Scenes from just another summer week in the Butte

It is Monday evening and the warm sun is setting behind Red Lady after a wet day. Alpenglow is packed with people listening to… reggae. A guy by himself, a local business owner, moves to the beat by the bike path next to Stepping Stones with a beer in his hand. A couple in their 70s from Oklahoma share a bottle of chardonnay in the soccer field as their grandchildren run free.
Softball is being played by men and women on the other side of the Center for the Arts at a field named after Pitsker. In between, toddlers play in the sand and on the swings in a park named after Mary Yelenick.

Stepping over dogs in the office while walking around with a seven-week-old who will grow up in paradise, there is amazement at a photo of a nest of blue herons taken by a river last Sunday.
Watching the community express empathy for a kid injured at work. Being grateful as the community watches over another kid who is protected without knowing it as he wanders around town with his young friends.
Seeing four teenagers use a roll of duct tape, two inner tubes and a plastic sled to play Huck Finn and lazily raft the Slate River from Tony’s Trail to Riverbend for three hours.

There was magic to be had Thursday in the thin air and on the single track after pushing a bike and climbing over the piles of snow in the trees below 401.
Friends driving back from a summer river trip on Sunday. A family camping and sailing on Blue Mesa. A group exploring new trails on their mountain bikes by Monarch.
Being amazed every year by the color swatches of flowers in the fields on the Upper Loop or the Lower Loop, the Woods Walk, Walrod or Snodgrass.

Bluegrass by the chairlifts on the mountain Wednesday evening. The good news over the weekend that a friend who suffered a “small” heart attack will be back on the bike in four weeks and kicking butt on skis in the backcountry in August. Another friend hearing she doesn’t need another surgery.

People gathering at the top of Red Mountain for a Bat Mitzvah on Saturday. People gathering at Westwall for a wedding. A couple getting engaged and slyly telling their friends. A book club gathered on the floor in a circle discussing The Geography of Bliss and hopefully realizing where they are.

Listening to a determined woman talk on Wednesday about the importance of building schools in Afghanistan. The Music Festival holding concerts in a barn. Poetry in the bookstore. Momos on the corner. The Milky Way over Whetstone. Seeing the Space Station flying over our heads on Tuesday.

A preacher who gets up early and is blessed to see a bear outside the house while he prepares his sermon on Sunday. The deer in the wetlands in the morning during one of the greenest summers ever.

Being grateful that the mayor and town manager are making an attempt to talk some sense into our national representatives in D.C. and explain that a mining law from the 1800s is ridiculous and could do irreparable harm to this enchanted place that touches our soul and many of us feel is home…
…and remembering that the man who is now the U.S. Secretary of the Interior promised a local teenager a year ago he would protect the mountain where the sun set on Monday.

Being grateful. The Crested Butte summer goes on, and who can argue it is not a pretty good life?