A RKABL E SETTING

1.34 acres with end-of-road privacy & a 6-bed home with massive mountain/golf course views.

99 Pennington Place - Mountain Village $4.5M

IN -TO W N VA L U E

Sitting high on the hillside, this sunny 4-bed home takes in beautiful sunsets with easy access to skiing and downtown.

970 Primrose Lane - Telluride $2,500,000

P RIVAC Y & VIEWS

Beautiful square cut log home on 69 acres with stunning views & all day sun.

509 Elam Point Dr. - Hastings $1.65M

VE RY C OMPE L L ING

Unique architecture & sunny homesite minutes to town! Surrounded by hundreds of acres of pristine open space. Irreplaceable!

126 Kokomo Court - Hillside $1,450,000

DAMON DEMAS

Seasoned Broker

ddemas@tellurideproperties.com | 970.708.2148 Damon.SearchTellurideRealEstate.com I 237 South Oak Street @ the Telluride Gondola

Which Bottle Works for You? Telluride’s finest selection of wine, beer and spirits.

The Local Store

Best selection and prices in the entire area Featuring highly allocated wines that you won’t find elsewhere. We have everything you will need for your event.

FREE DELIVERY ANY DAY OF THE WEEK! (970) 728-5553 • 129 West San Juan Ave • Telluride • Hours: Mon – Sat 10am to 10pm & Sun 10am to 8pm

telluridebottleworks.com

Michael J. Ward, GRI Lynn K. Ward 970.708.0932 • 970.708.0968 Michael@Telluride-Colorado.com

125 Hang glideR, Mountain Vill age

11893 Count y Road 1, Ridgway

Located in a cul-de-sac in an old-growth aspen stand adjacent to the Double Cabin ski run, this exceptional home and guest quarters offers spectacular views, numerous living spaces, seven bedrooms including multiple master suites, and has an incomparable location just steps to the gondola. Throughout the home, centuryold logs, majestic stonework, plaster walls, walnut floors, and mahogany trim lend warmth and grandeur. Dramatic views of the surrounding mountains are inspiring.

One of the most architecturally inspiring homes in the area, this ranch offers horse lovers and outdoor enthusiasts the utmost in sophistication and style. The French country main home offers four bedrooms, six bathrooms, numerous living spaces, three fireplaces and a three-car garage. The log and stone guest home offers one bedroom plus Murphy bed, two full bathrooms, and generates significant rental income. A separate barn/garage and toolshed complete this 41 acre property with beautiful pastureland and outstanding views.

$7,950,000

$2,495,000

207 e ast g RegoRy , t elluRide

3362 R anCH R oad , R idgway

559 w est C uRtis d RiVe , t elluRide

Two spectacular parcels totalling 5,000 sf, this property has commanding views of Bear Creek, the ski area, and the Town of Telluride. Because an existing structure straddles the lot line, the lot line may be vacated allowing for the construction of a single home. This provides tremendous flexibility for development as one larger home, or two smaller homes can be built. Water and sewer are currently provided to the cabin, so there are no tap fees for a house up to 2,500 sf.

Incredible opportunity to own a spectacular ranch in San Juan Ranch near Ridgway and Telluride. This property offers 110.51 acres and includes a 1,143 sf, fully furnished 2 bedroom, 2 full bath guest home built in 2012 with a garage and storage for two four-wheelers which are included. Nearly two miles of trails have been built providing lots of off-road fun! The property contains stands of old-growth aspen, a natural rock quarry and seasonal water. A main home can be built.

Lot 23A, 559 West Curtis Drive, is a spectacular 2,521 square foot lot located on the sunny side of town with amazing views of Bear Creek and the ski area. The purchase includes HARC approved full construction plans for a four-bedroom, three and one-half bath, 3,062 square foot home (SF includes a two-car garage and 241 sf of decks). Plans and engineering are building permit ready. It is located near the end of West Curtis Drive with little traffic providing privacy.

$1,650,000

$1,500,000

$1,175,000

N ext g eNeratioN D esigN

L egacy H omes

Luke TrujiLLo

aia

TruLinea.com 970-708-1445

NORTH PACIFIC EXPEDITIONS Alaska Adventure Cruises

KENAI FJORDS NATIONAL PARK & PRINCE WILLIAM SOUND, ALASKA www.northpacificexpeditions.com

An unforgettable

• • • • •

Experience...

Spectacular views from the top floors of the Peaks Resort Uniquely appointed penthouses Concierge level services and amenities Pillow menu, premium coffee, 24/7 concierge, ski valet World famous Spa at the Peaks

reservations@silverstartelluride.com

800.537.4781 SUMMER/FALL 2019

www.TellurideMagazine.com

13

imagine...

YOU ARE HERE.

STAR

S I G N AT U R E P R O P E RT I E S

T E L L U R I D E ’ S F I N E S T VAC AT I O N R E N TA L S A N D P RO P E RT Y M A N AG E M E N T reservations@silverstartelluride.com

800.537.4781

silverstartelluride.com

Photo by: David O. Marlow

Photo by: David O. Marlow

Photo by: JC Buck

PROUD ARCHITECTS

OF VIRGINIA PLACER

Photo by: Dallas & Harris Photography

16 • SUMMER/FALL 2019

CONTENTS

DEPARTMENTS 19 WITHIN Look at Us Now

20 CALENDAR OF EVENTS The Who, What, Where, and When in Telluride

26 LOCAL FLAVOR Take a Wok on the Wild Side

28 MOUNTAIN HEALTH Prehab, not Rehab

30 ASK JOCK Athletic Advice from our Mountain Guru

46 INSIDE ART Coming to the Table

FEATURES

32 34 38

Holiday Review Essay by Mark Sundeen

86

Piecing it Together

52 TELLURIDE FACES Mountain Freak

Meet Elmer Plumlee, Sally Jones, and Rich Estes

By Rob Story

56 HISTORY

Conquering the lesser-known peaks in the San Juans

On With the SHOW

Lift-Served Love

Telluride launches new mountain bike park

By Katie Klingsporn

42

48 ENVIRONMENT

Wheels Up

62 LITERATURE A Kind of Quiet Most People Have Forgotten, by Pam Houston, and Viola papilionacea, by Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer

Telluride Regional Airport lands first-ever commercial jet service

70 TELLURIDE TURNS

By D. Dion

Measuring Up, All Bets Are On, Shooting for the Stars, For Pets’ Sake

Tinseltown in Telluride

78 INNOVATION

Telluride Film Festival brings a little bit of Hollywood to the mountains

By Gregory Ellwood

Changing the World

82 NATURE NOTES Banding Birds

88 COLOR BY NUMBERS Index of Facts and Figures

96 A LAST LOOK Feet First, by Melissa Plantz www.TellurideMagazine.com

SUMMER/FALL 2019

LIV LUXURY 547 W PACIFIC AVE, TELLURIDE | $6,295,000 Exceptional new construction home in Historic Telluride. Centrally located near two ski lifts and the Gondola and a short walk to Main Street and everything the town has to offer. Natural materials and clean lines create an inviting modern dwelling with rustic comfort. Rarely available in town large setback combined with a wide frontage allow for an exceptional indoor-outdoor living. Views of the Ski Area. Two master suits and four generous bedroom suites, steam room, media room, two half baths, large mud room, garage, large front yard.

Iva Hild (970) 708-1297 ikostovahild@livsothebysrealty.com

18 • SUMMER/FALL 2019

Contributors

Magazine

Telluride Magazine is produced by Telluride Publishing LLC, a locally owned and operated company.

PUBLISHER TELLURIDE PUBLISHING LLC ~~~

ADVERTISING EXECUTIVE JENNY PAGE ~~~

PAM HOUSTON Pam Houston (“A Kind of Quiet Most People Have Forgotten,” pp. 62–66) is the author of six books including the memoir Deep Creek: Finding Hope In The High Country and Cowboys Are My Weakness, all published by W.W. Norton. She teaches in the Masters Creative Writing Program at the Institute of American Indian Arts, is professor of English at UC Davis, and runs the literary nonprofit, Writing By Writers. She lives with Icelandic sheep, miniature donkeys, elderly horses, Irish Wolfhounds, a feral cat and her husband Mike Blakeman near the headwaters of the Rio Grande.

STEPHANIE MORGAN ROGERS Stephanie Morgan Rogers (illustrations pp. 62–66) is a fine artist and illustrator who splits her time living on a small ranch in Ridgway, Colorado and Telluride. She studied art at Evergreen State College, University of Washington, and Universita per Stranieri in Perugia, Italy. She is inspired by the outdoors and her favorite type of work is primitive folk art because of its authentic allegorical nature.

She works in a variety of media, from illustration to large scale installations, and describes her style as a channeling of an old Italian pottery decorator.

Stephanie can be found on county roads walking with her pet sheep, an old horse, three dogs, and maybe a kid or three.

MARK SUNDEEN Mark Sundeen (“Holiday Review,” pp. 32–33) is the author of five books, including The Unsettlers (Riverhead, 2017), The Man Who Quit Money (Riverhead, 2012), and The Making of Toro (Simon & Schuster, 2003). His work has been translated into seven languages. A contributing editor to Outside Magazine, he has written for The New York Times and National Geographic Adventure. He holds the Russo Chair in Creative Writing at the University of New Mexico and teaches fiction and nonfiction at the Mountainview Low-Residency MFA Program. He lives in Albuquerque, and keeps a singlewide trailer in Moab.

EDITOR DEB DION KEES ~~~

CREATIVE DIRECTOR KRISTAL FRANKLIN ~~~

DISTRIBUTION TELLURIDE DELIVERS ~~~

WEB ADMINISTRATOR SUSAN HAYSE ~~~

CONTRIBUTING WRITERS Gregory Ellwood, Cindy Fusting, Elizabeth Guest, Pam Houston, Karen James, Annika Kristiansen, Katie Klingsporn, Paul O’Rourke, Sarah Lavender Smith, Rob Story, Mark Sundeen, Susan Viebrock, Lance Waring ~~~

CONTRIBUTING PHOTOGRAPHERS/ILLUSTRATORS Ryan Bonneau, Phil Borgeson, Tim Brown, Luke George, Joy Ja, Matt Kroll, Kyle Monk, Melissa Plantz, Stephanie Morgan Rogers ~~~

WWW.TELLURIDEMAGAZINE.COM Telluride Publishing produces the San Juan Skyway Visitor Guide and Telluride Magazine.

Current and past issues are available on our website.. © 2019 Telluride Publishing For editorial inquiries call 970.708.0060 or email deb@telluridemagazine.com For advertising information call 970.729.0913 or email jenny@telluridemagazine.com The annual subscription rate is $14.95.

Cover and contents are fully protected and must not be reproduced in any manner without written permission from the publisher. ~~~

ON THE COVER Reflections of the San Juan Mountains.

Photo by Ryan Bonneau, illustration by Kristal Franklin.

DIGITAL PARTNER www.TellurideMagazine.com

SUMMER/FALL 2019

Within h

LOOK AT US NOW

A resort town and its residents come of age

I

think one of my all-time favorite lines from a movie is in Ferris Bueller’s Day Off: “Life moves pretty fast.

If you don’t stop and look around once in a while, you could miss it.” So in this issue, we’re heeding that advice; taking stock, making a point to look around and catch up on just how far we’ve come.

We devoted two stories in this edition to Telluride Film Festival, a historical piece on its genesis (“On With the SHOW,” pp. 56–59) and another about its prominence in the film industry today (“Tinseltown in Telluride,” pp. 86–87).

And we feature our peripatetic friend, Tom “Freak” Curtis, a local who decided to take the summer off, relinquish his housing, and backpack around the mountains (“Mountain Freak,” pp.

34–36). No itinerary, no agenda, no carefully projected through-hike on an established trail, just wandering around and summiting three dozen or more peaks in the San Juans while making time

MELISSA PLANTZ

attitude, because pain is not always easy to behold. Pam Houston’s A Kind of Quiet Most People Have Forgotten, an excerpt from Deep Creek, takes an unflinching look at the “dark undertow” of depression and grief and nature’s powerful way of healing a person’s soul.

We also take a look at the local Thai food scene (“Take a Wok on the Wild Side,” p. 26), sports gambling (“All Bets Are On,” p. 72), the night sky (“Shooting for the Stars,” p.

74) last season’s epic snow (“Measuring Up,” p. 70) and much more.

We hope you like what you see in this issue, and that you take some time to stop and appreciate the here and now. Time flies whether or not you’re having fun, so you might as well savor each precious moment.

“You live life looking forward, you understand life looking backward.”

— Søren Kierkegaard, Danish philosopher to smell the wildflowers and enjoy the sunsets.

Also featured is a story about Telluride Regional Airport (“Wheels Up,” pp. 42–44), which had humble beginnings as a sheep ranching operation and today welcomes commercial jet service for the first time. Telluride Ski Resort is also turning a corner, with brand new flow trails and a mountain bike park that will now have chairlift access (“Lift-Served Love,” pp. 38–40).

Our literature section has two introspective pieces. Mark Sundeen’s essay Holiday Review reminds us that kindness should be the default

Cheers, Deb Dion Kees SUMMER/FALL 2019

www.TellurideMagazine.com

19

20 • EVENT CALENDAR

Summer • Fall 2019

RYAN BONNEAU

CALENDAR of EVENTS

ONGOING EVENTS

AH HAA SCHOOL FOR THE ARTS This summer at the Ah Haa School take a class with visiting artists including Lynn Rae Lowe, Sarah Hansen, Emily Ehr, Karen Blair, Kate Atchison, Antonya Nelson, Krista Harris, Susie Billings, Tricia Gourley, Ilze Aviks, Lisa Pressman, Sam Levy, Kay Witherspoon, and Ying Li. The school also has a year-round curriculum for adults and youth, exhibits, workshops, lectures, classes, camps, and special events. See the full schedule of offerings online. ahhaa.org BOOZE AND BOOKS Book discussions are held over libations at 5:15 p.m. the second Thursday of every month at the bar/bistro at Telluride Hotel. telluridelibrary.org FITNESS CLASSES AT THE LIBRARY Wilkinson Public Library hosts a variety of free fitness classes, including Yoga, Zumba, and Pound. Check out the schedule at telluridelibrary.org MARKET ON THE PLAZA Mountain Village hosts a farm and craft market with food, art, and jewelry produced in Colorado. The market is held at the Heritage Plaza June 19 through August 28, each Wednesday from 11 a.m.–4 p.m. townofmountainvillage.com METROPOLITAN OPERA Telluride’s Palm Theatre hosts live screenings of the Metropolitan Opera: Roméo et Juliette on July 8, La Bohéme on July 15, and Il Barbiere di Siviglia on July 22.

MAY 23 GONDOLA OPENS FOR SUMMER/FALL SEASON 24–27 MOUNTAINFILM IN TELLURIDE

The festival celebrates the outdoors, featuring films about adventure and ecology, symposiums, and lectures. mountainfilm.org

31–2 TELLURIDE BALLOON FESTIVAL

Watch hot air balloons soar above the San Miguel Valley or stroll past them, tethered and aglow on main street during the early evening. Balloons launch at sunrise, weather permitting.

JUNE 3 TELLURIDE ACADEMY OPENS

Telluride Academy kicks off its summer season with its first session of camps. Check out their full schedule online. tellurideacademy.org

25 ALEX PAUL & BIRDS OF PLAY

Local musicians Alex Paul, Eric Shedd, and Jack Tolann of The Birds of Play perform an album release party at the Telluride Transfer Warehouse. Admission is free. telluridearts.org

27–30 TELLURIDE WINE FESTIVAL

The festival features four days of fine wines, seminars, tastings, winemakers’ luncheons, and cooking demonstrations. telluridewinefestival.com

27–30 TELLURIDE YOGA FESTIVAL

TELLURIDE WOW FESTIVAL This multi-day festival celebrates fitness, wellness, and health with presentations and events. telluridewow.live

6 TELLURIDE HISTORICAL MUSEUM EXHIBIT OPENS

JULY

Sheridan Arts Foundation hosts its annual Wild West Fest, bringing underserved youth from Boys and Girls Clubs around the country to experience a week of horizon-broadening activities. sheridanoperahouse.com

5–9

The museum premieres its new exhibit, “If These Walls Could Talk: Preservation and Change,” using an immersive experience to tell the stories of Telluride’s iconic buildings and the people who lived in and built this town. The opening is free, from 6–8 p.m. telluridemuseum.org

7 PULP FICTION

Palm Theatre presents Pulp Fiction, on the film’s 25th anniversary, as part of its Classic Film Series. Admission is free, with donations to benefit Palm Arts programming. telluridepalm.com

14 THE JACOB JOLLIFF BAND

MUSIC IN THE CORE The town of Mountain Village hosts free, live music outside by local artists and bands from 2–4 p.m. on Sunday, Monday, and Tuesday afternoons at Heritage Plaza from June 2 through September 17. townofmountainvillage.com

Club Red hosts Josh Ritter & The Royal City Band. Known for his Americana style and narrative lyrics, Ritter was named one of the top 100 living songwriters. clubredtelluride.com

SUMMER/FALL 2019

This year marks the 46th annual festival, one of the country’s most renowned bluegrass music events, held during the weekend of the summer solstice. This year’s lineup includes Brandi Carlile, Kacey Musgraves, Gregory Alan Isakov, and more. bluegrass.com/telluride

Yoga instructors from all over the world convene in Telluride to offer workshops in all types of yoga, meditation, and other events. tellurideyogafestival.com

TELLURIDE PLEIN AIR FESTIVAL Landscape artists from across the country come to paint the region’s vistas; plein air painting is done outdoors, and the art is exhibited and sold to benefit the event’s host, the Sheridan Arts Foundation. The “Quick Draw” competition is July 3. sheridanoperahouse.com

3–8 WILD WEST FEST

MOVIES UNDER THE STARS Mountain Village screens free, family-friendly outdoor movies on Thursdays and Saturdays at 8:45 p.m. on Reflection Plaza, from June 20 through August 17. townofmountainvillage.com

www.TellurideMagazine.com

20–23 TELLURIDE BLUEGRASS FESTIVAL

The Jacob Jolliff Band is the next generation of bluegrass supergroups, led by mandolin player Jacob Jolliff of Yonder Mountain String Band. They perform at the Sheridan Opera House. sheridanoperahouse.com

18 JOSH RITTER & THE ROYAL CITY BAND 19 FIRSTGRASS

Mountain Village kicks off bluegrass weekend with a free outdoor concert on the Sunset Stage at 5 p.m.

30–6

1 JAMESTOWN REVIVAL

Jamestown Revival, a Southern rock group featuring Zach Chance and Jonathan Clay, performs at Club Red. clubredtelluride.com

3 ANNUAL TRANSFER WAREHOUSE PARTY

The local arts council Telluride Arts hosts this yearly event at the Telluride Transfer Warehouse. telluridearts.org

3–4

RED, WHITE & BLUES CELEBRATION Mountain Village kicks off the Fourth of July celebrations with live music and kids activities including carnival games, balloon art, magic shows, and face painting in the afternoons on the Heritage and Sunset plazas. townofmountainvillage.com

4 RUNDOLA

The Rundola is an annual foot race from the base of the gondola in Telluride to the top of the ridge adjacent to the gondola mid-station. The race starts at 8 a.m. and is organized by the Telluride Foundation.

4 TELLURIDE 4TH OF JULY CELEBRATION

Telluride’s Independence Day features a parade, a community barbecue, games and activities for families in Town Park, and a grand fireworks display after dark.

SUMMER/FALL 2019

www.TellurideMagazine.com

21

RYAN BONNEAU

RYAN BONNEAU

22 • EVENT CALENDAR

JULY

27 BOW WOW FILM FESTIVAL

6 MIDSUMMER NIGHT’S GALA

A fundraiser for Telluride Theatre, the gala is a secret party at a secret location with dinner, drinks, an auction, immersive art, and a performance with live music. Transportation to and from the event is provided. telluridetheatre.org

12–14 THE RIDE FESTIVAL

The Ride is a three-day music concert in Town Park, featuring Widespread Panic, Jason Isbell and the 400 Unit, Big Head Todd & The Monsters, and more. ridefestival.com

15–21 ART + ARCHITECTURE FESTIVAL

Take a tour of the art installations, architectural demonstrations, and samples of design work and culinary arts at the Art + Architecture Festival. Participants vote for their favorites at the closing party. telluridearts.org

16 CARISMA DE VENUS

The Palm Theatre hosts Carisma de Venus as a part of the Telluride Summer Jazz Series. Carisma de Venus travels to Telluride from the rainforests of Costa Rica to share the group’s unique sound. telluridepalm.com

17–20 AMERICANA MUSIC FESTIVAL

Celebrate the traditional genre of Americana and folk music with songwriter showcase performances at the Sheridan Opera House: Danny Schmidt, Carrie Elkin, Doug and Telisha Williams, Bonnie Bishop, Jeff Plankenhorn, John Fullbright with Beat Root Revival, Jack Ingram, and Kevin Welch. sheridanoperahouse.com

19 AH HAA ART AUCTION

This madcap annual fundraiser for the local arts school features a live auction with entertainment and a silent auction for all types of artwork and prizes. This year’s theme is “Onward and Upward.” ahhaa.org

19–21 HARDROCK HUNDRED

The Hardrock Hundred is a grueling 100-mile ultramarathon through the San Juan Mountains, starting and finishing in Silverton, Colorado.

20–28 THE TEMPEST

The tradition of Shakespeare in the Park continues as Telluride Theatre performs Shakespeare’s The Tempest. Performances are held on the Town Park Stage nightly at 8 p.m. telluridetheatre.org

21 SETH WALKER

Blues musician Seth Walker performs Live at the Bob, presented by the Palm Theatre. telluridepalm.com

26 WILD AT HEART

Palm Theatre presents David Lynch’s Wild at Heart as part of its Classic Film Series. Admission is free, with donations to benefit Palm Arts programming. telluridepalm.com www.TellurideMagazine.com

SUMMER/FALL 2019

The Bow Wow Film Festival showcases short films about dogs to celebrate the human-canine bond and raise money for animal welfare organizations. sheridanoperahouse.com

27 TELLURIDE 100

This epic 100-mile mountain bike race starts and finishes in Telluride and participants gain approximately 18,000 feet in elevation on the grueling course. Riders must purchase a Colorado Search & Rescue card to race. telluride100.com

28 JUMPIN’ JACK FLASH

Enjoy the Rolling Stones tribute band as they perform at the Sheridan Opera House. sheridanoperahouse.com

AUGUST 6–11 TELLURIDE CHAMBER MUSIC FESTIVAL

Classical music concerts are held outdoors and in various venues around town. There is a free concert in Town Park to kick off the week’s events, and the closing concert is held at the Palm Theatre. telluridechambermusic.org

7 KOTO DUCK RACE

Sponsor a yellow rubber duck, and if it floats down the San Miguel River fast enough, you can win a variety of prizes including a 2019-20 ski pass. The event is a benefit for KOTO community radio. koto.org

9–11 TELLURIDE JAZZ CELEBRATION

From international jazz legends to up-and-coming brass ensembles, the annual festival hosts the best of the genre at Town Park during the day and at the local venues in the evening. This year’s lineup features Trombone Shorty & Orleans Avenue, Lettuce, Robert Randolph & The Family Band, and more. telluridejazz.org

9 TOP CHEF & TASTE OF TELLURIDE

Telluride’s best culinary artists compete for the coveted title in this 10th annual fundraiser for One to One Mentoring, held at the Peaks Resort. onetoonetelluride.org

14–18 TELLURIDE MUSHROOM FESTIVAL

Symposiums, classes, forays, and a parade all celebrate fungi in this fun weekend event. This year’s theme is “Healing the Mind, Healing the Planet.” telluridemushroomfest.org

14 NEW STANDARDS

The Palm Theatre hosts New Standards as a part of the Telluride Summer Jazz Series. New Standards is fronted by composer and bandleader Peter John Stoltzman. telluridepalm.com

23 DO THE RIGHT THING

Palm Theatre presents Spike Lee’s Do the Right Thing, on the film’s 30th anniversary, as part of its Classic Film Series. Admission is free, with donations to benefit Palm Arts programming. telluridepalm.com

ONGOING EVENTS

MUSIC ON THE GREEN Catch free, live music concerts from 5–7 p.m. on Friday evenings outdoors at Mountain Village’s Reflection Plaza, from June 7 through September 6. townofmountainvillage.com PUNK SCIENCE The Pinhead Institute stages fun, interactive science experiments (atomic reactions, chemistry, physics, and more) for kids with PhD scientists on Tuesday evenings from 5:15–6 p.m. at Wilkinson Public Library for free from June 25 through July 30. Pinhead also hosts Mad Labs, Lego Robotics, Minecraft, Nature Rangers and other fun summer camps for kids—check out their full schedule online. pinheadinstitute.org RELIVING HISTORY Telluride Historical Museum hosts several programs periodically throughout the summer and fall, including Historic Walking Tours every Thursday afternoon at 1 p.m. (June 6 through August 29), Hike Into History Tours on Saturdays at 9 a.m. (July 13, August 17, and September 21), Free Family Night (July 29), Lone Tree Cemetery Tours (Fridays in September and October) and and a series of Fireside Chats in Norwood and Mountain Village on Wednesday and Thursday evenings in September and October. telluridemuseum.org STORY TIME AND KIDS ACTIVITIES The Wilkinson Public Library hosts Story Time for children at 11 a.m. on Mondays and Wednesdays and Fridays June 3 through August 5 (on Mondays it’s held outside in Elks Park). The Kids Cook program is at 3:30 p.m. on Wednesdays, where kids learn to make healthy snacks with ingredients provided. I Heart Art is at 3:30 p.m. on Mondays, with special art projects. Sci Fri welcomes kids of all ages to do fun science experiments at 3:30 p.m. on Fridays. The library also hosts summer reading programs for kids and teens, with prizes and live performances on Fridays at 11 a.m. on the gondola plaza. telluridelibrary.org SUNSET CONCERT SERIES The Town of Mountain Village hosts free outdoor concerts every Wednesday evening from June 26 through August 14. townofmountainvillage.com

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24 • EVENT CALENDAR

AUGUST 24 THE PRICE IS RIGHT

Telluride Theatre presents a new take on the classic game show “The Price is Right,” at the Palm Theatre. telluridepalm.com

RYAN BONNEAU

25 AN EVENING WITH KEN BURNS

ONGOING EVENTS

TECH TIME Don’t throw your tech devices out the window; come in for help at Tech Time at the Wilkinson Public Library at 1 p.m. every Tuesday. telluridelibrary.org TELLURIDE ARTS On the first Thursday of each month, the Telluride Art Walk celebrates art at the local galleries from 5–8 p.m., with a self-guided tour of the exhibits in downtown Telluride. Nineteen venues open their doors to showcase new exhibits and artists, and restaurants feature art walk specials. Maps are available from local businesses and Telluride Arts. telluridearts.org TELLURIDE FARMERS MARKET Telluride hosts one of the few all-organic, pesticide-free farmers markets in the state each Friday on South Oak Street from 10:30 a.m.–4 p.m. from May 31 through October 11.

TELLURIDE FILM FESTIVAL PRESENTS On the third Thursday of each month at the Nugget Theatre, catch one of the recently released films selected by the festival directors of the Telluride Film Festival.

TSRC TOWN TALKS Telluride Science Research Center brings world-renowned scientists to speak on various topics and hold discussions on Tuesday evenings at 6 p.m. from June 11 through July 30 at the Telluride Conference Center. Admission is free, and there is a cash bar. telluridescience.org www.TellurideMagazine.com

SUMMER/FALL 2019

21 MOUNTAINS TO DESERT RIDE & TELLURIDE 200

Cyclists race from Telluride to Gateway Canyons Resort (or past the resort into the Unaweep Canyon for longer distance) in this annual fundraiser for the Just for Kids Foundation, which supports youth in the San Miguel watershed region. m2dbikeride.com

22 RUDY ROYSTON AND FLATBED BUGGY

Watch a screening of the Ken Burns documentary The Roosevelts: An Intimate History, Episode 5, followed by a Q&A with the director, hosted by the Telluride Historical Museum. telluridemuseum.org

Bandleader/composer/percussionist Rudy Royston and his latest project Flatbed Buggy perform at the Palm Theatre as a part of the Telluride Summer Jazz Series. telluridepalm.com

30–2 TELLURIDE FILM FESTIVAL

26–29 TELLURIDE FESTIVAL OF CARS & COLORS

Telluride hosts an internationally acclaimed film festival with world premieres, movie stars, filmmakers, directors, and a free outdoor cinema. The lineup is always kept secret until the day before the festival, but a large number of TFF premieres have gone on to win “Best Picture” Academy Awards. telluridefilmfestival.org

SEPTEMBER 7 IMOGENE PASS RUN

This annual celebration for automobile enthusiasts with the mountain foliage as a backdrop features a motorcycle concours, antique plane show, and exhibits of luxury and classic cars. carsandcolors.com

OCTOBER 10 BRAVO

Runners start in Ouray and cross over 13,114-foot Imogene Pass, a 17.1-mile course with more than 5,000 feet of elevation gain, finishing in Telluride. imogenerun.com

A fun fundraiser for San Miguel Resource Center, in conjunction with Ah Haa School for the Arts, where artists decorate brassieres in outlandish style and male models hit the runway and auction them off. ahhaa.org

7 DWAYNE DOPSIE AND THE ZYDECO HELLRAISERS

11–13 TELLURIDE HORROR SHOW

Grammy nominated singer/songwriter and accordion player Dwayne Dopsie performs energetic, modern Zydeco music at the Sheridan Opera House. sheridanoperahouse.com

The newest film festival in Telluride, Telluride Horror Show screens independent horror, fantasy, and sci-fi movies and hosts special programs, a pig roast, and industry guests. telluridehorrorshow.com

7 AFTER HOURS

20 GONDOLA CLOSES FOR OFF-SEASON 24 ROCKY HORROR PICTURE SHOW

Palm Theatre presents Martin Scorsese’s After Hours as part of its Classic Film Series. Admission is free, with donations to benefit Palm Arts programming. telluridepalm.com

12 KOTO FALL STREET DANCE

Celebrate autumn with a block party on Telluride’s main street with live music and beverage booths. koto.org

Telluride Theatre presents a live shadowcast of the cult classic film at the Palm. telluridepalm.com

31 KOTO HALLOWEEN BASH

KOTO hosts a costume party for Halloween. koto.org

12 SUNSET BLUES CONCERT

31 HAUNTED HOSPITAL

13–15 TELLURIDE BLUES & BREWS FESTIVAL

NOVEMBER

The Telluride Blues & Brews Festival kicks off with a free concert in Mountain Village on the Sunset Plaza. townofmountainvillage.org This popular fall music festival features craft beers from all over the country and a beer tasting, as well as big name music acts in Town Park and at late night “Juke Joints” performances in local venues.

This year’s lineup features Phil Lesh & The Terrapin Band, Boz Scaggs, Anders Osborne, Tab Benoit, and more. tellurideblues.com

20–21 RISING APPALACHIA

Sisters Leah and Chloe Smith of Rising Appalachia perform folk music with Southern roots and global influences for two nights at the Sheridan Opera House. sheridanoperahouse.com

The Telluride Historical Museum hosts a spooky tour on Halloween through Telluride’s former hospital. telluridemuseum.org

13–15

KOTO SKI SWAP Sell your old gear or pick up some new gear at this annual fundraiser for KOTO community radio, held at the Wilkinson Public Library. koto.org

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26 • LOCAL FLAVOR

Take a Wok on the Wild Side Telluride’s thriving Thai food scene

By Elizabeth Guest

Denver or Amazon taste. A jar of tamarind gets opened—too salty, wrong type, won’t provide the bright, tangy flavors for their classic Pad Thai.

Even soy sauce is complex, each variety pivotal to certain dishes. There’s si io khao, “white,” si io dam wan, “sweet,” and si io dam, “black.”

Seeking precise ingredients is the first part to perfecting Thai meals. The second part is the cooks. “If you know the food, you know what to do, but you have to test to make sure it’s right. Not too much blender, not too much sweet,” explains longtime Siam chef Duran Wandee. “I always test—if it’s good, I tell you it’s good.”

Wandee didn’t start working at Siam until her mid-fifties, but Thai cooking runs in her blood. She

It’s Thai street food you don’t normally find in this small corner of the world.

And we don’t dumb down any of the flavors.

grew up in the ‘40s and ‘50s in the market district of Bangkok. Surrounded by native ingredients like curry, galangal, kaffir limes, and coriander, she watched as everything was made from scratch, ground with a mortar and pestle, sizzled up in an oiled wok, and plated with fresh cilantro and Thai basil. When she moved to the states in her 20s, she worked a corporate job until “retiring” in 1994 to start her culinary career. “I like to work…when I was little, 8- and 9-years-old, I worked,” says the now 69-year-old. “Now, I go to bed early to get up early, so I have the energy.”

A cheerful, laughing lady, she’s eager to finish chatting and get back downstairs to her station before the restaurant opens. She gives Swenson a knowing look, he nods, and she scurries off to roll spring rolls or whatever else is on the day’s pre-service prep list.

At 5 p.m., the restaurant opens and the 100-square-foot kitchen surges with six hardworking chefs firing woks and

JOY JA

M

iles of mountain ranges away from the bustling booths and bold flavors of Bangkok’s food markets, Telluride chefs work hard to make sure there are exotic ingredients and dishes available around town. From bird’s eye chilis in Som Tum papaya salad, to ginger and galangal in sweet, tangy Tom Yum Goong soup, Telluride is home to some tasty Thai food.

Siam, a Thai restaurant in Telluride, has been serving authentic fare since 2006. The key for Siam, says Kyle Swenson—the restaurant’s manager for more than 10 years—is sticking to true Thai ingredients. Hard-to-pronounce shopping lists lead Swenson on wild ingredient chases for far stranger things than goose. “The reason the food is so good is that the cooks are very particular about their ingredients,” Swenson says. “I go looking for chilis, sauces… everything is very, very, specific.”

Chefs report back on how products sourced from Asian warehouses in

running grills. The majority are Thai, including Apirak Pothisam, or “AP,” Sayan Hanthingchai, and Sihalath Soupanya, or “Mon,” all longtime employees and leaders in the kitchen.

“It’s not like other kitchens. They’re all pretty serious, but they also have fun,” says Swenson of his Thai cooks.

“The language barrier can be hard— sometimes you think they’re yelling at each other, or at you, and then all of a sudden they’re laughing.”

Siam’s Thai cooks don’t just work together, they also live together. The business funds a multi-bedroom house for their staff in Mountain Village.

In the Village Core, Joy Itthithepphana runs a smaller and quieter operation as she chefs up fresh bowls of Pad Thai at her food cart, Wok of Joy. Born in Chon Buri in the countryside outside of Bangkok, Joy started out catering six years ago, and now crafts bright, vibrant dishes in the plaza.

A chef-driven food cart, she does all the cooking. Every curry coming out of the kitchen is guaranteed to be Joy. Her husband Jason Smith, who she met in Chiang Mai in 2000, supports her at prep, dishwashing, and running the register at the cart, which opened in 2018.

“It’s good food, good prices, and we serve up the real deal,” says Smith. “We don’t tame down the flavors,

and serve them the same way they do in Bangkok and Chiang Mai.” The daily menu includes Pad Thai, a curry of the day, chicken satay with sticky rice and peanut sauce, as well as guest appearances by dumplings, various noodles, spring rolls, and bao

buns. The focus is on lunch-size portions, but the cart stays open later sometimes, such as Wednesdays for the weekly concert series on the Sunset stage following the daytime farmer’s market, as well as other events. “It’s Thai street food you don’t normally find in this small corner of the world,” says Smith.

“And we don’t dumb down any of the flavors.”

Wok of Joy combines flavors from North and South Thailand, and like Siam, focuses intensely on sourcing authentic Thai ingredients. They’ve fostered a partnership with some lady food growers in Florida—which has a similar climate to Thailand— for lemongrass, galangal, kaffir limes, chilies, and many more herbs and aromatics.

Joy is also a self-taught chef, but with a long lineage of family foodies.

“Her mom is a killer cook, and her JOY JA grandma loved to cook,” says Smith.

“My grandma always had food on the table,” Joy adds. “We would eat all day.”

Thailand has a unique and amazing food tradition, and now that it is finally seeping West, it’s possible to get a taste of it in Telluride. “Bringing a Thai sense of food and community spirit to our cart has been a dream come true,” says Smith. \

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28 • MOUNTAIN HEALTH

Prehab, not Rehab Five Ways to Prevent Injury and Stay Healthy as an Endurance Athlete

By Sarah Lavender Smith

W

hen I finally earned a coveted spot in the 100-mile Western States Endurance Run, a lot of friends assumed my main goal would be to break 24 hours.

Of course, I wanted to earn the top-tier prize that comes with finishing under 24 hours, a sterling silver belt buckle. But I made myself focus on a different primary goal: Get to the starting line healthy and ready.

Many endurance athletes overlook the fact they can’t start a race unless they’re injury-free and healthy. They dream about crossing a finish line by a certain time, or fulfilling an epic endeavor such as a through hike, but they de-emphasize injury prevention and healthy habits in the months leading up to their goal event.

That’s because preventing injuries and promoting overall wellness usually involves doing a little less of the activity to which they’re devoted.

If given a choice to spend twenty extra minutes training, or use those twenty minutes to do physical therapy exercises and self-massage with a foam roller, most will use the time to log extra miles.

Take it from me, who’s spent eight weeks in a cast for a stress fracture, or from any athlete who’s sidelined from common injuries: Take those twenty minutes for PT and body care.

“Prehab” is better than rehab. Preventing injuries—thereby enjoying and developing your

sport without interruption—is much preferable to taking weeks off for recovery and rehabilitation.

By following the five principles below during a six-month training block, I got to the starting line of the Western States 100 healthy and proceeded to earn a silver buckle with 15 minutes to spare.

1. BUILD RECOVERY INTO YOUR TRAINING Improving endurance, speed and strength involves deliberately stressing your system— pushing your limits with harder, higher-intensity efforts—and then adapting to that stress. Mild soreness and fatigue are normal symptoms of that stress. The body needs easy days and rest days to recover and adapt; otherwise, the stress can blossom into an injury.

For this reason, try to alternate hard and easy workouts. For example, if you push yourself to run or bike up Bridal Veil and hammer back down at close to a maximum level of effort, then the next day, go easy and stick to a gentle, relatively flat route such as the Valley Floor. “Easy” means finding a pace and effort level that feel relaxed and sustainable, breathing low enough to talk in full sentences.

Take a complete rest day at least once a week, and cut back your training volume for a lighter week every three to four weeks to help avoid burnout as well as injury.

2. ADD STRENGTH CONDITIONING TO YOUR ROUTINE Generally speaking, you don’t need a gym membership or a personal trainer for effective strength work (although the guidance of a physical therapist helps). You can get the conditioning you need for better performance and injury prevention by using your own bodyweight for exercises.

Strength conditioning should be aimed at improving weak spots, imbalances, and flaws in form that can lead to injuries. Additionally, all athletes benefit from a strong core, so strength work should prioritize exercises for the whole trunk.

I advise my clients to tack on 15 to 20 minutes of exercises at the end of their run workouts, two to three times a week. A short but effective workout might incorporate some or all of the following. All you need is a step, a bench, and a grassy surface or a towel for comfort when on the ground: • Heel raises • One-legged squats • Lunge variations • Step-ups or box jumps • “Fire hydrants,” “clamshells,” or “bridges” • Plank variations • Bicycle crunches • Pushup variations • Tricep dips • Balance poses

3. BOOKEND WORKOUTS WITH STRETCHING AND BODY CARE If you roll out of bed and head out the door, or if you drive to a trailhead, your body will feel stiff when you start your workout. Asking the body to switch suddenly from a sedentary state to rigorous exercise feels unpleasant at best and risks a strained muscle.

It’s better to ease into exercise with dynamic stretching—gentle, low-impact movements that promote a fuller range of motion and coordination while also increasing circulation, preparing your body to perform your sport. The dynamic stretching routine I use takes five minutes or less and includes: ankle circles, toe taps, leg swings, walking lunges, front kicks, and knee to chest. Yoga sequences also work well.

After your workout, to restore flexibility and promote blood flow to help repair damaged tissue, take ten minutes for static stretching and self-massage with a foam roller or trigger-point ball. Don’t neglect the feet and ankles; massage arches, scrunch toes, and circle and flex your feet to prevent plantar fasciitis and Achilles tendonitis.

4. GAUGE AND TRACK YOUR FATIGUE AND PAIN Endurance athletes condition themselves to get comfortable with being uncomfortable; that is, to tolerate a certain level of pain and fatigue. So how should they judge when to back off rather than keep pushing?

Endurance athletes condition themselves to get comfortable with being uncomfortable; that is, to tolerate a certain level of pain and fatigue.

So how should they judge when to back off rather than keep pushing?

First, understand that pain and fatigue are not black and white. They fall on a spectrum.

If something feels “twingy” or “off,” then try to gauge its severity on a scale of 1 (normal) to 10 (excruciating). If it’s a mild ache that you’d rate a 3, and it’s not affecting your form or gait, then keep going. A mile later, it may feel fine. If, however, it escalates to sharp pain that you’d rate 4 or higher, and it impairs your normal movement, then it’s time to cut your workout short, take a rest day and seek treatment.

Also, take note of deep fatigue, loss of motivation, or an abnormally high resting heart rate, which are signs of needing rest. Track these symptoms and their severity in a workout log, so you can show the record to a doctor or physical therapist.

5. BUILD A TEAM OF EXPERTS TO HELP YOU Self-training and going solo is great—to a point.

Eventually, you may benefit from working with a coach, physical therapist, massage therapist, or sports doctor.

Beware of self-diagnosis when you feel unusual or persistent fatigue or pain. You may need a blood test to realize your sluggishness is actually iron-deficiency anemia, for example, or an MRI to understand that your chronic hip pain is a labral tear that won’t heal on its own.

I experienced the pitfall of self-diagnosis last summer after I had a disappointing finish at the San Juan Solstice 50-mile run. I suffered light-headedness and shortness of breath during the race, which I took as a sign to train more, and harder, above treeline for altitude adaptation.

When I attempted the Ouray 100 the following month, I felt as if I were breathing through a straw and dropped out at Mile 66 with burning lungs unable to process the oxygen needed to keep going.

Only afterward did I see a doctor and learn that I had given myself an overuse injury of the lungs, diagnosed as exercise-induced bronchospasm. I needed rest and medicine, not additional intense training. Lesson re-learned.

Sarah Lavender Smith is a Telluride running coach and author of The Trail Runner’s Companion: A Step-by-Step Guide to Trail Running and Racing, from 5Ks to Ultras, available online and at Between the Covers bookstore. \

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29

30 • ADVICE

Ask Jock

Athletic Advice from Our Local Mountain Guru

Fly Fishing Fiesta

Dear Jock, Everybody knows we had a deep snowpack last winter. I’m curious how all the runoff will affect the fly-fishing waters around Telluride this summer. Do you have any thoughts?

—A Hopeful Fisherman Dear Hopeful, You are in for a fisherman’s treat this summer—and maybe longer. According to Tim Patterson, a fishing guide for RIGS, based out of nearby Ridgway, the deep snowpack will translate into an extended fishing season, probably into the late fall or perhaps even next winter.

Fish populations thrive when the water is cool. Increased water volume from the big winter means the temps in rivers and streams will remain lower for longer. Additionally, higher water volumes also improve the fishing in the high-alpine creeks and streams.

During spring runoff when the rivers run muddy, Patterson cautions that there’s no need to wade into the middle of the stream. When the waters are cloudy, the fish tend to huddle close to the banks, where the flow is less turbid and they can better see to feed. Also, from a safety standpoint, you want to stay out of the surging spring currents and avoid the possibility of a chilly swim in your waders.

May your fishing season be long and bountiful, — Jock

Q

Herb Hunter

Dropping In

Q

Q

Dear Jock, My hippie friend collects the roots of osha plants during the summer. She claims osha is a balm for respiratory ailments, and she gave me some to chew on when I was sick. I confess it made my scratchy throat feel better. Now I think I should dry my own stash. Any tips on where to find osha plants?

—Osha Hound Dear O-Hound, I’m not an herbalist, but a couple of years ago I harvested some osha root (Lingusticum porteri) in the company of an expert. We found osha plants in a shady stand of aspen, just below treeline.

From that experience, I learned the following tips for osha harvesting: First and foremost, don’t be greedy. The root of one or two healthy plants provides enough to last a winter.

• Osha plants look much like their toxic cousins poisonous hemlock and water hemlock, which often grow nearby. True osha root smells like celery.

But even if it reeks of celery, you should double check with an expert before ingesting.

• Timing is important. In order to be effective as a medicine, osha must be harvested shortly after the first frost.

• Finally, the United States Forest Service requires a permit to harvest any flora or fauna from the forest. A permit for personal use (less than 1 pound) is usually free. I doubt you’d go to jail for harvesting one unpermitted plant, but I don’t want you to be an inadvertent osha outlaw.

Happy hunting, — Jock

A

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Dear Jock, We’re coming to Telluride for a week-long family trip. My 12-yearold son is all about skateboarding and doesn’t want to see the “stupid mountains.” I’ve read there’s a skate park in Telluride’s town park and a skateboard shop called The Drop. Are there other skating opportunities? What else can I use to entice him?

—Skater’s Mama Dear Mama, Frankly, your son’s urban instincts are correct: Telluride is not exactly a skateboarding mecca. But even though it’s not a worldclass skating destination, the skate park here is cool and worth a visit.

The same is true of the small street skating area across from Telluride’s post office.

Telluride does have a committed all-ages skate scene led by the owner of The Drop, Craig Wasserman. Along with being the Pied Piper of Telluride skateboarding, Wasserman is also a talented artist. Check The Drop’s website to see if your visit happens to coincide with one of his skating or art camps. If so, enroll Junior immediately. He’ll be grateful. Wasserman has cultivated a positive and welcoming tribe of skateboarders who encourage and help each other.

Once you arrive, if your son changes his attitude about the “stupid mountains” and hikes up Bear Creek with you, I suppose you could take a 65-mile daytrip to Montrose to set him loose in the large skate park there as a reward. I’m not a skater, but I’ve heard it’s worth the journey.

Ride on, — Jock

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32 • ESSAY

By Mark Sundeen

W

e stayed one night at Karl’s place in Jimena de la Frontera in southern Spain. Let me begin with the PROs. As advertised the house was beautifully situated in a whitewashed medieval village and from the sunny roof terrace we could see miles to the Rock of Gibraltar and the Mediterranean. The cobblestone lanes were so steep I had to goose the Fiat. The pleather lazyboy didn’t exactly capture the gypsy soul of Andalusia, but that’s fine because the sheets and towels smelled of fresh detergent.

The main PRO was price. At $53 USD a night it was the cheapest in town. We planned this trip on short notice and could barely afford three weeks in Spain. Our summer had freed up unexpectedly and we needed to leave home. Hospital bills piled up. As I told Karl in my first email, my wife had spent four months in Jimena de la Frontera as a teenager and wanted to return. He didn’t reply but that’s OK we’re all busy and besides, instructions for letting ourselves in were clear and I wasn’t seeking a friendship during our four nights especially since Karl lives in South Africa. Point is I knew this wasn’t going to be a palace.

CONs

Holiday Review ENTIRE HOUSE BEAUTIFUL VILLAGE LIFE IN ANDALUSIA JIMENA DE LA FRONTERA, SPAIN 3 GUESTS · 1 BEDROOM · 1 BED · 1 BATH

It was already 8 p.m. when we arrived and C took me walking up to the old castle ruins on the hill where she used to hang out as a kid, purple sun lingering, so it wasn’t until late that I saw the place was a bit dirty.

I’m not a fussy person. I’m not even very clean. I’ve spent hundreds of nights just throwing a sleeping bag down in the dirt, and C and I lived in the back of a car for two months in Mexico. But the shower was stained with mildew and paint flaked off. Same thing behind the toilet, a black array of mold. It wasn’t a matter of not having been scrubbed, rather a general sense of disrepair. The shower curtain was torn, patched with masking tape. The old, white plaster walls were smudged with fingerprints and dotted with nail holes. I suppose we could have bailed right away, but by the time we got a whiff of the musty mattress it was midnight.

Still I felt like a jerk canceling the remaining three nights. Since Karl’s place lacks Wi-Fi I had to compose my complaint the next day from the terrace of the hotel down the block, all shaded by palms and lime trees, succulents blooming in clay pots. I’ve never canceled an Airbnb. You can read my other reviews; I’m no complainer. Look at Maria’s place in Madrid— five stars across the board. Maria was waiting there when we arrived bedraggled from the airport after the overnight flight from California and she gifted us a bottle of Spanish wine and a tortilla. You can see that my review was 100% positive even though I didn’t sleep well, but that’s because I was awakened in the night by C’s sobbing, obviously not Maria’s fault.

Karl’s response was swift and polite. He offered a partial refund, saying the system was forcing him to charge a cancelation fee of fifty-five dollars. Fine. He added: some times an occasional guest creates the perception of problems that stems from another reason that later emerges because after all it’s not a hotel and people often project that need for that type of environment.

Karl, you’re right that a real reason comes out I was irked that Karl implied that the mildew the crib and the Bjorn thing. Instead, we came to was not a problem but merely my perception of Jimena. When my wife came here as a girl, it was later. For me it was the tear in the bedsheet. My wife a problem, and that the peeling paint was just not on some lark, but because her house burned pointed it out to me in the morning. I guess that’s my projection of inner turmoil, and that I didn’t down and her parents were caught without insur- the other reason we are in Spain, to make another know what a hotel was, but really I just wanted my ance or savings, and a family friend offered to take baby, to start again our family. We held each other money back. By now we’d had coffee and toast at her to Spain as a nanny for their son. Same thing with soaring tenderness and neither of us cried.

I thought my suffering was boundless, but that the hotel. C used to drink beer on this very terrace now: This was not our first choice.

After your note refused our refund we took a morning it reached its bottom limit. I was not willand was pleased to see it unchanged.

Karl wrote to say he had a second house we could long walk along the lazy river, the Rio Hozgarganta, ing to launch our new life from your stale mattress move into. We trudged up the steep lane upon which with its stone aqueduct and Roman mills with shady with its torn sheet. I was not going to nourish my C’s knees ached and we met Karl’s housekeeper who pools. Thousands of pink oleanders blossomed along wife with a meal fried in your cracked skillet. And showed us around. It was a step up, clearly where its banks and we peeled off our clothes and plunged your other home—even though it was nicer—it Karl himself stayed. His surfboard hung in the entry, into the green water. My wife told me a story about too reeked of a sort of aging-man-loneliness and I his videocassette collection lined the wall. But as we walking this river alone when she was fifteen. A shep- suspected that in the closets and cabinets I’d diswalked back down the hill, C and I felt a coldness. herd had approached and invited her to see a cave. cover small grenades of despair.

I wanted to forget you, Karl, but as the days “Moving into Karl’s other house is just moving closer This sounded like a bad idea, but she’d never met a to Karl,” she said. “Here’s where Karl sleeps. Here’s shepherd before, didn’t even know they still existed, passed you dwelled in my chest with a deep ache. where Karl brushes his teeth.” Even the kind woman and, most importantly, hell yes she wanted to see a Someone in Jimena told me that you have two who showed us around: “Here’s the person who cave. Once they arrived he asked for a little kiss, and grown daughters who live here, that they used to cleans up after Karl.” We moved to the hotel where she bolted past him and sprinted to freedom. Most of look after the house, but there was a falling out, and since then the place has I clicked to cancel, sure that sunk into disrepair. I was not Airbnb would remove the fee. surprised. I felt estranged from By then we were hungry so you after just two days. we traversed the cobblestone Karl, my bones are pierced! to Bar España where we sat on I am afraid of all my sorrows. the terrace with a wide view of My patch of grass sprouted up the cork forests and cattle range green and tender just in time to of Andalusia and I drank a beer place folding chairs upon it. My with a ration of prawns in butter brother drove across Albuquerand garlic while C had mineral que to Home Depot and bought water and a mixed salad with wooden boards and a six-pack tuna and egg. Save for the old and built a tiny crate. We had men watching soccer, we had to put him in there, Karl. C’s the place to ourselves. parents drove our son up to “How long was his spirit in Montana and in a grove of birch the world?” C said. behind their house I dug a hole “Where is it now?” I said. with my brother and dad and “I want him so bad.” nephew and niece through the Any relief we felt being duff and the rocks and clay to extricated from Karl’s gloomy where the spring water seeped. little homes was premature.

His little fingernails kept growUpon returning to our new ing and I wanted to clip them room with its sparkling bathbut couldn’t bring myself to do tub we splashed into the pool it. I laid my son in a box lined on the roof, where C found an “I’M NOT A FUSSY PERSON. I’M NOT EVEN VERY CLEAN. I’VE with cedar boughs and we sprinavocado fallen from a tree and kled his body with water from I discovered Karl’s latest note.

SPENT HUNDREDS OF NIGHTS JUST THROWING A SLEEPING BAG the sea and water from the river.

Hi Mark it appears that C Karl, my soul is weary of my is looking for something DOWN IN THE DIRT, AND C AND I LIVED IN THE BACK OF A CAR life. Why did you take my son, other than the style of FOR TWO MONTHS IN MEXICO.” my only child? And why not me place you booked and as instead? I will never be able to such a normal cancelation call my son on a Saturday aftershould apply because 2 places can’t be that wrong. As I said before, the traits I love about her are depicted here. First, noon and ask him to run down to the rental and normally the real reason comes out later. It she has the courage and wanderlust to be roaming scrub the mildew in the shower.

But I will call to him anyway. When I’m old I appears that C desires a more refined hotel the woods by herself. Next, she gives people the benefit of the doubt. She also has the sense when things will call out to my son: When you’re done painting like establishment.

Typically I wouldn’t use this venue to emote but go bad to run like hell. But what I love most of all is will you replace the fry pan. Spare no expense— Karl’s note hurt my feelings. It was chauvinistic to her curiosity, her insistence on knowing all the world, get a heavy one cast in iron with a handcrafted oak spatula. Maybe our guests will be lovers and he’ll assume it was my wife, and not me, who could not especially its oddities like shepherds and caves.

We swam and swam, floating in flowers. Karl, cook breakfast and carry it to the terrace where appreciate the grime on the lid of the trash can.

Actually it was me who objected to the single non- we named our son Silver and swaddled his flawless they will kiss and nap in the warm sun. And, Son, stick fry pan dangling above the stove, Teflon flaking body in a hand-knit shawl and when I pushed C’s buy a new set of sheets, take my credit card, the in ribbons; me who was saddened by the table made wheelchair out of the hospital elevator, she said, softest cotton the color of cream. Gather buckets of particleboard and held together with Scotch tape. “Put the sunglasses on my face,” and the people of the pink oleanders that line the Rio HozgarBut what really wounded me was the way Karl smiled at us like the bundle in her lap was filled ganta that flows through Jimena de la Frontera, casually referred to C by first name as if he knew with joy. As for the car seat, I left it with the nurses arrange them about the bed. Make it nice. Son, because I couldn’t bear to bring it home empty. A those lovers might just be your mother and father her. He had no right.

Karl, may I address you directly? We had other Mormon friend sent me a note. “You and your wife conjuring you by miracle back into this world. We plans for this summer. I had planted and watered will raise your son in the spirit world. I testify this may never know a stranger’s sorrow until we know a patch of grass under the mulberry tree where we to be true.” We drifted in those oleanders. Where our own. Their hearts are fragile, so be kind. Make the bed, boy! Make it lovely. \ would hang a swing. We bought the stroller and was our son? Where was that spirit world?

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MOUNTAIN FREAK CONQUERING THE LESSER-KNOWN PEAKS IN THE SAN JUANS

BY ROB STORY

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MANDY MILLER

hy did local ski bum and stonemason Tom “Freak” Curtis quit a well-paying mountain-town job, willingly relinquish Telluride’s most valuable commodity (a somewhat affordable apartment in town), and opt to spend a summer’s worth of nights sleeping either on the ground or in the bed of a ’93 Ford Ranger?

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Last May, Curtis marshaled together a $2,500 bankroll for the summer, quit his job with Onsight Builders, and started pounding nonpavement.

“I really wanted to go hiking,” Freak says.

OK, but hundreds of Telluriders each summer gut-out epic hikes and bag towering peaks. Why shake up your life so much? “Sure,” Freak says, “you can live in Telluride and get tons of exercise and return to a roof over your head. But people here seem to bag the same peaks—Ajax, Ballard, the Wilsons—over and over again. It’s seriously hard to get out and hike truly new stuff.”

He makes a good point: The San Juan Mountains are so rugged and stretch so far—150 miles—that it really is impossible to travel the extent of the range without taking days, weeks, and months to climb peaks that even 30-year-locals may have never heard of.

So last May, 49-year-old Curtis marshaled together a $2,500 bankroll for the summer, quit his job with Onsight Builders, and started pounding nonpavement.

He mulled attempts at huge through-hikes such as the Colorado Trail or Continental Divide Trail, then he considered how unimaginative those are; maybe through-hikes are just trophies, bucket-list items to check off for people who don’t necessarily know mountains.

Western Slope dwellers, on the other hand, know the San Juans are the steepest, most dramatic in the Rockies, so why fool around with the exurbs of Denver and the round mounds of Summit County?

Instead, Freak—who’s spent more than twenty years

in the Telluride region—set his sights on the infinite, unclimbed apexes he’s scoped forever in the San Juans. It’s truly crazy—isnt it?—that so many of those don’t even have names. And it also seems nuts to ascend the same popular ones over and over, overlooking magnificent peaks for the silly reason that they stand lower than 14,000 or 13,000 feet.

Do hikers who follow the metric system write off mountains lower than 4,268 meters? Of course not, even though 4,268 is the exact equivalent of the over-played standard of 14,000 feet in elevation. Last summer, Freak decided not to worry

about arbitrary cut-offs. He looked at the San Juans and realized, holy crap, there are a gazillion peaks in my home range that neither I, nor anyone else, ever attempts. “I was intrigued by the hundred highest summits in the San Juans,” Freak says. “I’d already done thirty of them, so I took off from Telluride in the 1993 Ford Ranger that I lived in for four months. I didn’t want to be obsessed with a list.”

Indeed, Curtis pretty much discarded his itinerary the first day on the road.

“I was planning on starting in Lake City, doing Uncompahgre Peak (at 14,321 feet, the tallest mount in the San Juans),” he says, “but after Montrose, I just felt an urge to turn right and check out the Cimarron Range instead. Then I saw a magnificent elk in the middle of the dirt road and decided ‘This is what I have to do.’ The Cimarrons are every bit as gorgeous as the peaks around Telluride,” he insists.

The more he climbed, the more Freak believed that “it’s easy to get stuck in your small part of the San Juans.”

What’s not easy is gaining the summit of Colorado’s most savage geologic uplifts. At the start, before mountaineering honed him into great shape, Freak resented the superfit, ultralight hikers and their Euro-looking tights. He simply couldn’t comprehend their anal-retentive approach to wilderness, “where notching 30 miles a day is paramount, but there’s no time allowed to sniff flowers or watch sunsets.”

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36 • FEATURE

Freak’s expedition finished in late September.

He had just $2 left in his pocket. Two dollars.

At least the ultralight crowd knows how to move above timberline—unlike mountain newbies who stomp on the talus and scree till perilous rockslides form, and rumble and threaten hikers below. “One butthole almost killed me with a rock,” Curtis claims.

Hikers kicking scree loose wasn’t the only thing he had to worry about living outdoors all summer— he also locked horns with a lot of wildlife. He experienced a “two-bear day,” met several unfriendly moose, and dealt with even meaner mountain goats that devoured his food cache in Chicago Basin. “You have to unzip your tent very quietly around mountain goats, or else they’ll run down hillsides to drink your pee. It’s cool to watch the first hour, but by the fourth you just want ‘em to leave you alone.”

Still, Freak reserves a special disgust for the blubbery rodent that people new to the mountains seem to revere: “Marmots are awful, vile creatures. They’re the rats of the mountains.

Just because they live at altitude doesn’t make them cool. Hiking through some marmot habitats was like entering gang-infested Compton. They approach you with no fear and cackle at you for food. I had to chase a number of them away.”

Throughout the summer, Freak took countless solo trips lasting four or five days. But by no means was he always alone; he credits Asa and Robin Van Gelder, Melanie Kent, Nora Coenen, and Mandy Miller for extreme support and company on many excursions. And Search and Rescue personnel and the San Juan County Sheriff in Silverton gave him crucial lifts to a trailhead or friendly resting place.

But, as any mountaineer will attest, climbing peaks puts you in your own head constantly, and the solitude can sometimes be overwhelming. One of Freak’s coping mechanisms was to write poetry. For instance, he rhymed “Chicago Basin” with the dwindling of his food supply down to the “last raisin.” www.TellurideMagazine.com

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Another went: I don’t want to get wet/ But I do have to pee/ Did I really drink 3 whole cups of tea?

And he’s proud of the simple couplet: People must think I’m a loon/ Why are we out here during a monsoon?

Wanderlust isn’t just tough on the soul, it’s also tough on the sole. Freak went through four pair of running shoes over the course of his adventures,

but his budget dictated his supply of “whatever was on sale at Famous Footwear.”

The summer of 2018 was somewhat a bizarre time to ply the Colorado highcountry.

National Forests were closed due to fire restrictions...then the monsoons came (at least to higher elevations) causing burned patches to slide down in messy floods of mud and stone.

Still, rain brought stunning wildflowers and more. “That’s the thing about rain,” Feak says, “It makes for beautiful waterfalls; nature going surreal, sublime and fantastic.”

Freak’s expedition finished in late September.

He had just $2 left in his pocket. Two dollars.

For him, the highlights were almost too amazing to describe: The intense beauty of hiking late on the summer solstice, an out-of-body experience on La Garita caldera, peaks such as Jagged and Arrow that he says defy the imagination, and fishing gorgeous, high-alpine lakes that few anglers will ever experience.

Even with just a couple of bucks left and no place to move back into, he managed to land on his feet. These days, Tom Curtis lives in Salt Lake City, where there’s abundant well-paying work for a stonemason. If another crazy mountaineering summer awaits in his future, it’ll happen in 2020 at the earliest.

Still, nothing and no one can take his Freaky summer of 2018 away from him. “I did all the Fourteeners in the San Juans, and summited a total of 48 peaks in the range,” he says. “Because I’d done some before, I’ve now climbed 64 of the highest 100 peaks in the San Juans. I did all the hard ones, so there’s now 36 manageable peaks left for me.”

Don’t ask him to enumerate the unclimbed mountains, though. For Freak, it’s not about the numbers. “The list isn’t the most important thing about climbing,” Freak concludes, “It’s the experience.” \

PHOTO CREDIT: TSG-BRETT SHRECKENGOST

Discover the thrilling NEW Telluride Bike Park!

Mountain Biking in Telluride has never been so fun!

The NEW Telluride Bike Park trails have something for everyone in the family, and the upgraded bike rental selection at Telluride Sports will set you up for adventure!

Book Online & Save: www.telluridesports.com Camel’s Garden in Telluride 302 W. San Juan Ave. | (970) 728-3134

Gondola Plaza in Mountain Village 562 Mountain Village Blvd. | (970) 728-8944

38 • FEATURE

Love

Lift-Served

Telluride launches new mountain bike park

By Katie Klingsporn

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ith trails that weave through aspen groves, traverse breathtaking alpine basins and gain high mountain ridges, Telluride draws its fair share of mountain bikers.

But in order to enjoy Telluride’s mix of trails, you’d better arrive with intermediate skills at least. That’s because the inventory of local trails has long leaned toward technical, rocky, off-camber, and steep—with nary a true beginner trail in sight. With tight switchbacks, big exposure, and high-consequence obstacles, the majority are beautiful lung-busters, not friendly to the naïf.

Local riders become hardened to it, but for destination riders or tourists who want to try out the sport, www.TellurideMagazine.com

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mountain biking in Telluride can play out in disastrous fashion—leaving them intimidated, injured, or turned off to the sport. “You don’t want people to be sandbagged, because what we as locals consider beginner trails, are not beginner trails by the standard of the real world,” said Penelope Gleason, who says her staff at Bootdoctors is extremely careful about where they send riders. (Often, the best option for beginners is the paved bike path along the Valley Floor—not exactly a rubber-meets-dirt wilderness experience.)

This scenario might be perfectly fine for locals who aren’t keen on sharing their singletrack. But resort officials say that as a destination, Telluride has fallen behind on a national trend to turn its ski resort into an all-levels bike park in the summer.

Until now. Welcome to Telluride Ski Resort’s new bike park—a lift-served experience that is poised to bring big changes to ski area operations, the region’s mountain biking profile, and the Mountain Village economy.

Go with the Flow much pedaling. And this really broadens the cross-section of terrain we have available.”

This means that people who haven’t biked in years, total beginners, or families with children can test out the sport in terrain that matches their ability. And this will fill a huge gap in the region’s mountain biking inventory. “The biggest thing that we were missing, which is probably the most important, was a beginner trail,” said Scott Pittenger, Telluride Ski Resort’s director of mountain operations.

“We had the retail component, the maps, the gear, the rad kids going up and down. But there was no way for a guest to come here and have a day of mountain biking that they were happy about unless they came in being an upper-end intermediate or advanced rider.”

Not that the flow trails should be limited to newbies, says Noah Sheedy, an avid cross-country mountain biker and director of the resort’s Ski & Snowboard School. Flow trails are a huge trend in the mountain biking industry. He says the flowy ribbons of dirt, which bob and weave through forest, are pure fun, no matter your level of expertise. “They are just a hoot to go down,” he said.

“Ultimately that money will come back to the Norwood Forest Service office to fund maintenance and building of new trails in the region.

Because when we all bike, we all do damage to trails. And there’s been no mechanism to maintain those trails in the past.”

TELLURIDE SKI RESORT

Come June, the base of Lift 4 in Mountain Village, which normally goes dormant in the summer, will come to life. The ski lift, equipped with new bike loaders, will be hauling mountain bikers and their steeds uphill. The pass office will be open, selling lift tickets or season passes. Bike guides will be on scene, much like the ski school instructors of the winter, to offer a variety of instruction to riders. Bike rangers, meanwhile, will replace their ski patrolling counterparts, cruising the trails to respond to any mishaps. Trails will be cleaned up, repair stations set up, and new signage will be posted.

Mountain bikers will encounter the same options they’ve had for years in the Village, with one big exception: flow trails. Cross-country riders can still access the popular Prospect Trail, downhill bikers can rampage the World Cup, while the enduro clan can practice their drops on the Gold Rush trail. But mixed in with the advanced terrain will be roughly ten miles of new flow trails—which resort officials said represent a game-changing offering for the park.

“It is a very manicured, purpose-built trail with big bank turns, bridges, and rolls,” said Telluride Ski Resort CEO Bill Jensen. “The reason they’re called flow trails is they don’t require

Canopy Tours Coming

Unlike other ski areas with bike trails beneath chairlifts, Telluride Ski Resort has never charged money for uphill access. Instead, the bike park has been a fairly hands-off system, with bikers catching the gondola from Telluride or Mountain Village to ride trails for free. The ski area hasn’t even historically managed the park; most of the trails were built by the U.S. Forest Service and handed to the Town of Mountain Village for management.

But in the last decade, the resort started to look more seriously into taking over the operation and transitioning it into a lift-served park—following the lead of resorts like Whistler and Winter Park, which do big business as bike destinations in the summer. “We were seeing this increase in biker activity in the region in general and realized that we were kind of starting to fall behind,” Pittenger said. “We had a good core set of trails, but hadn’t done anything to keep up with other biking venues.”

It made sense for other reasons too, Jensen said. “The bottom line with building our summer activities is to increase our energy in Mountain Village to something more comparable to what we experience in the winter,” he said, adding that a vibrant bike park can help keep the wheels turning for Mountain Village merchants.

Telluride Ski Resort tapped Gravity Logic, a premier trail design team out of Whistler, to help imagine new trails, and a resulting preliminary section of flow trail was enough to convince everyone to build more. And when the resort began the process of drafting its Master Development Plan —which maps out long-term infrastructure improvements—it included plans for expanding the bike park, as well as adding a canopy tour.

Jensen said it made sense for Telluride Ski Resort to take over the park. The company is set up to manage it, with staff to run lifts, teach lessons and—crucially—maintain it. Plus, the staffing required means that several resort employees will see their seasonal work stretch across an entire year.

Following five years of review, the Forest Service gave the plan final approval in 2017. Resort crews spent the summer of 2018 building roughly ten miles of new trails, and the park is scheduled to open at the end of June (weather dependent) with a total of fifteen trails.

This isn’t just a matter of Telluride Ski Resort building a single beginner trail and calling it good. Instead, it marks the beginning of a multi-year effort to expand summer recreation opportunities on the resort. Along with the $1.3 million it’s already put into the bike park, Jensen said, the resort will continue to build every year—with new jump trails coming on line, a host of spur trails planned, and new cross-country options in the pipeline.

Construction of the canopy tour, a $1.1 million project that will entail building zip lines and towers in the terrain near Gorrono Ranch, will also begin this summer. “Our hope is to put 400 to 500 people a day in the Mountain Village, having an activity to do,” Jensen said.

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Pay to Play

For local riders accustomed to the old arrangement of free riding, the park’s new pass system— for which crews will be scanning during operating hours of 10 a.m. to 6 p.m.—might take some getting used to.

Telluride Ski Resort has created a tiered system with several options. For visitors and the general public who do not have a winter ski season pass, single-day tickets will cost $36, or unlimited season passes will cost $199.

For winter ski season passholders or bikers who only want to ride the cross-country trails, an unlimited season bike pass can be purchased through a $25 donation to the National Forest Foundation. In fact, a portion of all lift ticket sales will go toward the NFF, which will match them at 50 percent for hiking and biking trail maintenance in the Telluride area. Jensen says this will help perpetuate new trail building and ongoing maintenance, solving a problem that has long plagued local trails. “Ultimately that money will come back to the Norwood Forest Service

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office to fund maintenance and building of new trails in the region,” he said. “Because when we all bike, we all do damage to trails. And there’s been no mechanism to maintain those trails in the past.”

Jensen said he fully expects some grumbling about the new fees. “But you know, somewhere we have to address this maintenance issue. I think it’s a very reasonable way.”

And for those who are adamant about not paying for their bike trails, they’ll just have to schedule accordingly—they can ride the gondola to the trails before 10 a.m. and after 6 p.m. without getting scanned.

Gearing up

At Bootdoctors in Mountain Village, the store is charging ahead to prepare for what is expected to be a busy season, Gleason said, expanding its fleet of demos, rentals and bike accessories to fit a broader cross-section of riders. “We are super excited about the expansion of the bike park,” she said. “I think that just having more trails of differ-

ent levels is going to make a big difference in our business.”

She said when it comes to introducing people to a sport, the goal is to provide a positive, esteem-building experience, and these new trails can unlock that experience for riders.

Bootdoctors is already planning a bike demo to coincide with the opening, and Telluride Ski Resort is hosting a bike race in July, along with regular events billed around bikes.

Mountain Village Mayor Laila Benitez said the entire community is expecting the new park to be a boon. “Across the board, everyone is so excited about this. Everyone’s looking at this as a big opportunity for us collectively,” she said. “I think any opportunity you have to offer locals and visitors something fun that they can do with their friends and family, it’s a win.”

Plus, Pittenger said, the time is right.

“The last two years in particular have just seen massive increases in bikers all over,” he said. “And so while we didn’t necessarily start the fire, we’re striking while the iron is hot.” \

42 • FEATURE

WHEELS UP Telluride Regional Airport lands first-ever commercial jet service

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his is not your average airport. Flying anywhere else, there are passengers who sleep through the entire flight and even the landing. Not here. Not at Telluride Regional Airport, where you skim past some of the highest and most exquisite peaks in the Rocky Mountains at eye level. You might still feel a crimp in your neck, but it won’t be from nodding off during the flight—it will be from craning to look out the window at the landscape as you touch down on a runway perched in the most scenic landing zone imaginable. port Authority was formed for oversight. It didn’t take off immediately—it was essentially, at first, just a private airfield—but in 1985 the first commercial service came to town, with flights to Albuquerque and Denver on Beechcraft 1900C turboprops.

Although some residents were initially wary of having direct flights into Telluride—part of the town’s cachet was its remoteness, providing a haven from urban life—as the ski resort grew and tourism flourished, it became apparent

that having an airport would benefit the local economy. And TEX does not have to rely on the town for funding. The airport has been self-sustaining for more than two decades, and has a thriving general aviation business that keeps it aloft even without commercial service. “General aviation is what helps the airport pay its way,” says Telluride Regional Airport Manager Kenneth Maenpa. “Probably 95 percent of the revenue we make is from general aviation.”

MELISSA PLANTZ

At 9,070 feet, Telluride Regional Airport, or TEX, is the highest elevation airport with commercial service in North America—and also the most beautiful.

“You’d think you we’re landing in the Swiss Alps,” says pilot Cliff Honeycutt, the President and CEO of Denver Air Connection.

The airport was built in the 1980s on what used to be a sheep ranching operation on Deep Creek mesa. The ski resort and the town each put up $1 million to build the airstrip, and the Telluride Air-

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MELISSA PLANTZ

If You Build It, They Will Come

Finding and maintaining commercial service has been the real challenge. The trend in the airline industry has been to consolidate in major cities and cut service in small communities like Telluride. The financial calculus in markets like this is tough: operating a plane is expensive, there are fewer passengers than in a metro area, and perhaps the most crucial factor is the industry-wide pilot shortage because of the increased number of flight hours needed for a pilot to fly commercial. In the past three and a half decades, ninety-one communities have lost air service, thirty-two of which lost service in just the last four years, according to the Regional Airline Association.

Telluride is lucky in that respect. The regional community had some foresight, and in late 2003 they passed local legislation to create an airline

guarantee program, now called the Colorado Flights Alliance, with a dedicated funding stream from lodging and restaurant taxes, the ski resort, and other public and private partners to negotiate flight service. Many small communities including Crested Butte and Steamboat Springs in Colorado, Cheyenne, Wyoming, and Columbia, Missouri, have adopted similar mechanisms. Ultimately, the program is what has kept commercial service available in Telluride and in nearby Montrose, where 134,000 passengers fly in annually.

Even with the Colorado Flights Alliance, securing commercial flights into Telluride has been a bumpy ride. There were a host of carriers over the years, sometimes three carriers at once, but commercial service ceased twice in the last decade—in 2014 and again in 2018—primarily because of the

airline industry’s shift to larger regional aircraft, as well as the scarcity of pilots. Then Boutique Air swooped in with its small, eight-passenger direct flights to Denver, and this year, after a series of major infrastructure upgrades at the airport and several years of negotiations with the carrier, the airport will offer 30-passenger jet service with Denver Air Connection. For the first time ever, commercial jet service will be available at TEX. Colorado Flights Alliance is proud to deliver the new service. Colorado Flights CEO Matt Skinner credits the investment by the airport and the community support for helping to land the next-level flights, which will make it easier not just for visitors but also for locals to travel. “This has truly been a collective effort,” says Skinner. “Jets to TEX represent a great milestone in our regional air service.”

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MELISSA PLANTZ

Flying High

Up until this point, the only commercial service at TEX has been with turboprop planes. The difference between flying in a turboprop and in one of the DAC Dornier jets is like going from a Volvo to a Lamborghini. It’s a smoother, faster ride, says Wade Goetz of Denver Air Connection. “Dornier jets are really designed for high altitude takeoffs and landings,” says Goetz. “With a jet, you can fly twice as fast, and get above the weather instead of flying through it. We get to Denver in forty minutes.”

Goetz and Maenpa were old fly buddies, and Maenpa and the Colorado Flights Alliance courted the airline to provide service at TEX. Denver Air Connection is a branch of Key Lime Air, which is a niche operator—they started out as a cargo carrier decades ago and became the largest UPS feeder in the nation. Then they started flying passengers: 30 different collegiate sports teams. Because of their background they have seasoned pilots, and they also have modern, high-performance jet aircraft, both of which are a commodity for a small airline.

Denver Air Connection, which is based in Centennial, Colorado, has built a relationship with United

safety upgrades so that the airport could accommodate all kinds of aircraft. A little over a year ago, they enhanced the terminal building for TSA screenings and the waiting area. The projects were years in the making, but they set the stage for the airport’s success.

“I have to give credit to the Telluride Airport Authority board, as well as the FAA and the state, for having the vision and investing in the future of the airport,” says Maenpa.

With the facilities ready, all the parts came together, like the pieces of a Rubik’s cube lining up and matching colors.

“All the combined efforts over the past several years led to this moment,” says Skinner.

No longer will it just be the elite segment of the general aviation crowd that gets to fly in and out of Telluride in an advanced jet aircraft, says Maenpa. If you’ve ever looked up and marveled at the Gulfstream G4s carrying celebrities to town and dreamed of flying in the fast lane, you’re in luck. “Now the general public will be able to enjoy that with the Dornier jets.

That’s what is so exciting. They’re a rocket ship, an ideal aircraft. We’re so fortunate they were based in Colorado.” \

With a jet, you can fly twice as fast, and get above the weather instead of flying through it.

We get to Denver in forty minutes.

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Airlines, which means passengers can now book jet service to Telluride from all over the world. It was the perfect fit for TEX. The other piece of the puzzle was having the right facilities for jet service. The Federal Aviation Administration spent $84 million dollars in capital improvements, including matching funds from TEX and a Colorado Aviation grant, fixing a dip in the runway and making other extensive

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45

46 • INSIDE ART

Coming to the Table Telluride Transfer Warehouse design takes shape

By Susan Viebrock

C

hivalry dictated King Arthur’s be round to give each person equal weight and equal say in pressing matters. (And we know how well that worked out. Think Game of Thrones for real.)

Throughout history, tables have come in a wide variety of shapes and materials depending upon their intended use.

Superficial physical configurations aside, tables have always been the locus a family, a place to gather, talk, connect. In short, tables are where we nourish ourselves, literally and metaphorically.

Around a table we have all celebrated important milestones and shared experiences with friends and family.

And so it will be at the new table on the rooftop bar of the Transfer Warehouse, Telluride’s community center at the heart of its cultural corner. Telluride’s proposed table will be designed and programmed to provide a place for people to gather for meetings, meals, and conversations—

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or just sit with a coffee and a good book.

The idea for a special table came out during a number of the fifty-two facilitated public meetings held over the past seven years by Telluride Arts, the town’s designated custodian of the venue. Attended by about 700 locals, those gath-

erings allowed the community to shape a vision for the Telluride Arts District and this treasured landmark. “Germane to the vision for the Warehouse is to create an open, welcoming place for people to gather, similar and in complement to the library, but focused on history, arts, and cultural activities. From this core value, the planned spaces will be designed to maximize its use by many.

At the heart of that vision, emerged the idea of developing a community table,” said Kate Jones, the executive director of Telluride Arts and Art District, and a regional rainmaker.

And, for Telluride’s Table, there will be no need to wait for build-out on the Warehouse. Last year a donor sponsored the development of a prototype Telluride Arts will be installing for the summer season. Look for a series of Tuesday Table Talks starting in June, as well as artist exchanges, community and chefs’ dinners, and tiny table-top exhibits.

From the foundation up On May 31, 2016, the Town of Telluride gave the thumbs-up to the Telluride Transfer Company’s development proposal, which included the purchase of the Transfer Warehouse by Telluride Arts. The plan was for the reincarnated structure to once again serve as, well, a warehouse—but this time, a warehouse of ideas and art (writ large) under the guidance and supervision of Telluride Arts.

Specific plans for the Transfer Warehouse, a National Historic Landmark, include the Warehouse bar and cafe, serving a café menu, cocktails, coffee and tea; a small, museum-style shop that doubles as the reception area; a screening room for digital media, small lectures, solo and small group performance art, poetry readings, and a quiet place to read; exhibition space; gallery/studios as a working space for an artist-in-residence, which can be easily converted for exhibitions and small parties; a kitchen, storage space, and more.

In other words, the resurrected Transfer Warehouse is a place designed to feed users at every level of their being, body and soul. “Arts are how we truly embody our humanity,” said Penelope Gleason, a Telluride Arts board member. “Shared experiences as audiences at movies, music concerts, poetry readings, exhibits, workshops, and lectures help us to discover and appreciate our similarities and differences. These sorts of shared experiences are the foundation of community, compassion, and respect that help us transcend our differences and inspire us to engage in positive social interactions and actions.”

By June 2019, Telluride Arts will have retired the debt attached to the property. With the first phase of fundraising complete, new construction can begin any time in 2021.

In the end, Telluride will always have legendary mountains, boundless outdoor recreation, and preserved open space. Once complete, the Transfer Warehouse will be the cultural equivalent of those natural assets—a treasured architectural and historic landmark and a unifying force for the extended community and beyond. \ SUMMER/FALL 2019

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48 • ENVIRONMENT

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PIECING IT TOGETHER Local artist recycles print into “paintings”

A

t first glance, her landscapes and portraits look like stylized paintings. You have to examine them more closely to appreciate the texture and unique form.

Molly Perrault is a trained painter, but instead of using oils or acrylics, she paints with bits of recycled magazine paper— and the effect is stunning.

Perrault happened upon the medium by chance. She studied art at Louisiana State University in Baton Rouge, but when she moved to Telluride, she didn’t pack her art supplies. Coming from an urban place, she didn’t realize that a small resort town wouldn’t have an arts supply store, or that residents regularly drive an hour or more to pick up any special items. But no matter—she comes from a more resourceful, environmentally conscious generation.

She grabbed a bunch of old magazines and some glue, and started creating.

Perrault first dabbled in this collage-style painting in college. “When I needed a break from painting—I tended to blend the colors too much in painting—I kind of deflected to paper,” she said. “I didn’t devote myself wholeheartedly to the medium until I moved to Telluride.”

She says she likes being able to reuse the print magazines. Instead of them ending up in the waste stream, she gives the paper, which comes from trees, a new life as a tree or another part of a landscape.

“I feel like I need to give the paper its full cycle, do it justice in a way.”

Moving to the mountains didn’t just nudge Perrault toward a different medium, it also changed her artistic direction. “I was just ready for a change of environment; new

scenery, mountains, small community. Telluride has totally shaped my art. I never did landscapes before. I never felt inspired by my immediate surroundings until I moved here.”

Her artistic process is painstakingly slow, says Perrault, but meditative. It is similar to the type of technical painting in which she was trained: first she makes a sketch, then she lays out her palette.

But instead of mixing the colors, she digs through the magazines to find the exact shades of color and texture, and then clips out the pieces. Then she moves deliberately, completing sections at a time, typically from the top to the bottom. She also hides the title of each piece somewhere in the painting, using snippets of words from the publications. “I like it because it forces me to focus and put all my energy into it.

It’s like putting a puzzle together. It’s very detailed…sometimes I have to break it up by drawing for a couple of hours. It can take up to a couple of months to finish.”

Perrault said she still draws a lot, but she’s only done a couple of conventional paintings since she moved here and she’s committed to the new medium. “I have a website and I do take commissions; I’ve done a couple portraits. But in general I just end up doing what I’m most inspired by. I’m open to anything.” \

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52 • TELLURIDE FACES

TRUE COMMITMENT THE PEOPLE THAT TAKE CARE OF OUR TOWN Photos by Matt Kroll

These three people are probably already at work by the time your alarm goes off. They are responsible for the things that keep the town running: hauling off the waste, keeping the streets and utilities in order, and making the parks beautiful. They are the unsung heroes that make Telluride what it is: Meet Parks Supervisor Sally Jones, Streets Superintendent Rich Estes, and Waste Manager Elmer Plumlee, and don’t forget to tip your hat when you see them around town.

Elmer Plumlee TAKING OUT THE TRASH

T

he only time you worry about them is when they’re not doing their job. Whether you call them waste engineers, trash collectors, or garbage men, they perform a crucial service that everyone needs: taking out the trash.

It’s arguably the hardest job in town, but Elmer Plumlee—everyone’s favorite local Bruin Waste employee—never complains. “I’ve got 14 years in with Bruin, and all of it in Telluride,” says Plumlee. “We leave at six in the morning and we don’t take a lunch break. We stay at it pretty much constantly until the job’s done. Sometimes it’s nine o’clock at night.”

Plumlee is tall and fit, with long, blond-grey hair and a voluminous beard. He moved here from Arkansas and is an outdoorsman who appreciates the natural beauty and likes to “prowl around the cedars, hunt, and fish.” It’s his easy-going personality and gentlemanly manner that has charmed his customers, who he always recognizes and greets warmly even when he’s off the job. “When I see people out, I always wave and talk to them.

To me, being open and friendly is part of the job. It’s public relations.”

Plumlee mostly deals with construction waste, which in Telluride’s constant cycle of remodeling and gentrifying is a huge task. He says it’s a challenge, lifting the three-yard and six-yard cans into the truck, and in the summer he averages more than 100 compact yards a week. But he likes that the work is self-supervised. “I’m pretty much my own boss. I’m given my tickets and my route and it’s left up to me to decide the best way to do it.”

He’s had a lot of jobs over the decades to compare with his current waste management position.

He has worked in nursing homes, a chicken plant, an aluminum dye casting plant, and sawmills. He’s www.TellurideMagazine.com

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been a military policeman in the army, a logger, and has even dug ginseng. He also spent eleven years as a diesel mechanic, underneath the big rigs. He is much happier to be on top, in the driver’s seat of the Bruin trucks now.

Although the driving is one of the most challenging parts of the job, admits Plumlee; especially in the winter, when snow narrows the streets and makes them harder to navigate. He says he got stuck twice this winter and had to help pull out a

FedEx, UPS, and wine delivery truck.

“I do almost as much backing up as I do going forward,” he says, smiling.

Maybe even harder than the driving is dealing with the actual trash— there’s a reason people throw things away, after all. Plumlee also manages industrial and restaurant waste in addition to construction refuse. The sewer plant is obviously the worst, but dodging the rotten milk jugs and exploding bags of brisket juice are some of the things that separate the men from the boys in his line of work.

“It’s part of the job. There’s a whole lot more to it than just getting in one of those big trucks and getting down the road.”

There are also some treasures to be had among the trash—Plumlee says he occasionally runs across discarded musical instruments: guitars, banjos, fiddles. And once, he and his partner found $85 in coins someone had dumped into one of the cans, which they put into the pot of gratuities and split.

The most precious treasure he happened upon was not on the job, but in the bowling alley in Moab. An avid bowler, he was introduced to his wife there. He beams when he talks about her; he says she patiently waits for him to come home not at the regular 5 p.m. quitting time, but whenever he finishes the job. “The bowling is what got us together. Matter of fact, we got married in the bowling alley.”

Someday, says Plumlee, he’d like to retire back in Arkansas, where he has land and roots and family. But for now, he appreciates the beauty of the wilderness here, the love of his wife, and the satisfaction and steady income he makes from an honest day’s work. He has a kind of Zen serenity to him, a chop-wood-carrywater mentality: “I set out to do the best job I know how to do, every single day; it doesn’t matter what it is.” \

Rich Estes THE WIZARD OF PUBLIC WORKS

E

veryone around town calls Rich Estes “Big Rich,” for reasons that are obvious when you first meet him. He’s well over six feet tall and weighs 260 pounds, with broad shoulders and a wide smile. He is the quintessential gentle giant, with a calm voice and demeanor.

That calming presence comes in handy on the job: He doesn’t just supervise the crews that plow, sweep, and maintain the roads and water and sewer lines, he is also the person who fields any complaints from the public. “I get a lot of agitated phone calls,” says Estes. “Once you talk to them face to face, they come away with a better understanding. I find if you listen, make eye contact, and just respect them, it seems to turn the leaf.”

Estes moved to Telluride in 1983, and has been in the town’s public works department for decades. He started out as an equipment operator and worked his way up to his current role as street superintendent.

He’s got a crew of seven workers and two mechanics, and he says that although most people think they just paint the crosswalks and move the snow, that’s just the most visible part of the job; there’s a lot more that goes on behind the scenes. Ever wonder where the dirty snow goes after huge winters? There’s a paved snowmelt yard with a charcoal filtering system, with a pile 100 yards long, 40 yards wide, and up to 60 feet high, slowly re-entering the river next to the shop. In spring, when they start sweeping the streets, they fill 10-yard dump trucks with dust and sand to be hauled away.

They also enforce the building permits that affect the rights of way in town. The most challenging part of the job, though, is dealing with the utilities, says Estes. He’s in charge of the water and wastewater from the point it leaves the water treatment plant until it hits the sewage treatment plant. “It’s one of the less glamorous things we do. Clogs, backups, we deal with it; we’re on call, twenty-four seven.”

Estes didn’t get the nickname Big Rich as an adult, driving a backhoe or skid steer around town—he’s been called Big Daddy or Big Rich ever since he was a child. Estes has a twin brother who is shorter and smaller, and they look nothing alike

(“We actually have to show our driver’s licenses to prove it,” says Estes) so his nickname sprung from there.

And despite the fact that Estes is built like a linebacker, he is actually passionate about baseball. He played baseball as a kid, coached baseball and softball, and was the chief umpire in Telluride Town Park for many years. “Those were some of the best times of my life.”

Estes has actually spent as much time in Town Park as he has taking care of the town streets. He does production for Telluride Bluegrass Festival and Telluride Blues and Brews Festival, and has been involved with them in some capacity for 35 years. He started out doing security but over the years has come to be an important part of the whole process of turning the tiny park into festival grounds that accommodate tens of thousands of guests. He jokes that Bluegrass director Craig Ferguson calls him his “insurance policy,” because he is perhaps the only other person that understands how all the pieces of the infrastructure puzzle fit together, how it all works, and how to fix and operate everything.

Estes spends all his vacation time working the festivals, and even met his wife Keri (and her two beautiful daughters, who he considers his own) backstage at Bluegrass. He says it’s not the music that draws him to the festival scene—he barely sits through an entire set because he’s on the job, trying to make sure everyone has a good time—but the concert-goers. “My favorite thing is of course the people. People become lifelong friends and come back to see each other just those few days every year.”

It’s the people that keep him committed to his job at the town, too.

He says he feels lucky to have a great crew of coworkers, and when he’s dressed in his public works clothes, he likes being asked by people on the street where to go eat or what to do. And more than anything, he loves Telluride and being able to serve his neighbors. He relishes being asked to help, being needed, and making a difference. “I like being counted on.

I like people to rely on me and I like to accomplish things for people and be the go-to guy. I am here to work whatever hours they need me to, and get the job done. It’s my dream job, it really is.” \

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54 • TELLURIDE FACES

E

very spring the giant flowerboxes that line the center of Telluride’s main drag reappear, as if by magic, filled with an explosion of vibrant colored columbines, yarrow, dianthus, penstemon, petunias, pansies, snapdragons, and verbena.

But it isn’t actually magic—it’s the handiwork of Telluride’s talented park supervisor Sally Jones.

Being the park supervisor entails a lot more than just filling the flowerboxes. After thousands and thousands of people come to Telluride Town Park for the festivals and concerts, it’s Jones and her crew that have to transform the damaged turf back into ball fields. Like moving and planting the 1,000-pound flower boxes, it’s not like waving a magic wand—when they turned the irrigation on after one particular Telluride Blues and Brews Festival, the smell of beer spilled on the ground was so pungent that they joked it might actually be in the system. But over the decades, they have perfected the conversion from festival to fields. “We’ve spent years developing the grass. It’s all organic with really deep roots now, so it mostly comes back, but we do have to re-sod a lot of areas,” says Jones.

Jones doesn’t just take care of all of the parks in town, she actually www.TellurideMagazine.com

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Sally Jones

KEEPING THE PARKS PRISTINE helped build most of them. Jones started her 40-year career working in the parks department when she moved to town in 1979 after attending college in Boulder. When she first came, Telluride Town Park was still full of tiny mining shacks and horse stables. Jones oversaw huge projects as they built the parks, bit by bit, into what they are today. They turned the outhouses into actual restrooms, built the original fields, the campgrounds, the volleyball courts, tennis courts, baseball backstops, the Imagination Station playground, the river trail, the warming hut, the pool. Jones said that the budgets were smaller back then, and crews of volunteers helped with many of the projects. It was Jones who had to rally the troops. “We’d get a keg of beer in the back of the truck and run it down Main Street asking for helpers,” says Jones. “I like to motivate people. It was really fun.”

It was far from all work and no play, says Jones. Early on, her work

with the parks department was seasonal, so she also got to coach and teach skiing and run recreational programs like volleyball and rollerskating at the old Quonset hut. And even on the job, there were moments of levity. She remembers the winter they accidentally sunk the tractor in the Kids Pond skating rink. And the time that her crew hid out in the old parks department maintenance building in the middle of the festival grounds during the Bluegrass Festival, trying to poach the running of the tarps, but got busted because ten of them ran out at once, still wearing their purple work jerseys. “We laugh a lot and just make the hard work really fun. I credit a lot to my team—we work together really well and everyone respects one another.”

Jones says she has stayed on the job so long because it “never gets boring,” with new projects to tackle, the changing of the seasons, and the never-ending tasks, from fixing picnic tables and maintaining ball

fields, cross-country tracks, and pet waste pickup stations to running the Zamboni and managing the Town Park Pavilion. She raised her three children here, and as they grew up playing sports, working in the parks department allowed her to stay close to them even while she was at work.

Her job has also kept her very fit and young-looking. She still has the beauty and exuberance of a twenty-something ski bum, and is always smiling and laughing. But all the hard work and time outdoors does take a toll; Jones chuckles that she’s bionic now, after multiple knee and shoulder surgeries. But working in the parks department is also a little bit like having a gym membership.

“It’s like my crew says, we get paid for staying in shape.”

Jones says it’s been rewarding to watch the town evolve and the parks and trails become so beautiful. “Mostly I just love what I’m doing. Every day’s a challenge, whether it’s building the outdoor ice rink and getting stuck or having equipment fail, we just try and move forward with a positive attitude. I think that’s why I’ve been here so long.

It’s been a really fun ride. And look at it, isn’t it just the most amazing park?

It’s so cool to see the progression from nothing to everything we have.” \

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56 • HISTORY

ON WITH THE

SHOW…

THE CURTAIN GOES UP ON TELLURIDE’S FILM FESTIVAL

By Paul O’Rourke he Sheridan Opera House was filled to overflowing on the night of August 30, 1974. Opera house manager and festival coordinator Jim Bedford was busy with final preparations for the night’s festivities. James Card, curator of classic films at the George Eastman House in Rochester, New York, stood anxiously in the wings with his friend Tom Luddy, program director and curator at the Pacific Film Archive in Berkeley, California. Bill and Stella Pence, owners of the opera house, were nearby, waiting nervously for the curtain to go up. It was just after nine o’clock and the Pences, Card, and Luddy—the co-directors and co-founders of the Telluride Film Festival—must have felt some combination of relief and exhilaration. The SHOW was about to begin.

To thunderous applause the splendid 75-year old Gloria Swanson made her way onto the opera house stage wearing a red chiffon dress and a glittery sequined cap, an entrance befitting this world famous actress and fashion icon of the 1920s.

The lights dimmed and 35mm images flickered on the screen. An organist provided musical accompaniment as scenes from several silent era films synopsized Swanson’s illustrious career. As the lights came up James Card stepped on stage and presented the Silver Medallion to Gloria Swanson, the first tribute given to honor a career in film at the first ever Telluride Film Festival.

That first night might have been good enough to render the entire weekend a success. But Francis Ford Coppola was in attendance, too. There at the invitation of Tom www.TellurideMagazine.com

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Luddy, Coppola was to receive the second Silver Medallion.

Only two years earlier, The Godfather had played to capacity crowds and had garnered Oscars for Best Picture, Best Actor (Marlon Brando), and Best Adapted Screenplay. One might have assumed that Swanson and Coppola, the festival’s best-known celebrants, would have received the lion’s share of attention that Labor Day weekend. But it was the third Silver Medallion recipient who stole the SHOW. Leni Riefenstahl was 72 years old in 1974. A well-known actress to German and European audiences during the 1930s, as well as a gifted filmmaker known for her “mountain films” and her pioneering cinematographic techniques, Riefenstahl was, for her friend James Card, a good choice to be honored at that first film festival. Riefenstahl’s career is remembered for three films, Blue Light (1932), Triumph of the Will (1934), and the two-part documentary Olympia (1936). All three were screened at the festival. The latter two films—condemned by many as Nazi propaganda yet hailed by film scholars for their mastery of the medium—were, along with Riefenstahl’s presence, certain to engender controversy. The Monday noon seminar in Elks Park was to have featured Riefenstahl, but went ahead without her. Several members of the Anti-Defamation League had made their way to Telluride from Denver to voice their displeasure over her presence. Riefenstahl had limited her outdoor appearances as a consequence. Later that evening, following the screening of Blue Light and the presentation of her Silver Medallion, the opera house audience gave Riefenstahl a standing ovation. Whether it was prudent or even appropri-

The screening of Able Gance’s five-hour masterpiece Napoleon in Elks Park on a cold Friday evening in 1979 was one the TFF’s most significant events. (Photo courtesy of Phil Borgeson)

ate to honor Leni Riefenstahl in Telluride is debat- time, Telluride stepped up. “As the years went on,” Telluride apart from the handful of festivals that able. Without doubt, the commotion surrounding her remembers Jim Bedford, “the number of volunteers dotted the cinematic landscape at the time. One attendance at that first Telluride Film Festival put increased as the festival expanded.” But, as BF also other programming element was added in 1977, pointed out, “many came back, year after year, and the result of an unanticipated occurrence in 1976. the event—and the town—on the map.

As it had in 1974 and 1975 the festivals’ honorTelluride was still a relatively sleepy place in they would do whatever was asked of them to put on the early 1970s. Its unpaved streets and boarded up the best SHOW possible. For everyone it was a true ees and programs were made public several weeks main street businesses belied the fact that the town labor of love.” It was like “Tom Sawyer’s Fence,” prior to the event. On August 19, 1976 The Telluwas in the process of re-discovering itself by the time remembers Stella Pence. “All we really needed to ride Times announced, “The three most honored film artists at the Third Telluride Film Festival will the film festival debuted in 1974. The population had do was hand out the paint brushes.” be animation director Chuck more than doubled since the Jones, actress Jeanne Moreau, turn of the decade, many of the and movie director King Vidor.” newcomers young, smart, artisOn September 3, just as the tic, ambitious, a little rebellious, festival was set to begin, the and anxious to transform a minTimes’ headline read: Moreau ing town on the verge of becomCancels. In what was touted ing a ski resort into something

by Richard Eder in The New more reflective of the ideals, York Times as “the smallest, energies, and artistic sensibilthe most original, and in many ities they’d brought with them ways the most stimulating of from places like New York, D.C., the major film festivals in the San Francisco, Chicago, Detroit, United States,” the 3rd Telor Madison, Wisconsin. luride Film Festival became Jim Bedford was one of those, more associated with Moreau’s like many, who ended up in Tellucancellation than with its outride in the early 1970s by way of standing program. Never again, someplace else and a recommenpledged the festival’s directors. dation from a friend. Bedford, or No longer would passhold“BF” as he came to be known, ers or festival attendees know found lodging in the basement of in advance who was to be honthe Sheridan Opera House. And ored or what films were to be as he tells it, “one day not long screened. Suspense—and a bit after I’d arrived, I heard footsteps more flexibility and a certain over my head, on the floor boards. amount of trust between the That was when I met Bill and directors and the audience— Stella Pence.” Informed by the were added to the festival’s couple the opera house was to already unique format in 1977. undergo extensive renovation so The 4th festival was marked also it could, once again, operate as a by the retirement of co-founder movie theatre, Jim inquired, “Do James Card. William Everson you need a manager?” It looked had a penchant for classic films to be, to borrow from a classic, and westerns, and he stepped “the beginning of a beautiful into Card’s shoes with a swagfriendship.” ger that became well known to When James Card visited attendees as well as to volunthe Pences during the summer teers. “He was a real presence,” of 1973 and suggested—it was said Lynn Rae Lowe. Everson’s more like a proclamation—a collection of 16mm films were film festival be staged at the the staple of many a Community newly reopened and renovated Center (Quonset Hut) screenopera house, Jim Bedford was ing over the next decade. “He about to take on another job. And was much loved in Telluride,” it wasn’t long after that when said Stella Pence. a good number of Telluride’s Produced as it was by the recent transplants—people like Jim Bedford in front of the Sheridan Opera House in July 1974.

National Film Preserve, the Lynn Rae Lowe, Baerbel Hacke, non-profit corporation set up and Salli Russell, to name only I CANNOT CONCEIVE OF LIVING WITHOUT

by Bill and Stella Pence and a few—found a calling of sorts James Card in 1974, Telluride’s when it was announced “The SHOWING FILMS. MOVIES HAVE BEEN THE film festival was well respected National Film Preserve and the AMBROSIA OF MY LIFE. TO OFFER THAT GIFT TO for its exposition and celebraSheridan Opera House in cooption of silent era films, undiseration with the George Eastman OTHERS, SHARING IN THEIR ENJOYMENT OF THE covered masterpieces, and its House and the Telluride Council MOVIES I LOVE, IS MY GREATEST JOY. efforts to preserve rare cinfor the Arts and Humanities ematic treasures. But there present the First Telluride Film —James Card, co-founder of the Telluride Film Festival had been no one event more Festival, Aug. 30 – Sept. 2, 1974.”

The original festival recipe was, without too eagerly anticipated than the screening of Kevin A film festival needed projectionists and sound technicians, people to handle transportation and much exaggeration, near perfect. Tributes, first- Brownlow’s meticulous restoration of the epic crowd management, food service workers, ticket time American screenings, a pre-festival party, film, Napoleon, in 1979. That Tom Luddy and Bill takers, concession workers, ushers, maintenance noon seminars in Elks Park, no red carpets, no and Stella Pence were able to convince the film’s people, and janitors. The festival needed volunteers. paparazzi, no press junkets, with silent era, con- 90-year-old French Director, Abel Gance, to come And in keeping with the spirit of camaraderie and temporary, revival, and relatively unknown films to Telluride stood as the high water mark in the community involvement that was evolving at the all components in a playbook that served to set festival’s short history.

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58 • HISTORY

Co-Founder and Co-Director, James Card, was first and foremost a film collector. To the Telluride Film Festival he brought his unabashed affection for the collection, preservation, and exhibition of silent films. (Photo courtesy of Phil Borgeson)

With the box canyon and Ingram Falls in the background, Leni Riefenstahl—known for her German mountain films— poses with her Silver Medallion in 1974. (Photo courtesy of Phil Borgeson)

Jack Nicholson and Angelica Huston were in Telluride for the 2nd TFF in 1975, where Nicholson received a Silver Medallion.

(Photo courtesy of Phil Borgeson)

The restored version of Napoleon was just over Wells had arrived in Telluride in 1978, and with an “to redefine its purpose just a little, to be betfive hours long—the original was nine hours—and influx of dollars to expand the ski mountain, Tellu- ter…. It’s magic and it’s unwise to tamper with had never played in its entirety to an American audi- ride began to take on the appearance and, perhaps, something close to perfect.” At the Telluride Film ence. A 75-minute version had shown in Telluride at the attitude of an up-and-coming resort town. There Festival, the “audience is king.” The directors and the opera house—or Segerberg Theatre as it was was little doubt the film festival had contributed production manager Jim Bedford insisted the then called—on December 30, 1928. Logistics were to Telluride’s popularity and commerce for a half festival have the best projection and sound. Not an issue. Screens at the festival’s three venues in dozen years. In the minds of most, the town and its only did the audience get what they deserved, 1979—the Opera House, the Nugget Theatre, and the principal industry should return the favor. And so they explained, filmmakers, according to Bedford, Community Center—were simply not up to the task it was: Thanks to funding from the Telluride Com- “knew their films would be shown as they’d never of presenting Napoleon as Gance had intended. The pany and the Town, a fundraising campaign, grant been shown before.” That’s why they—and the decision was made to have local resident—writer awards from several state and national foundations, audiences—kept coming back, year after year.

The “tweaking” done to the festival took the and documentary filmmaker—Lito Tejada-Flores and the announcement by Festival Development and his crew construct a 60-foot wide triptych screen Coordinator, Lynn Rae Lowe, that Frontier Airlines form of continuing with the Elks Park open air (3 separate but contiguous surfaces) in Elks Park. was to be the “Official Airline of the Telluride Film cinema venue and by adding a post-festival party, with Director Les Blank often providing his “smellOn a very chilly Friday evening, August 31 at 9 p.m., Festival” in 1982, the SHOW did, indeed, carry on.

With its financial house in relatively good a-round” culinary fun complementing the theme of with Bill Pence in the projection booth behind one of three projectors and Abel Gance seated at the order, Telluride Film Festival had the luxury if not that particular evening’s screening. The Labor Day window of his second floor room at the New Sheri- the wisdom, according to Bill and Stella Pence, picnic was introduced in 1979, first held, along with the Monday noon seminar, at the top dan Hotel across the street, the of the Coonskin lift. In 1981, in addi315-minute, larger-than-life cintion to screening its first world Preematic masterpiece played to its miere—Louis Malle’s My Dinner appreciative Telluride audience. with Andre—the festival directors Telluride Times reviewer Peter jiggled their tribute program ever Shelton noted, “Since Napoleon so lightly by honoring the character opened at the Paris Opera House in actor and inviting Margaret Hamil1927, no one, including Gance, had ton, Woody Strode, Elisha Cook, and seen the complete film. So it was John Carradine to Telluride, along a triumph for Telluride,” Shelton with the other honorees, Brazilian continued, “just doing it, putting it Director Carlos Diegues and Yugoup there for what it is, one of the slavian Director Dusan Makavejev. rarest of things.”

The latter’s film, WR: Mysteries Even with a surge of rave of the Organism raised a few eyereviews following the screening brows, especially from unprepared of Napoleon and the tribute to sidewalk strollers passing by Elks Abel Gance, finances posed a Park on that Sunday night, alarmed distinct threat to Telluride’s film perhaps by the film’s several erotfestival. As it was, the festival had ically suggestive scenes. Bill and advanced from one year to the Stella Pence apologized (for the next on its own inertia, the pockoutdoor screening, not the film) in etbooks of its directors and their a letter to the editor, in the Times, businesses, and the dedication writing, “We are indeed sorry if the and good will of its growing legion screening of WR was offensive to of volunteers. It got to the point some. We meant no harm. We will be where there were serious discusmore careful in the future.” sions about “closing the curtain” “Careful” was not exactly in and taking the SHOW elsewhere. keeping with the Telluride Film But as fate—or providence— Cartoon by Pudin from the Telluride Times, September 5, 1974. (Courtesy of Phil Borgeson) Festival’s modus operandi. Making would have it, Ron Allred and Jim www.TellurideMagazine.com

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the program secret was a decidedly risky decision, after all. Nor was careful a guideword for the Town of Telluride or its residents during the 1970s and early 1980s. The countercultural character of the Town, along with its rugged and remote geographic location were, in an important way, mirrored in the festival’s attitude and partially responsible for its allure. That “stage” offered something special to the festival, especially for those actors, directors, producers, critics, scholars, and film lovers who were unfamiliar with Telluride, at least before their first visit.

Festival Co-Director and Co-Founder Tom Luddy came up with the novel idea to chauffeur filmmakers—often Eastern Europeans—from Las Vegas to Telluride via Monument Valley. A wonderful way, thought Luddy, to introduce these great filmmakers to the American West. In 1983, one such fellow traveler was Russian Director, Andrei Tarkovsky, who both Tom and Bill Pence had for seven years endeavored to bring to Telluride. Tarkovsky was not welcome in his homeland due to the controversial subject matter of his widely acclaimed films and was at the time living in Rome, where he’d just completed work on his latest film, Nostalghia, winner of the Critic’s Choice Award at Cannes that year.

The film was to have its North American premiere in Telluride. One could only imagine the conversations in Tom Luddy’s van. Tarkovsky’s disaffection with Russia and with Russian censorship must have been among the topics.

On September 1, 1983, the day before the 10th Telluride Film Festival was to kick off, Korean Air Lines Flight 007, on its way from New York City via Anchorage to Seoul, deviated from its scheduled route, entered restricted Soviet air space, and was shot down. All 269 passengers on board were killed. The Cold War heated up that Labor Day weekend. And while the SHOW did go on, the international incident lent a rather interesting backdrop for what became a spirited back and forth between the Russian Director and an American actor, both honored at that year’s festival.

During his Saturday tribute, Tarkovsky boldly proclaimed, through his interpreter, “My intuition tells me that this audience is in a very critical moment now, that they are willing to find in cinema something different—not an entertainment—but something deeper and more substantial.”

It’s likely Richard Widmark, an actor well respected for his roles in such films as The Kiss of Death and The Alamo, was in the audience that Saturday night. During his own tribute the following evening an emotional Widmark, his hands shaking as he said, “I’d like to say a word in defense of entertainment…Griffith, Keaton and Chaplin were all entertainers.” He concluded his remarks without once mentioning Tarkovsky’s name, “Pretentiousness and pomposity are not art.”

It was fitting perhaps that the curtain came down on the tenth Telluride Film Festival in a fashion similar to the first. The verbal sparring between Andrei Tarkovksy and Richard Widmark may have reminded festivalgoers in 1983 of the controversy that marked the inaugural event in 1974, when strong feelings surfaced with the tribute to Leni Riefenstahl. But the rancor, if you could call it that, was never perceived, in either case, as causing those festivals to end on sour notes. Quite the contrary. Cinema is meant to stir the emotions,

Gloria Swanson mingles with festival fans and critic, Elliot Stein (right) in Elks Park in 1974. James Card (white hat) is in the background. (Photo courtesy of Phil Borgeson)

William (Bill) Everson, a specialist in silent cinema and American genres, replaced Co-Founder, James Card, in 1977. (Photo courtesy of Phil Borgeson)

The Saturday noon Elks Park seminar in 1974 featured Francis Ford Coppola (center). On his right is Yugoslavian Director Dusan Makavejev and TFF co-founder Tom Luddy. (Photo courtesy of Phil Borgeson)

to get people thinking and talking. A little gentle intellectual pushing and shoving is a good thing, something to be welcomed and celebrated.

While we can assume that Widmark and Tarkovsky did not clink beer steins at the after party watching Les Blank’s In Heaven There is No Beer, it’s certain the directors, the guests, the staff, the volunteers and the locals in attendance must have raised a well-deserved toast to ten years of the Telluride Film Festival. Jim Bedford said it well in an interview with Art Goodtimes in The Telluride Times, “I can’t think of anything to make it better than it was. To me it was the synthesis of ten years of effort.”

Perhaps what the Telluride Film Festival was most remembered for after ten years was what made it an instant hit right from its opening act, what Bill Pence called Telluride’s intimate scale, where “the town is the festival and the festival is the town.” And while its program evolved and its reputation grew during its first ten years, the Telluride Film Festival’s cozy immediacy and conviviality—where directors and actors and a host of movie types mix easily and willingly with passholders, festivalgoers and volunteers—remains its hallmark. For four days each year—going on 46 years now—people from around the world and from around the corner gather in Telluride to celebrate the SHOW. It was then, as it is now, a film festival for people who love films. \

CREDITS The writer relied heavily on articles from The Telluride Times (1974-1983) and Jeffrey Ruoff’s excellent book, Telluride in the Film Festival Galaxy (St. Andrews University, 2016), from which several quotes were borrowed. The writer gained perspective on Tom Luddy and the festival by way of his radio interview (KQED in San Francisco) with Michael Krasny in 2011. The writer thanks Lynn Rae Lowe, Leslie Sherlock, Bill and Stella Pence, Rudy Davison, Kathy Rohrer, Philip and Gerry Borgeson, and Jim Bedford for their assistance and their insights on the early years of Telluride’s Film Festival.

POSTSCRIPT With assistance and encouragement from Tom Luddy, Andrei Tarkovsky was able to contact world-renowned Russian cellist—and defector—Mstislav Rostropovich by phone from Telluride during the film festival in 1983. Rostropovich agreed to accompany Tarkovsky back to Italy and was at his side during a press conference in Milan on July 10, 1984 when the great director made public his intentions to seek political asylum and never return to Russia. All of this, of course, the consequence of a drive through Monument Valley, a word of support from Tom Luddy, and the magic that is the Telluride Film Festival.

Abel Gance and Kevin Brownlow on stage at the Sheridan Opera House for Gance’s tribute at the 1979 TFF. (Photo courtesy of Phil Borgeson) SUMMER/FALL 2019

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62 • LITERATURE

A Kind Of Quiet Most People Have Forgotten The following is an excerpt from Pam Houston’s Deep Creek: Finding Hope in the High Country, W.W. Norton & Company, 2019.

I

PAM HOUSTON | ILLUSTRATIONS BY STEPHANIE MORGAN ROGERS

t’s July 2014. I am guest teaching in the Chatham University Low Residency MFA program in Pittsburgh, where I have been adopted for these ten days by a couple of smart, talented and beautiful young women named Kyle and Maggie, and their handsome, entirely self-possessed mutt, Apacha. It is always both mystifying and flattering when the cool kids want to hang out with my sturdy, skort-wearing, middle-aged self, and makes for a very satisfying do-over from my teenaged years, during which the Kyle and Maggie equivalents would have rolled their eyes hard if I had taken one step in their direction. Or perhaps there were no Kyle and Maggie equivalents in my teen-hood, because along with being the most popular girls in the MFA program, Kyle and Maggie are almost preternaturally kind.

I can see by their eyes, though, they each carry some large and not short-term sadness within them—which is the same thing people say about me when they look into my eyes for the first time, even on the rare days when I feel as though I don’t have a care in the world. Maggie, I know, has recently lost her mother, who was very dear to her, and she is swimming in the deep waters of that grief. But Kyle’s sadness, about which I have been told nothing, has a different flavor, one as familiar to me as my name, and has something to do—I am nearly certain—with how she is letting herself be treated by a man.

The girls and I have taken Apacha for a walk through the huge, half-wild and fabulous Frick Park, on Pittsburgh’s east side, and now we’re having a beer—well, they are having a beer—while we decide whether to stay where we are and eat vegetarian, or move on to BRGR for organic bison lettuce wraps. I’m not drinking beer these days, nor any alcoholic beverage, nor soda, nor coffee, nor even green tea. I’m not eating wheat, nor sugar, nor anything packaged, processed, or inorganic, because when I went to the doctor for my yearly check up in May, I had the first high blood pressure reading of my life, along with a pre-cancer diagnosis in the form of HPV 16. The ecosystem that is me was clearly in trouble, and it was time, I decided, to clean up my act.

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As the doctor was writing a prescription for the blood pressure meds, I asked her if I could have six months to right the ship. “No,” she said, without looking up, so then I asked her if I could have three. “I’m writing the prescription,” she said, “I won’t be there to see whether you take the pills or not.” Which I realized was true, and which I chose to interpret as permission.

Caffeine has always been my go-to antidepressant, and I’ve said for years if I ever had to make a choice between giving up coffee and dying I would choose death. But as it turned out, all death had to do was wave at me from the window of a bus at a distant intersection for me to quit all caffeinated beverages cold turkey. To heal, I reasoned, my body needed sleep, and I had not slept properly in decades, if ever. Not if we define sleep as the state, that, when you emerge from it, is like coming up from some deep ocean-y paradise of nothingness at the very bottom of the world. Unsurprisingly, I spent my first ten non-caffeinated days wanting to kill myself.

And look just there, how I have used the phrase “wanting to kill myself” as a kind of mildly self-deprecating but good-humored figure of speech.

Surprising, one of my selves says to another. As I was likewise surprised when, a few weeks ago, I was standing behind a podium and in answer to a reader’s too personal ques-

tion I heard myself saying, “There was a period of my life when I would have considered killing myself, but that period is over now.”

Is that so? That same self, the cynic, asked.

Yes, another answered—this one has a slightly imperious, almost British accent— I feel quite confident that’s where we are. ***** Two mostly wonderful things about life after fifty: I’m never sure what I am going to say until I hear myself saying it, and it’s hard to remember, with any real accuracy, feeling any way other than how I feel right now. But if a person’s books are any reliable record of her life, and in my case they certainly ought to be, there were periods in both my thirties and forties where—and here I want to be careful with the wording—the possibility of suicide came up a lot.

In my thirties I wrote a book called Waltzing the Cat and that book contains a story called Cataract, about a river trip gone awry, and after the flip where both female characters nearly drown in a series of class V rapids, there is this moment of dialogue: “Lucy,” Thea said, “if you were to kill yourself ever, what would it be over?”

“A man,” I said, though I didn’t have a face for him. “It would only be over a man. And you?”

“I don’t think so,” she said. “Maybe something, not that.”

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“What then?” I said. But she didn’t answer.

“If you are ever about to kill yourself over a man,” she said, “get yourself to my house.

Knock on my door.”

“You do the same,” I said. “For any reason.”

“We’ll talk about what it was like being under the water,” she said, “what it was like when we popped out free.”

The only decade of my life in which I don’t remember having suicidal thoughts—until this one—was my twenties, possibly because I seemed to be trying so hard to kill myself in more socially acceptable outdoorsy ways. In addition to highwater, hurricanes and out-ofbounds skiing, I also dabbled in tornados and mudslides, and found myself flat on my back looking up at the underside of any number of bucking, green-broke horses.

Back in Park City, in grad school, I looked after a horse named Whoosie, a beautiful young thoroughbred just off the track who, kicking up for joy one day while I had him on the lunge line, came into contact with my left arm, his hoof breaking my radius like a breadstick and pulverizing a significant portion of my ulna.

I’d been alone at the barn when it happened, and when I came to, there on the floor of the indoor arena, Whoosie’s nose inches from my face in concern, I saw my hand was flipped over backwards in relation to my elbow. Glorious shock kicked in, allowing me to sit up, turn my hand the right way round and tie it tight to my body with my scarf, one handed, before stalling the horse, bolting the barn doors and walking nearly a mile to the nearest residence. The temperature that January night was ten below zero.

Several times along the way I nearly fainted, and when that happened I would sit myself down, take big breaths and nearly nod off or pass out—it’s hard to say which in that condition—but then I would hear a train whistle, clear and loud, and I would get myself together and go a little farther.

I told my story many times that evening, to the nice people in the house closest to the barn who called the ambulance, to the EMT’s who cut all three of my layered coats off of me in strips, to the receiving nurse in the ER, to my grad school friends who rushed to the hospital, and to the intern while we waited for the surgeon—I had somehow, on graduate student health insurance, scored the orthopedic surgeon for the Utah Jazz—to arrive.

It was close to midnight when he did, and as I heard myself describe that train whistle for the tenth time, I stopped midsentence.

There were no trains in Park City. “Now wait,” I said, “I would swear….”

“Oh,” my surgeon said, smiling kindly, “Lots of people hear the train.” He patted my good arm and told me he would see me first thing in the morning.

Before they wheeled me into surgery, my surgeon told me I ought to prepare myself to wake up to my arm amputated at the elbow.

“I’m going to do everything I can to save it,” he said solemnly, “but it’s a hell of a mess in there.”

I’d been too afraid of freaking out my mother to call and tell her about the accident, and now I was glad I hadn’t. If I did wake up without my arm, I would need a few days to grieve it before it became something she had lost.

The team operated for four solid hours, removing eighty-five bone chips, reconnecting tendons, transplanting a hunk of cadaver bone from the bone bank, and securing their work with two metal plates and eighteen screws.

They wheeled me out of surgery and my doctor ordered x-rays. He decided he didn’t like the way everything looked, so the team spent four more hours doing most of it all over again.

Waking up with my arm still attached gave me the courage to call my mother, though my surgeon warned me it would be six to twelve months before we knew for certain whether the bone transplant would take.

“No really,” I told her, “It’s a miracle. I got the best doctor in Utah, and my arm is still here!”

“May-be,” she said, in two distinct syllables, and I heard ice rattle in the glass in her hand, “But you’re still going to have those big ugly scars…”

The surgeon who spent those nine hours replacing my pulverized ulna with cadaver bone sent me home with a bag full of Darvocet which, within 48 hours, created some kind of chemical reaction in my brain that sent me so low I called, for the first and only time in my life, a suicide hotline.

When the guy picked up the phone, I immediately apologized for taking his time. “I know I ought be happy,” I said “my arm is still here, hurting like a son of a bitch, but more or less in tact.”

“Are you taking anything?” he asked, and when I told him about the Darvocet he said,

“Well for chrissake, stop! Haven’t you ever heard of Advil?” Which turned out to be some of the best advice I’ve gotten in my life.

I spent most of my forties writing a book called Contents May Have Shifted, and its working title, for all the years it lived in my laptop was, Suicide Note, or 144 Reasons Not To Kill Yourself.

Really? The cynic pipes up again. Really?

If you were ever actually suicidal, you must not have been very good at it. And it’s hard to argue with her now, over our daily lunch of hibiscus tea and kale superfood salad. It’s bad business to deny your past, the earnest self, the one who pays attention in therapy, tells her, and for now they—we—leave it at that.

Much was made of my working title in interviews I gave when Contents came out because it was mentioned in the jacket copy, but I had never intended to call the published book Suicide Note.

Too maudlin, too melodramatic, the contradiction within the longer version of the title dishonest, almost coy. The working title was simply a daily way to describe to myself what I was doing: prophylactically collecting and transliterating suicide prevention nuggets, gathering up all the things about this planet that made me want to stay on it, against some unknown future moment when I might feel it would be better not to. And, because I find myself here on the other side of fifty, trying with all my might to stay alive, it seems reasonable to conclude that at least to some extent, my strategy worked. ***** The waitress brings Kyle and Maggie their beers and me my Pellegrino with lime, and we are talking about favorite dogs or favorite bands, but Kyle is looking at me so intently with those sad, soulful eyes the next thing I know I’m saying, “You know, there was a period of my life when I thought I might kill myself because a man I thought I loved didn’t love me back. It embarrasses me a little to say so, but there it is.”

Kyle’s face is some mixture of stunned and relieved, which I take as a sign to continue. “I’ve always measured my sense of wellbeing on airplanes, when we hit turbulence. You know, how much—or how little—do I care if this plane goes down?” They nod. They both do know.

“I can remember actually willing the plane to tumble from the sky a few times, because some Joe I probably could not pick out of a lineup were he here tonight, didn’t call, or went out with one of his four other girlfriends, or lied about where he was last Saturday.”

The girls are quiet—even Apacha has stopped licking his balls. It flashes through my mind I might be grossing them out, like in the way you don’t want your parents to mention the great sex they had over breakfast.

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“You didn’t ask me to dinner, I know, so I would sit here and rattle on with my old lady advice,” I continue, “but I have been thinking a lot lately about how much power I used to give the men in my life to make me feel okay, or not okay. There are reasons for that—ugly childhood reasons—so I try to give myself a break.

I’m not a regretter, exactly—I think writers all need something to push against and that was my thing for a long time—and yet at fifty-two it seems absolutely mystifying to me I would give men so much power. It’s power I don’t think most of them even really want.”

Now Kyle is looking at me like I have crawled inside her brain. We are all silent for a while. “Maggie’s got a good man,” is what she finally manages to say.

I nod. I don’t doubt it. Maggie’s grief for her mom is palpable, piercing, but it is not full of the shadows and confusion that come when a little girl is treated badly in a hundred different ways by fathers or father figures, that insidious, everlasting training.

“I don’t know anything about your past,” I say to Kyle, “and I’m not trying to tell you how to live. Somebody could have said all this to me when I was your age—I’m sure someone did— and it would have probably just made me double down. I had to do it as long as I had to do it,

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chase those nasty cowboys.” I smile and Kyle smiles, but her eyes never do. “I’m just saying, I guess, there’s another version, after this version, to look forward to. Because of wisdom or hormones or just enough years going by. If you live long enough you quit chasing things that hurt you; you eventually learn to hear the sound of your own voice.”

Apacha groans, maybe signaling the end of the conversation, so I drain my Pellegrino and reach for the check, but Kyle stills my hand.

“What made it change,” she asks, “for you?”

There are so many possible answers, including thirty thousand dollars worth of therapy; several new age healing ceremonies—one involving a man who set his chest on fire and another involving a dust buster; five published books and a pre-cancer diagnosis, but I say the thing that feels first, truest, and most long-term: “I realized I could make my own life,” I say. “I could have my own ranch. I finally realized I could be the cowboy.” ***** But now it is a grey, late November morning, and I’m here, a cowboy on her very own ranch—120 acres of hard dirt and ponderosa, of sixty-mile-per-hour winds and blizzards that drop five feet of snow in 24 hours; of floods and

drought and fire; of blue columbine and quaking aspen and 12,000 foot peaks all around; of unspeakable beauty and a kind of quiet, on a winter morning, most people on the planet have forgotten exists. I am here, in the middle of all that, and I am pretty damn sad anyhow.

The days seem impossibly short already and yet we’ll lose daylight for another month before this planetary ship turns itself around.

I’m worried about old Roany’s chances of making the winter, and I can’t decide if it is more humane to move him to a warmer place where everything would be unfamiliar, or try to heat the barn a few degrees with chicken lamps so he can live—or die—in the place he knows. I had to rush little Ingrid, this year’s lamb out of Jordan, to Doc’s yesterday with bloat, and he saved her life, but once an animal is prone to bloat it tends to return. Facebook has already made me cry four times this morning. First it was Ursula LeGuin reminding me we don’t write for profit, we write for freedom; next it was a video of the Unist’ot’en Indigenous Camp Resistance trying to stop the Keystone Pipeline; and then it was the state of Nevada electing a man to their house of representative who said “simple minded darkies” show “lack of gratitude” to whites. Honestly, who wouldn’t be sad waking up in this world? And then I

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67

68 • LITERATURE clicked on The Prairie Fire Lady Choir singing a song my friend Annette wrote called “Not A Good Man”—a kind of Irving Berlin meets Laurie Anderson number with all the women wearing lollipop colored dresses and big hair, and when that teared me up I knew I might be in serious trouble.

Cry me a river, says the cynic. How about we make a short list of all things that could be wrong and are not. So I do. At this moment, none of my close friends are dying (except inasmuch as we are all dying). I have a job—I have several jobs—and at only one of them am I not respected. I am not underwater on my mortgage. I have a barn full of hay and four cords of wood on the porch and a cabinet full of dark chocolate covered figs and almonds. My upstream neighbor has not gotten into bed with the frackers and the condo village at the top of Wolf Creek Pass got defeated yet again. My presence on this ranch means these 120 acres will not be subdivided, will not be paved over, will not be turned into dream homes for people who come here one week a year.

And still, this morning, that dark undertow, the feeling of looking up from the bottom of a dank, wet well….

Time to move. On this point, all selves are in agreement. Put the smart wool on, lace your boots, don your barn coat. Cut the apples, cut the carrots, feed the equines from your hands. Cut the string that holds the bale of hay together, two flakes for the mini-donkeys, six for the horses, everything that’s left for the sheep. Top off the horse water, top off the sheep water, double check the heaters in the troughs. Listen to the reassuring thump of cold boots soles on frozen ground, the contented burps and purrs of the chickens as they peck around after their organic scratch grains, the other-worldly whoosh of wing beats overhead—the bald eagle who winters upriver, back after his one-year hiatus. This is how the ranch heals me with its dailiness, its necessary rituals not one iota different than prayer.

The forecast is calling for wind and possibly snow tonight but right now it is perfectly still and almost 20 degrees, too warm for my heavy barn coat. The creek at this time of year, with all the freezing and unfreezing, is an ice sculpture, the willows lining it pencil drawings, the mountaintop beyond it already feet deep in snow.

Olivia, still a pup, is charging and leaping to see above what’s left of the tall grass while William patrols the perimeter. From here I can see Middle Creek Road, Lime Creek

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Road, as well as the state highway across the river, and though this represents some fairly large percentage of all the roads in Mineral County, for the hour we’ll be walking, not one car will go by.

Out here, on this acreage, I’ve learned not only to hear my own voice, but to recognize what makes my heart leap up and then go towards it: the snowshoe hare—half way through his bi-an-

Viola papilionacea And here they are, the wild violets.

How they leap into gardens uninvited, their tiny purple faces unapologetic, open.

How they thrive amidst the other plants chosen by the gardener. They do not mind not being the chosen ones. They thrive.

Tenacity can be so small, so beautiful.

I may not be a powerful woman, but I have some wild violet in me, some willingness to insist on renegade beauty, some desire to be soft and yet persist, some certainty that the garden is big enough for us all.

—ROSEMERRY WAHTOLA TROMMER

nual color change—William scares up along the back fence, his big white feet flashing as his still tawny body gains distance. A coyote, sitting, dignified and still as a church, 200 yards across the pasture, watching us make our way to the wetland, and then the flash, when William sees him, and he sees William see him, his total evaporation into thin air, like a ghost dog come from some other plane of being.

These are the things that have always healed me; it just took me half a lifetime to really trust them, to understand how infallible they are. Moving through space, preferably outdoor space, preferably outdoor space that maintains some semblance of nature, if not this nature, some other nature. When I’m happy it’s a carnival out here and when I am sad it to almost too beautiful to bear—but not quite. It is definitely too beautiful to contemplate leaving. I climb the hill where John Robert Pinckley—the first man to build a cabin on this land— and his children, Bob and Ada, are buried, and I know well that when I claimed these 120 acres they also claimed me. We are each other’s mutual saviors.

Sitting at the Pinckleys’ gravesite, William pressed up against one thigh and Olivia on the other, looking across the river at Bristol Head all aglow in the low winter light, I am certain the world is not out to hurt me but to heal me, and I’ll hold on to it with both hands for as long as I am able.

This is what I try to explain to Kyle and Maggie over a second round of beers and Pellegrino in Pittsburgh. We decide bison burgers sound better than falafel, so Maggie drives me to BRGR while Kyle runs home to drop off Apacha. Maggie and I talk about the eleven-month trip she and her boyfriend took four months after her mother’s death. “I was afraid I wouldn’t survive her absence if I stayed still,” she said, and I said, “Maybe you were collecting new things to love about the world.”

We wait for Kyle for thirty minutes and then an hour. Finally she calls to say she is on her way so we order for her, but by the time she actually gets there her food is stone cold and she barely eats a bite.

She’ll send me an email a few weeks later thanking me for the things I said to her, admitting she had been driving around all that time we were waiting, crying, trying to pull herself together enough to join us, but that I wasn’t to worry too much about her because since that night she had been working on her writing and spending quality time with Maggie and Apacha and feeling a whole lot better. I wrote back and told her though I thought of her often, I hadn’t, exactly, been worried. She sounded so solid, so grounded in her email I decided I didn’t need to say the other thing I was pretty sure of: that she had cried that night, not so much for the disappointing past, as for the dawning possibility of an unspeakably beautiful future. I was pretty sure she already knew. \

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69

70 • TELLURIDE TURNS Headlines & Highlights from the Local News

MELISSA PLANTZ

Measuring Up

Near-record snowfall in Telluride

F

or the first time ever, the San Juan Mountains were washed in black on the avalanche forecast map this winter, indicating “extreme danger.” It was the highest avalanche danger rating since the Colorado Avalanche Information Center started its assessments in 1973. More than 3,000 avalanches were recorded in the state, many of which were of record-breaking size and intensity.

Red Mountain Pass was closed due to avalanches for nineteen days, and I-70 was shut down multiple times when snow slides buried the highway. There were two local avalanche fatalities, one in Bear Creek and another above Priest Lake, and numerous others across Colorado— even in urban areas, including one person who died after being buried by snow falling from a roof in the town of Crested Butte. And a rogue avalanche in nearby Hinsdale County obliterated the house of the county sheriff, burying and injuring him and his two daughters. By all accounts, www.TellurideMagazine.com

SUMMER/FALL 2019

MELISSA PLANTZ

this winter was marked by an epic amount of snowfall in the region.

But did the snowfall in Telluride set a record? Almost, according to Telluride Ski Patrol. The resort has been keeping records of the amount of snow that falls since the inaugural 1972-73 season, although with automation, the weather data collection has

become much more complete over the years. And according to the data, this season’s 2018-19 snowfall (including October) rang in at 370.8 inches, just an inch or two shy of the heaviest season on record, 1996-97, with 372 inches (also including October).

That’s still about a hundred inches above the 44-year average, which is not

a perfect number because of the variations in the way the data was gathered.

But the numbers don’t tell the whole story—the storms this year came in rapid succession and the temperatures were cold enough that the snow didn’t abate and kept piling up. There was so much snow, says ski patrol snow safety supervisor Jon Tukman, that they had to put an extension on the Prospect Basin base stake that measures snow depth. Patrol headquarters were buried so deeply that they could walk out onto the roof. It was also an epic end to the ski season: The resort closed with a 92-inch base still covering the mountain and a few more spring snowstorms on the way.

Despite all the snow that fell, ski patrollers managed to keep everyone safe in-bounds on the resort. It was a huge job this year, as they recorded almost 600 avalanches in and around the ski area. “It’s fair to say nearly all of our paths performed at least once,” says Tukman. “Any way you slice it, a seriously big winter.” \

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71

72 • TELLURIDE TURNS Headlines & Highlights from the Local News

All Bets Are On

Colorado passes sports betting legislation

By Annika Kristiansen

C

olorado is ready to up the ante with new gambling laws. You may soon be able to wager a hundred bucks on the Broncos, the Rockies, or the Avalanche as a sports betting bill passed state legislature this spring.

Similar bills have been proposed across the U.S. in recent months after a Supreme Court decision last year lifted the federally recognized ban on sports gambling. States now have authority to choose whether or not to allow sports betting, and according to ESPN, eight states have already legalized it.

Governor Jared Polis said he will support the bill when it hits his desk, however, obstacles still remain. In November, voters will have the power to move the bill forward by saying yes to the 10 percent tax set by legislators on sports betting proceeds.

According to Colorado law, any tax increase must first be approved by voters. “It’s not a huge margin on sports betting,” Peggi O’Keefe, a lobbyist for Colorado’s casinos, told the Denver Post. “This is a number we can live with and still make a profit.”

If the ballot measure passes, the existing thirty-three Colorado casinos will be able to apply for licenses to open gambling locations or “sportsbooks” and develop mobile betting apps that can www.TellurideMagazine.com

SUMMER/FALL 2019

be used statewide. Under the bill, three types of licenses will be offered: master license, sports betting operator, and internet sports betting operator.

Once licensed, the business would hold the license for a period of two years and could partner with one land-based operator and one internet operator, and set up a single online/mobile platform.

The bill doesn’t just need approval from the state electorate—local voters in Black Hawk, Central City, and Cripple Creek (the three mountain mining cities in which Colorado’s casinos are confined) must also acquiesce to any in-person sports gambling. The legislation does not allow race tracks to apply for the aforementioned master licenses. “I wanted to maintain the intent of voters to keep gaming in those three mountain towns,” Majority Leader Alec Garnett said.

Although there is strong bipartisan support for this bill, not everyone benefits from its reach. Many teams, such as the Broncos and the Rockies, were unsuccessful in their lobbying for Colorado casinos to use official league data. They also were unable to land the placement of betting kiosks at stadiums and ballparks. Furthermore, limiting the physical sportsbooks to only the mountain casino locations

leaves businesses like the horse track in Aurora and its off-track betting locations in the metro area with the short end of the gambling stick.

David Farahi, chief operating officer of Monarch Casino, said that the bill has made it this far “because of house leadership.” Leaders from both sides of the political spectrum (Democratic House Majority Leader Alec Garnett and Republican Minority Leader Patrick Neville) were key orchestrators in bringing both parties together to construct and pass the bill.

If all goes through without a hitch, Colorado can expect to see a constrained sports betting market by 2020. Initial projections for state tax revenue are estimated at more than $11 million by the second year, and the bulk of the money would go toward state water conservation. A fund would also be established to support organizations such as the State Historical Fund that rely on tax revenue from traditional gaming, and a small amount of money is earmarked for gambling addiction programs. The stakes are high for casinos and related businesses who stand to benefit from the passage of this bill, but ultimately it will be up to voters in November to decide if sports betting wins. \

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74 • TELLURIDE TURNS

Headlines & Highlights from the Local News

Boulder Astronomer David Elmore captured this image of the Andromeda Galaxy from Wright’s Mesa in 2016. [Courtesy of David Elmore/Norwood Dark Sky Advocates]

Shooting for the Stars

Norwood recognized as International Dark Sky Community

By Katie Klingsporn

T

ucked into a remote corner of Colorado far from any city, Norwood is home to a mere 500 souls, encircled by large mountain ranges and situated on a high, dry mesa top.

All of these virtues make it undeniably sleepy.

But they also mean something else: Norwood has virtually zero light pollution. And when the sun goes down, the sky transforms into a spectacular canopy of constellations, galaxies, and planets.

“The more you look, the more stars you see. It’s like nothing else. It kind of puts you in your place,” said Creighton “Woody” Wood, a Wright’s Mesa resident and amateur astronomer.

Wood would know. He was part of a three-year effort to recognize, celebrate, and protect Norwood’s night skies. That effort paid off in February, when the International Dark-Sky Association named Norwood its newest International Dark Sky Community.

Norwood is the first town on the Western Slope and only the second community in Colorado to be given the designation. Advocates say it will have multiple benefits for the small town: It will draw a burgeoning population of “astro-tourists,” promote education of the cosmos and, most importantly, ensure the town continues to protect its valuable www.TellurideMagazine.com

SUMMER/FALL 2019

night sky through efforts like lighting regulations, town ordinances and outreach. “That’s the ultimate goal of this, is to reduce light pollution,” said Bob Grossman, a fellow Wright’s Mesa star-gazer who co-chaired Norwood’s Dark Sky Advocates with Wood. “And there are positive spinoffs to that.

One central one is that we preserve this amazing resource, the night sky.”

The effort began in 2015. That’s when Grossman heard a story on the radio about Ridgway’s interest in the designation. As he was listening, Grossman just happened to be enjoying the smear of stars and planets above Lone Cone Peak from the picture window of his cabin—a view he’s cherished for years. “I said, ‘Good lord, if Ridgway can get it, this is a no brainer for Norwood,” Grossman said.

He called the IDA the very next day to find out how Norwood could get the designation. Much to his surprise, he discovered he was the second person to call in as many days — Town Clerk Gretchen Wells had also inquired.

After meeting with Wells, Grossman decided to take the lead on the project. Wood soon joined him.

And for the next three years, they and a klatch of supporters worked to meet IDA’s requirements—an

effort that entailed drafting and passing a town lighting ordinance, drumming up community support, and measuring Norwood’s skies in various locations with light meters. This latter task often meant standing alone in the middle of the night during a new moon, cocoa in hand, under a blanket of stars.

Not a bad gig. They witnessed breathtaking meteor showers, constellations like Scorpio and the Andromeda galaxy, discovered an irrefutable fact.

“It’s as dark as the Gobi desert,” Grossman said.

Norwood’s Dark Sky Advocates submitted their final application in January. And when news of the designation came through, Wood and Grossman breathed sighs of relief.

Wood said that through the designation, “we have shown that this town cares about preserving its resource … It’s a great resource, rarer than ever these days, and it needs to be protected.”

The group will likely celebrate with star parties. But it’s not as if Norwood can just rest on its laurels. Grossman notes that the IDA reviews Dark Sky Communities every five years to make sure they are maintaining their preservation efforts.

“I think we have done our work,” Grossman said.

“Now it’s up to the community.” \

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76 • TELLURIDE TURNS Headlines & Highlights

RYAN BONNEAU

from the Local News

For Pets’ Sake

Telluride Humane Society in the works

P

eople in Telluride really love their pets. Dogs are welcome in the bank, there is a special “puppy parking spot” to tie them up outside the bakery, and there are even dedicated gondola cabins that allow pets.

There’s also a Telluride Animal Foundation, which sponsors spaying and neutering, facilitates adoptions, and has a food bank to help pet owners struggling to keep their animals fed—part of the foundation’s financial support comes from the Telluride Thrift Shop, a secondhand store on Colorado Avenue.

The one thing we don’t have yet is an animal shelter in town for adoptions, boarding, dog training, and other pet-related services. Which isn’t to say that we don’t have pets in need, says Ellen Williamson, a local realtor who is working to establish the Telluride Humane Society. Right now, the nearest animal shelter is in Ridgway, in Ouray County. Williamson is working through the legal nonprofit process for the venture. “I feel like we have an obligation to help with these animals.”

She is also partnering with local vet Dr. Steven Smolen. Smolen moved to Telluride a few years ago and built the town’s first animal hospital, a facility that provides 24-hour medical care. He sees the

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SUMMER/FALL 2019

MELISSA PLANTZ

community’s need firsthand: He ended up taking in a dog named “Jade” whose owners could not afford the major medical care she needed, and had to start a GoFundMe page to support her. He gets lots of similar cases in his practice, and not just pets—he also gets called to rescue wildlife including wounded elk, owls, and other creatures.

Williamson says that it’s her hope that the Telluride Humane Society can also offer support for pet owners who don’t have the resources to pay for basic care. “There’s a huge disparity of wealth here and many local residents don’t have the financial resources that can be needed for pet care. Now that we have an animal hospital, once we have a nonprofit we can assist with medical funds.”

Timing is everything, says Williamson, and the fact that Dr. Smolen and his facility are now here created an opportunity she wanted to seize by starting the Telluride Humane Society. Together, their vision is to build a no-kill community, provide classes and training for pet owners, and to work collaboratively with the Telluride Animal Foundation, the Second Chance animal shelter, and other organizations. “Animals are part of the pulse of this community,” she says. “Our ultimate goal is to create a space to serve the entire county.” \

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78 • INNOVATION

KYLE MONK

N

early 1,300 scientists are drawn to the Telluride Science Research Center (TSRC) each year, but they don’t just come for a vacation in the mountains. TSRC has become the the largest independent molecular science research center in the world. Driven to expand the global frontiers of science and technology, leading scientists from prominent institutions around the globe come to this tiny town to tackle big scientific problems during small, collaborative workshops.

Every year, the scope of the workshops expands as scientists experience how productive the invitation-only, small-group format is and create proposals for new workshops of their own. In 2018, Vadim Backman, Professor of Biomedical Engineering at Northwestern University, attended a TSRC workshop on Chromatin Structure and Dynamics and immediately began forming a plan to host a workshop in Telluride. “After several presentations that did not progress further than a few initial slides because of the lively and vigorous discussion, I could see the potential of the Telluride workshop format. After one of the talks, I approached the speaker, whom I had not met before, and we quickly understood that we have common ground in our work. The next step was for us was to explore the beautiful outdoors, which both of us found highly stimulating. We made a plan to collaborate, and now we do. This cemented an idea in my head that TSRC is exactly the right place—and in fact the only right place—for a convergent conference on Physical Genomics.”

For his workshop, Backman and his co-organizer, Caroline Uhler, Associ-

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SUMMER/FALL 2019

CHANGING the

WORLD

TSRC workshops spawn advances in science

By Cindy Fusting

ate Professor of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, handpicked a group composed of biologists, physicists, engineers, and experimentalists, each scientist selected because of ground-breaking work in his or her own field of interest. Without a per-

manent, year-round home base, TSRC hosted the first Physical Genomics and Transcriptional Engineering workshop at the Wilkinson Public Library in February 2019. There, the participants shared ideas and worked on ways to use new tech to address the most complex diseases of the 21st century.

Backman’s life’s work has been driven by his desire to help people, specifically to help in the fight against cancer. He elected to pursue a PhD program offered jointly by Harvard University and MIT—Medical Engineering and Medical Physics—to further the theoretical expertise he’d gained from two master’s degrees in physics, and incorporate translational work.

“Seeing patients connects my research to real people,” said Backman.

Inspired by the dramatic results from the use of the Pap smear test, Backman feels that an answer to the “cancer question” isn’t necessarily better drugs. Cervical cancer was the most dangerous cancer with the highest mortality rates in the nation sixty years ago, but because of the widespread use of the Pap smear test, the mortality rate has been reduced tenfold.

Early detection saves lives. Backman intends to create similar non-invasive and cost-efficient tests for all cancers.

Stage 1 cancers are nearly 100 percent survivable, whereas Stage 4 cancers are practically untreatable.

As faculty at Northwestern, Backman worked with Allen Taflove, a professor of electrical engineering at the university, to develop partial wave spectroscopy (PWS) nanocytology. This new technology allows scientists to assess cellular structure from 20 to 50 nanometers, a minute scale that is impossible to view with microscopy. Backman theorized that he could determine the health of cells by analyzing the different angles of scattered light at these extremely small dimensions, and testing has proven his hypothesis to be true. With PWS, accurate cancer diagnoses can

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80 • INNOVATION be found at the nascent stage of the disease, and the small-scale readings also provide detailed information about cellular building blocks, such as proteins, DNA, and RNA. Several large-scale clinical trials are already underway, and Backman’s technology may be available for physician use within three years. These screens will test for lung, colon, and prostate cancer, and the testing will save thousands of lives each year. “With PWS imaging, we are able to better understand the physics of the genome, which is so important in understanding how the cells will behave. If genes are the hardware, chromatin is the software, and we are just beginning to understand how to use the software,” said Backman. Chromatin, a group of macromolecules including DNA, RNA, and proteins, provides the genetic information that determines which genes get suppressed or expressed.

Chromatin manipulation was a main focus during the Physical Genomics workshop as it has the potential to affect a wide range of challenges from disease, to agricultural instability, to the destruction of coral reefs.

As for cancer, Backman’s review of test results from PWS screens revealed that the packing density of chromatin in cancer cells produces predictable changes in gene expression. Heterogeneous and disordered packing density predicates cancer cells likely to develop resistance and survive radiation and chemotherapy, while ordered packing density is indicative of cancer cells that will not develop resistance and will die during cancer treatment. With this new knowledge in hand, Backman has used pre-existing pharmaceuticals to develop chromatin-protection therapeutics (CPT) that alter chromatin structure so that cancer cells cannot adapt and will succumb to radiation and chemotherapy. Lab and animal testing showed nearly every cancer cell died within days, and human testing is expected to begin within the year. “From our TSRC workshop, we launched a new field of science: physical genomics, the nanoscale study of the physics of the genome. New imaging techniques allow for early diagnosis of disease and the creation of highly effective chromatin-protection therapeutics for potential use in cancer, atherosclerosis, Alzheimer’s disease, pediatric leukemia, and more,” said Backman.

Even though the scientists don’t come to Telluride for a vacation, outdoor activities are an integral part of the programming. The winter workshop allowed many of the scientists to ski together. “It was extraordinary; we had incredible discussions on the chairlift. It just makes one think so much better when you are involved www.TellurideMagazine.com

SUMMER/FALL 2019

KYLE MONK

TSRC IS EXACTLY THE RIGHT PLACE—AND IN FACT THE ONLY RIGHT PLACE—FOR A CONVERGENT CONFERENCE ON PHYSICAL GENOMICS. in an outdoor physical activity. It clears your mind, and you can start seeing through any problem from a perspective you did not know even existed. This is perhaps one of the physiological reasons why TSRC is so impactful, especially with fostering cross-disciplinary interactions.”

Research shows that exposure to natural environments restores cognitive function and significantly improves attention and memory.

TSRC participants invariably cite their group outdoor activity time as the most creative and productive.

“TSRC is not just another good place to meet with your colleagues,” said Backman. “It is a premier institution that allows you to build the kind of connections and collaborations that you would otherwise be unable to.”

Collaborations resulting from the Physical Genomics workshop include plans to apply for a $50 million Science and Technology Center (STC) grant through the National Science Foundation. The STC program supports innovative, potentially transformative, complex research and education projects that require large-scale, long-term awards. If funded, the Physical Genomics group’s STC will sponsor several test-beds to study patterns of gene expression. Research would cover disease (cancer, Alzheimer’s), neural longevity (strokes, heart attacks), regenerative medicine, agriculture, and synthetic biology.

The STC would also support programs for education and outreach. It would provide a platform for inter-

disciplinary collaborations and a curriculum that can be adapted for use across the nation—one that supports a real convergence of physics, biology, engineering, and medicine. Backman said that the next generation of students should be more integrated and able to better speak each other’s scientific languages. The teaching paradigms will shift to offer study that incorporates multiple scientific disciplines. The STC plan will include cross-disciplinary curriculum implementation at the K-12 level as well as at the graduate levels.

The benefits of cross-discipline exchange are obvious at TSRC. “We see connections made every week— new collaborations, new ideas for projects and research. Per dollar spent, TSRC has to be one of the most globally impactful investments in science,” said TSRC Executive Director, Mark Kozak.

This summer, TSRC workshops will bring together chemists, physicists, biologists, atmospheric scientists, mathematicians, physicians, and engineers from varied backgrounds to take on issues ranging from water and climate to new materials and energy, and the scientific and technological developments seeded here in a Colorado box canyon will find roots in institutions worldwide.

TSRC is currently raising funds to support the purchase of its first permanent home. TSRC is under contract and scheduled to close on a purchase of the historic Telluride Depot from its current owner, the Ah Haa School for the Arts, this summer. With a full-time home at the Depot, TSRC will spread out its scientific workshops throughout the year and will be able to offer more programming geared toward the general public. The Depot space will also allow for new programming that taps the resources of the TSRC network of 5,000 scientists from more than 100 institutions and ninety countries and connects with innovators from the business sector. In June 2019, TSRC will host the first Telluride Innovation Workshop: Insights into the Future of Industry, Implement Now! where industry and thought leaders will consider innovations including artificial intelligence/machine learning, edge computing, generative design, blockchain, advanced formulation design, industrial additive manufacturing, advanced robotics/cobots, autonomous systems, and more.

For more information on how to contribute to the restoration and renovation of the Telluride Depot and support Telluride Science, contact Mark Kozak at mark@telluridescience.org or visit telluridescience.org. \

SUMMER/FALL 2019

www.TellurideMagazine.com

81

82 • NATURE NOTES

BANDING BIRDS

Local Rosy Finch research to inform conservation practices

By Karen Toepfer James

P

LUKE GEORGE

ut a bird feeder out at your home and most of us, while certainly enjoying the influx of avian visitors into our lives, stop there—unless you’re Telluride’s resident ecologist Erika Zavaleta, that is.

When flocks of six-inch-long, brown-headed birds with vibrant pink bellies and wing feathers began showing up to rouse her family out of bed in their Telluride home a few years ago, Zavaleta—a U.C. Santa Cruz professor of ecology and evolutionary biology who holds a PhD in biological science—did what came naturally to her. She began researching them.

Zavaleta identified the visitors as BrownCapped Rosy Finch (BCRF), one of three North American rosy finch species that also include the Black Rosy Finch and the Gray-Crowned Rosy Finch. While each species has distinct plumage and occupies a different breeding range, all breed and winter at high altitudes where they are well adapted to the extreme environment.

Among the three species, the BCRF breeds the farthest south and is found primarily in Colorado.

Here, scientists are concerned both that its breeding habitat among the cliffs, rock fall, and mining relics found above 11,000 feet, as well as the lower elevations to which it descends to forage for seeds during winter storms, are experiencing increasing pressure from the effects of climate change that could imperil its existence.

These factors, combined with a general lack of scientific study on the birds, persuaded Zavaleta (whose Conservation Science & Solutions Lab at UCSC focuses in part on ecological and conservation responses to climate change) that the rosy finch species would be an ideal research subject.

Moreover, thanks to the interest and participation of a number of research collaborators, the work has evolved into a multi-disciplinary study that participants believe could one day serve as a template for future species conservation efforts around the world. “We want this to be a model of how to monitor a species, how to forecast what’s going to happen to it, and how to understand now what we can do to ensure it persists,” says Zavaleta.

As it turned out, it wasn’t just Zavaleta’s radar that pinged when she first took notice of the birds in the winter of 2016. The state agency charged with stewardship of Colorado’s natural resources, Colorado Parks and Wildlife (CPW), had in 2015 already listed the BCRF as one of 55 species (including 13 birds) worthy of the state’s highest conservation priority. Because of concerns that its population might be declining, CPW Species Conservation Coordinator Amy Seglund was already contemplating a study to gather population distribution and density data at various breeding locations across Colorado.

So it was a natural fit when Zavaleta contacted her about joining forces. “We’re realizing that

TIM BROWN

we need to do that to get the best research,” says Seglund, whose agency, along with the Bird Conservancy of the Rockies, collaborated with Zavaleta’s winter research efforts that began in January 2017.

Zavaleta’s research is examining the movement patterns and survival rates of all three species, a goal achieved by capturing birds at sites throughout the state and marking each with a color-coded leg band to specify its location of capture.

The study is enlisting the help of citizen scientists—interested members of the public—to look for the banded birds and to report to the email address rosyfinchreports@gmail.com. They are seeking information including the date and location of sightings, the number and species of birds, and the color of the leg bands.

To further that line of study, Zavaleta also contacted her former UCSC colleague Kristen Ruegg, Ph.D., for her expertise in avian genetics. Now an assistant professor at Colorado State University and co-director of the Bird Genome Project, Ruegg will contribute to the research by identifying specific genetic markers that signal the birds’ capacity to relocate or adapt in the face of climate change.

The CPW-led study began last summer when researchers headed into the high country in order to develop a baseline BCRF-only population status assessment. It will inform species monitoring or management plans CPW may develop, Seglund explains.

The same stakeholders participating in Zavaleta’s research are also involved in the CPW study.

While it’s exciting to learn more about the rosy finch, the hope is that their collaborative efforts will go beyond just scholarship and ultimately shape future conservation practice. “On the science side, we will publish papers and give talks to push out this model of collaborative work to improve the way we understand how climate change is affecting wildlife,” says Zavaleta. “This way we can do more than just say it’s affecting wildlife, and actually do something about it.” \ SUMMER/FALL 2019

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86 • FESTIVALS

TINSELTOWN in Telluride

Telluride Film Festival brings a little bit of Hollywood to the mountains

by Gregory Ellwood

A

debate raged earlier this year in Hollywood about where giant streaming services such as Netflix, Hulu, and Amazon Prime fit into the traditional movie industry. The primary reason for such discord? The awards season success of Alfonso Cuarón’s Roma, a passion project which took home three Oscars including Best Director this past February. One of the most critically acclaimed films of the year, Roma was in theaters for just a few weeks before Netflix debuted it worldwide on its service, and it goes without saying that most people saw the film from the comfort of their own homes. Theater owners, in particular, were not thrilled with all the kudos for a movie that many chains refused to screen because of the Netflix connection.

What you may not realize, however, is that months before Roma made its North American debut at the Telluride Film Festival, one of the premier film festivals in the world.

Alfonso Cuarón at Telluride Film Festival.

Roma made its world premiere at the 2019 Venice Film Festival, but screening at Telluride was key for the Spanish-language film. Over its 45-year history, the Telluride Film Festival has cultivated a unique audience of cinephiles, industry professionals, and patrons who flock to the beautiful Colorado town every Labor Day weekend for four days of non-stop screenings. As the festival has grown, that audience has included more and more members of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, the organization responsible for determining the nominees and winners of the Academy Awards. Many Oscar contenders debut at other festivals (and occasionally none at all), but starting with the buzzworthy premiere of Slumdog Millionaire in 2008, the TFF has screened or debuted nine of the last eleven Best Picture winners and countless more nominees. The festival had actually featured the last eight winners until Green Book broke that streak in February.

Granted, it’s not a substantial percentage of the Academy’s 8,000-plus members trekking to Telluride at the end of August, but it’s certainly more than the number attending any other major festival in the world. Plus, unlike Cannes, Sundance, Venice, or Toronto, members actually have time to see movies other than their own. And they’ll see a ton of them. Not a year goes by when you won’t find the likes of George Clooney, Julia Roberts, Angelina Jolie, Brad Pitt, or Emma Stone walking down Colorado Avenue on their way to the festival’s temporary venues such as the Galaxy or Werner Herzog Theaters. And a funny thing happens once filmmakers and talent

attend Telluride for the first time: they tend to come back. Laura Dern, Laura Linney (a Telluride resident) and directors such as Alexander Payne (The Descendants), Alejandro González Iñárritu (Birdman), Charles Ferguson (Inside Job) and Ken Burns (The Civil War), among others, are part of the “regulars” who make Telluride part of their yearly vacation calendar. And those regulars spread the word about what films other members need to make priorities when Oscar screenings start just a few weeks later.

The reason so many of Hollywood’s industry taste-makers return to Telluride every year is threefold. First, executive director Julie Huntsinger along with founder and artistic director Tom Luddy continually program a slate that includes not only highly anticipated premieres, but some of the best

foreign language films from Berlin and Cannes that haven’t reached U.S. shores yet. Second, there are no red carpets, no photo opps, no out of place corporate sponsors, no gifting suites, and no party crashers because, well, most parties at Telluride are so low-key they make Sundance events seem swank.

Shockingly, this festival is actually about the movies first, and besides an arguably necessary “patron” line, every attendee waits to get into a screening alongside everyone else. In one theater you may find a billionaire sitting next to a film student. In another a legendary film star will be chatting about their favorite films of the weekend with a local resident. And, lastly, that leads to the third reason, the Telluride “family.” Unlike the world’s other major festivals, there is a warmth and camaraderie from the top of the organization down to the longtime volunteers you simply can’t find anywhere else. Whether you’re a first-timer or recognizable regular, the festival wants to help you with your experience—it simply isn’t about closing doors or creating an elitist environment. For many in Hollywood that’s a welcome relief before the year-end awards season grabs everyone’s attention.

Those are just a few of the reasons Cuarón returned to Telluride last September. He’d previously brought his Oscar-winning Gravity to the festival in 2013, a screening that helped position the space thriller as a prestige player worthy of critical adoration and Academy praise. Both he and Netflix knew the road to the Oscars started just underneath the San Juan Mountains. And you can bet he’ll be back with his next film down the road. \ SUMMER/FALL 2019

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88 • INDEX

ON FIRE

FLYING HIGH

CATS AND DOGS

PEAK BAGGING

TAKE YOUR PICK

In 2018, there were

The highest elevation airport in the world is the Daocheng Yading Airport (DCY) in China, at 14,472 feet. The Telluride Regional Airport (TEX) is the highest commercial airport in North America, and sits at 9,070 feet in elevation.

Approximately 68 percent of U.S. households, 84.6 million, have a pet.

There are an estimated 183.9 million pet dogs and cats in the country.

Approximately 6.5 million pets enter U.S. animal shelters every year.

The San Juan Mountains have 12 peaks (and 16 summits) above 14,000 feet, and 250 peaks above 13,000 feet. Colorado has 53 “fourteeners,” or peaks above 14,000 feet.

Sports betting in the U.S. is projected to earn $2.57 billion in revenues in 2019, and $6.03 billion in 2023. The majority of sports betting, 36 percent, is done on football, followed by basketball at 31 percent and baseball at 23 percent.

58,083 wildfires in the U.S. that burned 8.8 million acres. In 2017, there were 71,499 wildfires that burned 10 million acres. In 2018, there were 1,328 fires in Colorado that burned

475, 803 acres.

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SUMMER/FALL 2019

ALL PHOTOS ADOBESTOCK.COM AND ISTOCK.COM

COLOR BY

NUMBERS

FROM THAILAND WITH LOVE

ACADEMY AWARDS

SADDLE UP

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REDUCE, REUSE, RECYCLE

In 2015, the number of Thai immigrants living in the U.S. was 300,000.

The city with the highest concentration of Thai immigrants is Los Angeles, with 27,000, followed by New York with 12,000.

Only 3 films have received 14 Academy Award nominations: All About Eve, which won 6, Titanic, which won 11, and La La Land, which won 6. In 2018, films that screened at Telluride Film Festival received 35 nominations; 9 of the last 11 Best Picture winners were shown at the festival.

The number of mountain bike sales grew from 15.3 million in 1992 to 20.2 million in 2015.

The total value of the U.S. mountain biking market is $6 billion annually, and mountain bike sales account for 24 percent of total sales with a value of $1.4 billion.

There were nearly 60 million runners in the U.S. in 2017. There are more than 30,000 running events in the U.S. each year, including 3 of the 6 World Marathon Majors, in Boston, Chicago, and New York City. The NYC Marathon is the biggest with more than 51,000 finishers.

The total amount of municipal solid waste recycled in 2015 in the U.S. was 67.8 million tons, with paper accounting for about 67 percent of that amount. Metals made up 12 percent, and glass, plastic, and wood was between 4 and 5 percent.

Sources: National Geographic, Wikipedia, International Airport Review, ASPCA, Animal Sheltering, Gerry Roach, Sports Business Daily, Pew Social Trends, Awards Database, Sauserwind, Statista, National Interagency Fire Center, EPA SUMMER/FALL 2019

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96 • LAST LOOK

Feet First One of the most fun ways (and certainly the fastest) to descend from high elevations in the mountains is glissading. Glissading, a controlled slide down a snow field, can be done on one’s feet or backside. The bountiful snow this past winter should make for excellent summer glissading.

PHOTO BY MELISSA PLANTZ

CHASING DREAMS A Story of Better Sleep in Telluride

I

t was a familiar story. Rick and Linda had worked “We met Larry through a friend here in Telluride,” common symptom, as the blood vessels of the hard to build their dream home in Telluride, and shared Rick. “Our friend is an architect, and after brain dilate to bring more oxygen, causing pain. they were worried they would have to leave. including a system in a client’s home, he installed There are medications that treat altitude Linda wasn’t sleeping well, and Rick’s aging mother one in his own. He is healthy and active. We had related symptoms, however Dr Hackett believes could no longer visit. no idea that he had overcome the same more people should instead be using oxygen.

“I slept just fine when insomnia and fatigue that Linda was “Medication works but it has side effects,” says Dr we were in Atlanta”, Linda experiencing. We never saw the system in Hackett. “Providing oxygen during sleep is a sideexplains, “but we’d come his home—it’s quiet and nearly invisible!” effect-free way to treat altitude related insomnia.”

“We sleep better, to Telluride, and I would The system was installed by Larry’s It was all Rick and Linda needed to hear. After have greater clarity toss and turn. I kept waking innovative business, Altitude Control researching the safety and efficacy of the of the of mind, and up, and I was tired all day.”

Technologies. It changes the environment systems from Altitude Control Technologies, they experience faster Linda’s lack of sleep affected of a room, typically a bedroom, by installed two—one in their own bedroom, and the couple’s enjoyment of recovery after hiking increasing the oxygen concentration, one in the guest room for Rick’s mother. their mountain home. “She and simulating a lower altitude. “Your “I like to consider myself a smart and educated and skiing by didn’t have the energy to home might be at 9,000 feet in Telluride,” shopper”, Rick says. “The system from Altitude sleeping in our go skiing,” Rick lamented, “or says Larry, “but it’s like your bedroom is in Control Technologies was without a doubt one of oxygenated to hike around our property.

Atlanta.” And it’s a life changer. the best finds I ever made.” Rick continues, “I was bedroom.”

She’d get headaches. We “Oxygen levels in most ski areas blown away, and I had to share with my friends couldn’t experience the are about 30% lower than at sea level”, who suffer from similar systems.” active life we came to explains Dr Peter Hackett, “I sleep better, have greater Telluride to live.” the Executive Director for clarity of mind, and experience Around the same time, Rick’s mother, Stella, the Institute for Altitude Medicine faster recovery after hiking “Providing oxygen stopped visiting. “She just wasn’t dealing with in Telluride. “While sleeping, the and skiing by sleeping in our the altitude well,” says Rick. “Her body wasn’t lack of oxygen triggers an unstable oxygenated bedroom”, exclaims during sleep is a acclimating the way it used to”. Rick and breathing pattern. These patterns— side-effect-free way Linda, “I can enjoy our home, and Linda started spending more and more time deep breaths followed by five to so can Rick’s mom. We didn’t have to treat altitude away from Telluride, and seriously considered fifteen second pauses—occur even to move. We are living our dream. related insomnia.” abandoning their mountain dream. And then in healthy people at altitudes above I can’t thank Altitude Control –Dr. Peter Hackett they met Larry Kutt.

6,000 feet”. Headaches are also a Technologies enough”.

Feel good at altitude.

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