RegularOccurrences

Ear to the ground:

“You’re doing something right when your net worth can be measured in NRS straps.”

– We may not have a 401k, but hey, we’re rich in straps

TLC for DMP

Help has arrived for the eroded climbing areas in Dalla Mountain Park. Located on the west side of town, Dalla Mountain Park (and the adjacent Animas City Mountain) are popular climbing areas. Really popular, it turns out.

11

Decisions, decisions

Talented Israeil author returns with third exhausting drama by Jeffrey Mannix

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“Dalla Mountain Park has the highest concentration of climbing in any park in any city in the state of Colorado,” Amy Schwarzbach, the city’s natural resource manager, said in a statement.

All that use, however, has taken a toll. According to the City of Durango, climbers have created social trails to popular climbing areas that have caused erosion. One area particularly impacted is a climbing spot called Euro Boulder.

“The erosion from Euro Boulder and the socially created access to it has a broader impact not only on wildlife, but other trails and Junction Creek down below,” Schwarzbach said.

Recently, the City of Durango (which owns Dalla Mountain Park) and the Bureau of Land Management (which owns Animas City Mountain) received $48,000 from a GOCO grant to help with trail restoration. The full grant funding includes matches from the city and BLM, as well as $1,437 from the Durango Climbers Coalition. Ultimately, the Southwest Conservation Corps was hired to get the work done.

The SWCC worked seven weeks at Euro Boulder. With the help of Durango Climbers Coalition volunteers, crews restored severe erosion around the base, improved drainage and fortified areas to prevent future soil loss.

“The SWCC crews that worked on this project not only helped provide awesome recreation, but also helped fulfill the city’s obligation to our conservation easement,” Schwarzbach said. “They’re taking care of fish and wildlife habitat, and the vegetation in the area.”

This summer hurts

I keep dreaming about car crashes. Not the kind where I’m in the driver’s seat. But the kind where I’m witnessing it. In some dreams, I’m at an in-door gathering with family and friends, and everything is joyous. But then a car comes crashing through. I wake up before I find out who survived and who didn’t.

In waking life, an actual car crash could happen. Or it could take the shape of a gunman out in public, which seems far more likely nowadays. For me, these dreams are reminders that protecting the people I love can be out of my control. The car crash doesn’t have to be literal and visceral. It can be gradual and emotional. It can feel like a heavy heart, weighed down by trauma that you carry until one day you go missing. You end up unhoused and have no choice but to walk with your heart through the city. By the time your family finds you, it’s too late. We have to identify your body and return you home with unanswered questions.

My aunt Jennifer went through a yearslong struggle like that, with a heartbreaking outcome that my family’s still processing. The day after the Fourth of July, I was a pallbearer for her funeral service. It felt disorienting to walk through a town full of red, white and blue celebrations, knowing the next day I’d have to bury my aunt, whose life was haunted by historical trauma; whose fate became that of many other missing and murdered Indigenous relatives. On July 4, I walked along the Animas River Trail and thought, “America, I’ve given you all and you just keep taking.”

It’s an understatement to say this summer hurts.

As a band-aid of sorts, I’ve been taking comfort in the music of Laura Stevenson. Her songwriting can sound sparkly and whimsical, but the music is only velvet covering barbed wire lyrics about sadness and loss. And there’s a nervous honesty in the way she approaches heavy topics. In Stevenson’s music, the dark and tense human sadness crystallizes into something beautiful and wondrous.

A few years ago, Stevenson wrote a song called “Runner.” In various interviews, she’s talked about how that song is her way of working through a depression that sets in during the summer. It’s a state of mind she has to brace for

Thumbin’It

All sides coming together to keep Durango Fire at its current location at River City Hall, with the City of Durango getting the old 9-R building. Phew, alright, that took a while.

Phoenix finally ending its historic 31day streak of highs at or above 110 degrees by reaching a cool and breezy high temp of only 108 this week.

Trump charged for trying to overturn the 2020 election. Oh hey, turns out you can’t try to push a coup after losing a fair election after all. How about that?

every year. In a Spotify interview about the track, Stevenson said, “I was exploring what’s real and what’s not real, whether there’s a god. I was asking, ‘What’s the thing that makes you want to live?’”

The chorus to “Runner” has one line: “This summer hurts.” It’s a line imprinted in my mind forever now.

For me, dread and anxiety comes with embracing summer. This summer, I’m grieving and begging to not lose anyone else I love for the rest of the year. Along with that, the boiling hot temperatures all around us lately have added another layer of despair. I think to myself, “Is the plural for ‘apocalypse’ pronounced as ‘The New Normal?’”

But sitting with a song like “Runner” is comforting. The song’s comforting because it reminds me that if I can sing with a smile the words, “This summer hurts” or if I can say out loud: “Everything is terrible and maybe we’re all doomed, because actually, we’re all in a tiny submersible led by mindless rich men with death-drive on autopilot, searching for the Titanic’s corpse, and one day this whole thing will implode.” If I can say that, then it means I can also recognize and say, “Things don’t have to be this way.”

With Stevenson’s music, there’s something else about the upbeat tone that subverts the writing. The opening lyrics for “Runner” contain the lines, “To give yourself a little bit of hope’s a lie / We’re just spinning where we stand.” It’s disenchanting, and yet, the guitars and drums are in joyous motion, moving the dejected narrator forward to see the sunrise around the corner. Maybe it’s because of the way her diamond voice constantly shines, but you can hear the smile in Stevenson’s singing when she reaches that chorus of defeat. I hear that smile through speakers, and a smile forms on my own face.

Today clouds are taking over the sky, and I know car crash dreams will continue to haunt me, but I play the song again. The day darkens, and I know these unanswered questions will linger, but my aunt has been returned home and that provides some peace. I play the song again, and I know the flowers on her grave will grow. I play the song one more time, and I know rain is on the way.

– Kirbie Bennett

SignoftheDownfall:

Reports that lab-grown chicken is making its way to restaurants and grocery stores near you. Well there’s no way this could go wrong.

The FDA recalling thousands of birth control pills that may be ineffective. Uhhh... uh oh; we gotta make some calls.

Tiny worms that have infested 30-40% of Colorado’s famed and delicious Olathe sweet corn. Crap, now what’s going to be the side with our lab chicken cacciatore?

Taking a bit out of crime

Make sure to check your horoscope because The Telegraph can tell the future! Five months ago, your Sign of the Downfall was a joke about cocaine sharks. Well, last week, a group of Floridian scientists claimed they might be real given the record amount of coke floating around the Keys. It’s especially plausible since sharks routinely bite floating objects. Strange, crack-like behavior was even been documented thanks to a sideways-swimming hammerhead. And it was proven that most sharks in the area preferred biting dummy coke bails over decoy birds. “That’s great news,” said a local real bird.