Where are they now?

The Feral Children at the End of the Road: Timbre Lee Kegermann

[  BY DAWN BELLOISE  ]

Timbre was born to river runner parents Terri Terkelsen, a Red Lady, and Tim “First Chair” Kegermann, and grew up in the pink house at the Crested Butte Four-Way from the time she was a one-year old in the summer of 1984 – so it was total culture shock when she was moved to Omaha to start seventh grade, having grown up as a CB wild child. 

“I didn’t transition well to a large Midwestern city where there are no powerful landmark mountains to ground you.” She explains that in her new city, she stood out as weird and the contrast was clear. “I was given so much freedom in CB, the way the community is watching out for you. I took it for granted until I moved and then I struggled outside of nature and the small, tight-knit extended family.”

Timbre returned every summer and for holidays and felt like herself for those visits back. “I could breathe. I was seen and heard. I obsessed about moving back.” She had been living off-grid on the mesa in Taos with her three kids when she decided to move back in 2007. The following year, she had her fourth child, a son, in Gunnison. She and her husband, James Trezise, left CB in 2015 for Burlington, Vermont. “The town feels somewhat like CB with so many parallels. It has the same problems and same awesomeness. It’s very artsy with cultural events.” 

They had started a film company while in CB and continued that in Burlington. Timbre helped to make a documentary about the 2016 Vermont Rainbow Family gathering and their company also had a lot of music video clients. She discovered her talent as a screenwriter and director, converting clients’ visions into a film shot list that would tell the story. It was the artsy stuff Timbre wanted to focus on.

The couple worked for the Flynn Center for Arts in Burlington, teaching film production and music video creation to young teens.

At the same time, they decided to rent a historical mansion where they leased out rooms to PhD students and the international community. Eventually, they decided to do a short-term rental situation and discovered they enjoyed the process, so they expanded. Currently, they have eight bedrooms in two different adjacent buildings. “We’re the only registered lodging establishment in Winooski, which is the working-class area of Burlington. The name means wild onion,” Timbre says. Their accommodations are called The Traveling Bohemian and it’s considered a boutique hotel. “During COVID we stuck traveling nurses in the hotel but afterwards, it boomed. People wanted to go to places that were different.”

Her filming projects are purely passion now and Timbre adds that she’s doing a lot more writing these days. “I’m working on a dark coming-of-age screenplay. We do continue to partner with people for cool projects in film and we look forward to making more cool films.”

As those once feral kids moved out into the world, they take with them their CB experiences. “‘No guts, no glory,’ comes to mind as to what I’ve taken with me from my life there. I think that you’ve gotta make fear your friend because it allows you to feel a sense of efficacy. If you believe in yourself, then mother nature and the universe will back you up – it’s the spirituality that you find in CB through challenging yourself in nature, that you find your strength.”