That big sound heard Monday in the North Valley was not the noon whistle – it was a collective community sigh that there was a full day of sunshine and blue skies and, according to the weather icons on the phone, that is going to last more than a few days. It had been a rough spring with chilly temperatures, lots of rain and even some spitting snow with a four-inch June pow-cam sighting last weekend. Sunshine and a blue sky brought a big sense of relief. I know we always need the moisture, but it finally brought the balance we need up here where we expect 300 or more days of sunshine a year.

Summer officially started Wednesday with the solstice. It is the longest day of the year up here in Crested Butte and so we won’t mention the turn in terms of daylight that took place as a result. The summer solstice has also come to mark the start of the gangbuster summer tourism season and we are certainly witnessing the influx of visitors here to escape heat and tornadoes down south. It’s easy to want to be up here at 9,000 feet in the Rocky Mountains when it’s 100 degrees in Texas. And this is the time to accept those seeking a mountain getaway while sharing the town, the trails and the backcountry. Seriously. What’s the point of bemoaning the temporary influx of people to a nice place? They are part of the balance. The important thing is that we as a community actively address that balance…and we are.

There is the more than occasional need to remind some that live here that it is in large part because of the summer visitors that we get to live here year round. We as a community made the choice when we decided to successfully fight a mine that we are living in a tourist town. That’s a good thing. We have been fairly thoughtful in trying to mitigate ramifications of a tourist economy over a mining economy. That communal choice doesn’t mean that people can come in here and wreak havoc without consequence. There is no reason to put up with jerks who act entitled because they have a black credit card. They can eat dirt. But it also means that it makes sense to expect the crowds and all that they bring and understand that the next six to eight weeks is a time to fatten up the bank account while taking advantage of the events that wouldn’t be here without visitors. The addition of recreational amenities to our valley are due in large part to the tourists and second homeowners that appreciate the same things residents appreciate. It’s not the end of the road, undiscovered, tiny town that is the draw anymore. I miss that time and there are still elements of that attraction for sure, but it is the recreational and artistic amenities that makes a June snow easier to tolerate these days. 

The people who have chosen to live in this place have done a pretty good job of finding a balance between being able to reside in a mountain paradise and accepting the impacts that come with the challenges. Understand that there will be lines at any restaurant. There will be fewer places to grab a drink or bite to eat so maybe wait until August before thinking it will be easy to pop into your favorite eatery at 7 o’clock without a reservation. Know that a lot of people won’t understand what it means to actually drive 15 mph so be aware when walking or riding your townie and let the speeders know if they are going too fast or blowing through stop signs. Crusty local attitude is still part of the CB charm but think charming instead of jerky. If you think you can text your buddy in Michigan and get an immediate response anytime between, say June 29 and August 15, think again. The internet and phone service are about to get…challenging. The backcountry will be packed and the dust at sunset will indicate how many people are rushing back to their campsites after eating out.

The balance comes in acceptance and preparation. Whether it is the CB Conservation Corps out there educating visitors and picking up remnants of backcountry mayhem; the local governments working to provide more places for workers to live near their jobs; people working to encourage more walking and bike riding in the town; or the residents choosing to provide funding for expanded skateparks, schools and trails, the thought is there to find balance. It really is a thoughtful place.

When it gets to be a bit much, remember you can go another 500 feet up in elevation and usually find yourself alone. Walk the alleys instead of Elk Ave. Ride that trail no one has heard of instead of 401 (which may not be rideable for a while anyway). Don’t have the expectation that communication will be easy with your phone or that you can pull into a campsite up the Slate and find solitude unless you know where to go. According to this week’s Wildflower Watch, “yarrow flower essence is valued as a protector when dealing with some of our modern-day challenges, such as big crowds…” Hey, try anything when it gets a bit rough…and it will get a bit rough. 

It is what it is, so take the breath. Accept the summer tsunami. Thank the CBCC crew. Enjoy the needed sunshine that has come in the nick of time. It is all part of the balance.

Happy solstice everyone….

—Mark Reaman

Council hears skate community

By Mark Reaman

Despite being rejected from regular grant funding source Great Outdoors Colorado (GOCO), the Crested Butte town council listened to a packed house of supporters Monday night and agreed to dig into their financial reserves and pull out $450,000 to continue the already scheduled renovation and expansion of the Big Mine Skatepark. Local mothers, fathers and skaters of all ages spoke passionately about the need for the skatepark and the benefits it provides to the community in general. In the end, the council voted 6-0 to pony up the additional money to keep the renovation on schedule for this summer.

“I was here and part of the effort when the skatepark was started in 1997,” said Daniel Hartigan. “Skateboarding is a cheap form of recreation for kids. They can be set-up for 20 years for a couple hundred bucks which is a lot less expensive than a $1,000 mountain bike. It is an important place for people who are maybe not into team sports. It is an important part of the community.”

“In the summer I go to the skatepark a lot,” said young skater Gage Goodnough. “It doesn’t have a lot of variety of features, and I would like to see that expanded.”

Another young skater, Colton Parr, spoke over Zoom. “I’m a skater and I love the skatepark. But our skatepark is so unsafe. It’s kind of crazy,” he told the council. “If you don’t fix it, kids could stop skating. Skating improves mental health and all of us that use the skatepark are a family.”

Skate coach Preston Chubb said the park has deteriorated with age and has become unsafe. He said his students sweep the bowls regularly, but rocks and chips are normal. “All the kids are super respectful, but it is kind of dangerous out there with rocks crumbling everywhere.”

Crested Butte Parks, Recreation, Open Space and Trails director Janna Hansen informed the council in her report that the 25-year-old park “is literally crumbling and requires significant repairs to keep it usable. Substantial drainage problems cause water to pool in the bowls and it is not uncommon for participants in our skate program to be out there with buckets and a sump pump dredging out the park before a program session,” she wrote. 

Hansen added that the town’s insurance company “had been citing the park for necessary repairs for over 10 years.”

Hansen offered the council five alternatives to deal with the GOCO grant absence ranging from having the town make up the $450,000 difference, phasing the project over several years, trying again for the state grant next year and pushing off the $200,000 bathroom project that was part of the proposal and putting the money toward the park.

Gunnison resident Randy Rennie said the park was a huge benefit to the youth of the community. “At the heart of skateboarding is a kind, open and welcoming community. I support doing the skatepark renovation.”

Salle McDaniel agreed. “It is a great outlet for kids of all ages,” she said. “But the current state of the park is unsafe, so it is ready to be renovated.”

“I see the community coming together at the skatepark, so I support the upgrades,” said nearby resident Jeff Derusseau.

Skater Mac Hausdoeffer said he was a regular kid at the skatepark. “I’m there pretty much every day in the summer,” he said. “Kids in town need more options like this.”

“Both my kids spend a lot of their summer over there,” said Kyle Anderson. “It is starting to fall apart and is getting unsafe. It needs to be taken care of. It is one of the most used spaces in Crested Butte in the summer. The town should put in the money to improve it.”

Christina Spatharos said her daughter has chosen to take up the sport and she is supportive. “Skateboarding is an activity that teaches kids perseverance,” she noted.

“The skatepark is a hub of the community and creativity,” added Chloe Bowman. “It is such an important place for our community. It should be of the utmost priority for funding.”

“I have two kids who use the skatepark,” said Chris Goodnough. “The renovation would be beneficial for the town. There are bathrooms in the other town parks. This one needs bathrooms too. Overall, invest in the kids who are part of this town.”

Amanda Whiteford said the park attracts a “non-sexist community. The Crested Butte skatepark has developed such a good community. It is better to be at a safe park instead of one that is falling apart.”

Murphy Smith said he has met many of his close friends at the skatepark and promised it would be a good investment for the community.

Madeline McCarthy said she has helped put on a lot of mental health events at the park. “It is super important to have a safe and updated park for the community,” she said.

Hansen explained to the council how the GOCO grant process had changed and smaller projects like the CB skatepark might not get a favorable eye in the future. Town manager Dara MacDonald said the town had the reserves to cover the gap but noted the Real Estate Transfer Tax (RETT) that funds many town capital projects has been on the decline of late. She also pointed out much of that pool of money is geared toward affordable housing projects.

Mayor Ian Billick said a rough estimate of the cost of an affordable housing unit to the town was about $250,000, so funding the skatepark would basically cost less than the expense of two units.

Councilmember Jason MacMillan asked if other “in-kind” donations might be secured to help lower the cost of the project. Hansen said there were some such donations lined up but not enough to cover the grant gap.

Councilmember Mallika Magner said the skatepark was a great amenity for town and council should do its best to refurbish it for the next generation.

“I thought the pickleball mafia was a lock, but you guys are great and eloquent,” MacMillan told the more than two dozen skate supporters in the audience along with another two dozen who were online. “I would love to fund it all, but it comes with giving something else up. Trying to find that balance.”

Billick said phasing the renovation didn’t make sense and would be a waste of time and money. Councilmember Chris Haver said he was against reducing the scope of the project and omitting any expansion with just a renovation of the current area. Councilmember Gabi Prochaska asked if a larger project might be viewed more favorably by GOCO. Billick said it sounded like the town should not count too much on future GOCO grants of this sort.

“This is a great turnout tonight,” Billick said. “The question is what do we give up or delay by funding this? Is it the replacement of windows in the budget that is part of our climate action plan? Some workforce housing units?”

“Windows,” responded some in the crowd.

“We need a balanced portfolio, and we are involved in a lot of housing projects,” said Billick. 

“We keep talking about densifying the town,” said Magner. “I like the idea of providing a hangout. It is good to have space. I’m in favor of funding this.”

“I keep thinking about the two units,” said MacMillan. “But this reflects the culture and livability aspect we also talk about. I too am in favor of funding it either in full or by postponing the bathrooms.”

Magner made a motion to have the town make up the grant gap in full.

“I am supportive of that motion. It is a priority,” said Billick. “I love the participation we are seeing tonight. It actually matters and people should understand that if they participate, they can make a difference. But honestly, in the future, there will be things we probably can’t do. I expect a slowdown in the local economy. We are already seeing it in the RETT. So, we will have to be honest with ourselves and know that when it comes to capital projects, things will get tougher.”

With that, the council unanimously voted 6-0 (councilmember Anna Fenerty was not at the meeting) to spend the money out of town reserves. The audience applauded the decision.

The Evergreen Skateparks company has the project on its schedule to start the renovation and expansion work on June 5.

ou may have heard Sue Sweetra ringing her handbells in concert at Crested Butte’s Union Congregational Church at some point. Sue has been a ringer from the time she was 5 and her father referred to her as a rapscallion at their home in Wheaton, Illinois. Growing up as a Midwestern girl, most of her hobbies revolved around singing in church and school choirs and ringing handbells in church. She tells of the impressive 30-member children’s choir in her First Presbyterian Church. She remained in choir all through high school. 

Back in those days, Sue explains, there wasn’t any organized sports except for little league, which girls weren’t allowed to play, so they’d mostly entertain themselves with whiffle ball, bike riding or playing in the stream that ran behind her house. “We’d try to swing across without falling in. We had a free childhood, and there were no phones,” she remembers. When the kids heard the town’s 6 p.m. fire whistle blow, “we knew we had to be home.” Finally, in sixth grade they started up after-school sports and Sue took up softball and soccer, even though she had no idea what soccer was. “But I wanted to try out and when no one wanted to play goalkeeper, I did it. I got pretty good.”

Sue’s parents taught her how to ski when she was 3, and the family would take off to the slopes every week during the winter. Her parents also taught her how to play golf when she was in sixth grade. There were PGA tour events in her town and in conjunction, a kid’s golf program with lessons. “We would get to meet people like Jack Nicklaus, Lee Trevino, Chi Chi Rodriguez and Arnold Palmer who were there teaching us kids. Just getting to meet pros like them, it made me feel special,” she says. 

In high school, Sue continued skiing and playing varsity softball and soccer in a club league. “My best friend and I tried out for the boy’s freshman soccer team in high school because we thought we were good enough, and we were. I was the starting goalkeeper, and she was the starting center mid-fielder.” Sue graduated in 1982 thinking, “Mostly I wanted to ski and I didn’t know what else I wanted to do.” She enrolled at Denver University (DU) as a sports medicine major. “Being a sports med student in a business school was really great because my class sizes were really small and I enjoyed that,” she says. She was there for two years playing soccer and skiing whenever she could, usually at A-Basin.

Sue met her late husband, Cliff Sweetra, in her freshman year at DU. “He was the ski patrolman who picked me up at A-Basin when I fell and separated my shoulder. I was taken down to the clinic. I went back to the patrol months later to ask for the names of the patrollers who helped me so I could make a donation to the volunteer portion. They gave me his name and afterwards I’d pop in to see if I could meet him because I didn’t remember any faces or anybody from that day.” She finally got to meet him four months later. “He invited me to dinner with the ski patrol group and that was the start of things.” They married in December of 1985. 

Cliff was working for Martin Marietta, an aerospace company in Denver and was transferred to Washington, D.C. while they were dating. “We were doing the long-distance romance thing,” she says.

She moved after they married, and they were there for 10 years. During that time, Sue returned to school to get a BS in nursing from George Mason University in Fairfax, Virginia in 1995. When Martin Marietta lost their funding for the project Cliff was working on, and with her ability to work anywhere as a nurse, they moved back to Denver. Moving back to Colorado was always their goal, Sue says.

They bought a place high above the town of Evergreen in Brook Forest, and Sue was hired at an Evergreen nursing home, which she recalls, “was not a stellar job for a recent nurse graduate but it sure taught me time management skills.” She was working the graveyard shift in charge of 56 patients. “You learn to coordinate. It was a wonderful learning experience.” 

She and Cliff still found time to ski, and Sue had become certified as a ski patrol in 1987 while they were living in Fairfax. The two joined a Nordic backcountry ski patrol called Bryan Mountain Nordic. The patrol was based out of Boulder and responsible for Devil’s Thumb in Fraser and was the first ski patrol to have an agreement with the U.S. Forest Service and National Parks to serve the Brainard Lakes area northwest of Nederland and the southern portion of the Rocky Mountain National Park adjacent to it. 

In 1996, a friend convinced Sue to fly from Denver to Gunnison for the Kim Reichhelm Ski Adventure week. “That was my first introduction to Crested Butte. I would have driven had I known it was only a four-hour drive,” she laughs. It didn’t take long for Sue to be smitten with town; in fact, it happened as soon as she debarked from a town bus and started walking around. She brought Cliff up the next month, and they bought a town lot across from the school on Eighth and Red Lady. “Cliff looked at me and said, ‘I could retire in this town.’ They spent 15 to 20 weekends a year coming to CB, staying at the Claim Jumper, “that encouraged people to bring their dogs and discouraged children. There were often six dogs under the dining room table,” Sue recalls. 

When the Claim Jumper was sold and there weren’t any places that would let them bring their dog, they decided to buy a place in CB South. Later, in 2006, they found their home on Belleview, sold the CB South property and Cliff retired in 2007. But Sue was still working as an operating room nurse at Lutheran Medical Center in Denver, commuting to work from CB, which she did for 14 years. They bought a small apartment in Denver so she could continue work, two weeks on and two weeks off. “You gotta pay the bills,” she laughs. When COVID hit she wasn’t willing to go into ICU as a COVID nurse, “so I basically just retired.” Last Christmas, Sue found a new retirement job as a shuttle driver for Dolly’s Mountain Shuttle. “And I absolutely love it. I get to meet really nice people who are happy to be here and always happy to see you.”

 In 2019, Sue suddenly was unable to walk for more than a block without getting completely winded. The tests came back as normal but as a nurse, she requested a chest CT scan with contrast. They found a 2.5 cm mass in her right lung. Two weeks later they removed her lower right lung lobe which was the cure. “The support from this community when I had my lung cancer was insane, people literally came out of the woodwork to offer food, driving and to pick up stuff. I do my best to be that person for other people now too.” 

“Most everyone in town knows me from either skiing or my handbells,” Sue says. She started in the UCC Handbell Choir in 2006. This past Christmas, Sue was invited to sing with the chorus in a production of The Messiah with the St. Petersburg Opera and Florida Orchestra in St. Petersburg, Florida. She spent most of the fall taking vocal lessons with WCU’s Lillian Magrinelli. “It was a big deal for me, being some chick from CB, Colorado who gets invited to sing with a professional orchestra and opera singers. I was scared out of my mind,” she tells. But she showed up prepared even though she was nervous for the two-night run, and they invited her back. Sue says that it’s the handbells that are her real love. “They’re a happy place, just me and 25 bells,” she says of her now 53 years of ringing.

Two years ago during COVID, Sue sold her house and moved into a home in Silver Sage with a roommate. Cliff had passed away in 2015. “I’m sure trying to stay in CB. I suspect medically, at some point, my doctor will tell me I have to move down in elevation, but until then, I see myself skiing as much as I can,” and that means Nordic skiing with her dog Cassi. Sue still patrols at Devil’s Thumb as well. She also volunteers with Living Journeys. “I try to do my best, help as many as I can and practice random acts of kindness.” 

We used to have dirt roads,” Laura remembers what so many recall fondly, or not so fondly, who lived here in Crested Butte’s wilder days. However, Laura was born and raised here so the muddy, dusty days were the norm during her childhood. Laura and her two older sisters, Lisa and Vicki, and younger brother Butch, lived at the top of the hill at the west end of Maroon Avenue with their parents Allan and Marcia Hegeman. There were holidays she’d get rather muddy herself, sliding down that steep street from her house in fancy dresses and moon boots, heading out for lunch with the family. 

One of the best things to do with all the snow from those deep winters, besides skiing, was to build snow caves and Laura recalls the pile of snow that would slide off the old school roof. The kids would transform the heap into a magical cavern where they’d drink hot chocolate. “One night in fifth grade, we even spent the night in the cave,” which she figures would never be allowed to happen these days.

Like most kids here, skiing was as much a part of life as breathing and Laura had BC Vandervoort and “Freckles” as ski instructors. “They’d take us to the North Face. Back then, we had to hike up but we learned how to ski The Extremes. Skiing was a big part of our life,” she says, but adds she doesn’t ski downhill anymore since tearing her ACL… three times. “I miss it and when I have more time I’ll get back into it.” She spends her winters on Nordic skis now.

And then there were the carefree summers where she’d be outdoors most of the time, exploring, hiking and camping with her friends in her backyard, the once undeveloped wooded hills of what is now the gated Trappers Crossing. “We also spent a lot of time up at RMBL,” she tells about the kids’ camp activities at Gothic. “I loved going through all the paths that led to the different cabins.” 

Laura attended Colorado Rocky Mountain School in Carbondale for her high school years. She spent her freshman year in the dorms until her parents bought a condo and alternated weeks living there with her and her brother Butch. Laura says she feels fortunate to have been able to experience learning there. “It’s a very outdoorsy school. The first two weeks of when you start there, whether you’re a freshman or a senior, they take you on a two-week backpacking camping trip over passes.” She graduated in 1991.

Not surprisingly, Laura was very much into photography, as her parents owned the popular photography shop in town, called Heg’s Place. Influenced by her father’s creative camera work, she had studied the art at her high school, which had an advanced program, its own photo lab and an apprentice program. In her senior year, Laura did her apprenticeship in New York City. “I was 17 and I had never been to a big city by myself, but I had a mentor. I worked at Magnum Photography, took the subway to work and lived in an all-women boarding house in Gramercy Park. It was hard, but looking back I was so fortunate to have had that experience. I got to do really cool city stuff too.” 

After graduation, she enrolled at Colorado Mountain College in Glenwood Springs for photography but left a year later to attend Cornell College in Mt. Vernon, Iowa, where she earned a degree in Environmental Studies. “Cornell didn’t have a strong photography program,” she explains, “And perhaps I lost interest. I chose environmental studies because the program there was very well rounded,” she says, “with diverse subjects like French, biology, environmental politics and animal behavior.” She returned home to do an internship with High Country Conservation Advocates (HCCA) and graduated in 1996. 

Immediately after graduation, Laura came right back to Crested Butte, “And I haven’t left,” she laughs. “It felt good to come home.” She worked briefly at Rijks Gallery, helping with framing and sales but she confesses, “I really wanted to work at the Crested Butte State Bank. It was my goal, but there wasn’t an opening at the time. My dad had started that bank with a couple other people in 1977 and I grew up going to that bank. I helped them out on my spring break, right after the explosion,” she recalls of the tragic blast that took the lives of three locals in 1990. She had also worked there in the summers during high school and college. One day, the bank finally called her with a full-time teller opening. That was 26 years ago, and Laura is still there at the job she always wanted. Now, she’s the branch manager.

Laura says that what she loves about her job at the bank is the social aspect of it. “Seeing our customers, helping people, whether it’s helping them with problems or finding the best financial solutions for them. I’ve probably worked with 200 different employees in my career here.” Much has changed since she first started, she says. “There are so many regulations that we have to follow ever since 9/11. The customer ID program we had back in the day was that we could cash a check with a ski pass, or open an account without an ID because on CBMR paydays nobody had their ID but everyone had their ski pass. I worked at the branch on the mountain back then and we’d rotate working there. The bank was there most of my career until two years ago when it closed.”

Laura met Robert Brodie when he came into the bank to cash his paychecks. One night while out with the girls at one of the local watering holes, Brodie walked in and Roanne Rouse called to the waitress, Jill Barr, to bring Brodie a beer from Laura. Flushed and embarrassed, the two nevertheless exchanged phone numbers. A couple of days later they got together for dinner at her house. “The rest is history,” she smiles, “We moved in together in 1997 since we both needed a place to live.” They married in 2000 and had their daughter Lillian in 2004. 

In early 2000, they moved to CB South, bought a condo, later buying a duplex and finally buying a single-family home there. “My brother and parents are still here in CB and we wanted our Lillian to go through our school for her whole school career. We wanted her to grow up here.” Lillian graduated from CBCS in 2022. 

Laura and her hubby do a lot of rafting at Ruby Horse Thief on the Colorado River out of Grand Junction and the Dolores River in the San Juans. “I’d love to go to some national parks and see other parts of the country. I’m not a huge ocean girl but I wouldn’t mind being in the tropics for a little while, like maybe winters,” she thinks.

“I’ve never been to southern Europe and that’s definitely on my bucket list. We have a lot of ideas of what we want to do once we aren’t working full-time.” This year, Laura’s hitting the big FIVE-OH and is thrilled that, “I’m not feeble,” she says jokingly with a grin, “I can still mountain bike and hike.”

[  By Dawne Belloise  ]

Born in Y2K to parents Krista and PJ Hildebrandt, Robbie Hildebrandt was raised with the rest of the CB millennial kids. If you’ve been on the mountain anytime in the past 35 years, you’ve most likely run into his parents since that’s how long PJ has been fitting skis and Krista has been on ski patrol. Robbie tells of the November day before he was born—his mom was going up to do lift evac training, but they wouldn’t let her because she was too pregnant and couldn’t fit into the harness. “She was all emotional about it and then went into labor,” he tells. Adding to the adventure of having a baby in winter at the end of the road, “They were stopped on the way to the hospital by a cattle drive in a blizzard. And that’s about the most Crested Butte birth I’ve heard yet,” he laughs.

Despite that exciting birth, Robbie says he had a pretty relaxed childhood compared to the outside world. “It was awesome. My parents didn’t worry too much about where I was because I was in a one square mile area. It was all an adventure and really helped me experience the world – going out hiking whenever I wanted, exploring the backcountry. It gave me an appreciation and understanding of the nature that surrounds us, giving me more of the eco-friendly view of life, an environmentalist view.” 

His graduating class from CBCS in 2019 had around 60 kids and Robbie says that he was a bit more on the outside of the social scene. “I was a little more of an introvert and did things on my own a lot, trying to figure myself out. The other side of growing up in a small town was trying to figure out what I wanted to be.” 

He also felt that there weren’t a lot of activities for his friends and him to do together for the most part that didn’t involve the outdoors, and thought it was challenging trying to figure out something extracurricular. Robbie felt that if you weren’t an uber athlete, you didn’t fit the CB mold. “We have a lot to do in nature but there’s not a lot for kids to do if you’re not into sports. I was into sports growing up, but I like to call myself the social athlete. I do like to ski, bike and hike but not at the uber level, I’m just there to kick back and have a good time,” he explains. “I found other things to fill my time with.”

Robbie’s niche was music and he and some friends put together a band called Limeade in their senior year with Robbie on drums and his percussion of choice, the cajon. “We were just a jam band playing music like Pink Floyd and Grateful Dead. We were total hippies, hanging out in my friend’s garage after school. We’d just jam for hours. It was Max Faust, Pierce McLaughin, Hunter Wright and Linda Horn and sometimes her sister Essie too. We threw parties at the garage.”

Robbie attended Western Colorado University (WCU) for a year to study mechanical engineering and was part of the inaugural class of the CU Boulder partnership program but when COVID hit and classes went online, Robbie didn’t feel he could focus. “Online classes weren’t my thing, so I decided that college was not my speed.” At the same time, he observed that essential workers were a necessity and were able to make a living here. He already knew he wanted to stay in the valley and came to the conclusion he needed to learn a trade that he would enjoy and one that would also pay the bills. Starting out with roofing, Robbie then jumped into high end carpentry with Crested Butte Builders. 

As most youth feel, Robbie started thinking he needed to experience life outside of the valley, so he moved in with friends in Colorado Springs. It didn’t work out so well and after someone rear-ended and totaled his truck, he thought home looked pretty good. “I felt relieved to be back in a familiar place, but I still didn’t feel like I had what I wanted or needed, so I was still searching. I took a road trip up to Seattle to check out a diving program for underwater welding.” 

Seattle was a bit too aggressive for Robbie and he didn’t like its vibe. “The people seemed angry and the city was dark, the weather was dark, everything seemed dark as compared to sunny CB.” During this time, he went to see his maternal grandpa in Minnesota, who passed away four days after Robbie arrived. His grandfather’s passing led Robbie to realize how much home meant to him and that revelation was the impetus for him to return. “I realized how beautiful the place I live in is, even though it’s so small there’s so much opportunity, especially at this point in time.”

He’s now working at Timberline Mechanical, having started out as an apprentice for boiler work and moving into head boiler tech when the position opened up. “I’m taking the natural gas coming into the house and basically making it blow up to make it heat the floors or baseboards,” he grins. “I love what I’m doing. I’m getting the education I was looking for and I’m learning hydronics and thermodynamics.“  

Robbie is currently living in CB South with his support pooch, Callie, a white shepherd he adopted from Gunnison Underdog. “She’s been living a happy life here with me. She’s a CB dog. Pretty much the only way I was able to find an affordable place in the valley that would allow a dog was through my parents, who own the Alpengardener property,” he says of his upstairs apartment. “I know that I’m one of the more fortunate kids to grow up in this valley to have parents who were able to plant their roots enough to have a place for me to live. This is invaluable.” 

Robbie notes that over the years, he’s watched the valley change for both the better and the worse. “The cost of living is hard. The ability to hold a labor body of workers in the valley seems impossible these days with the cost of living and the affordability and availability of housing.” But he certainly feels this is his home, and loves how Crested Butte and the valley is still so accessible to the outdoors. “I go dirt biking on the back roads. Dad made sure I was a dirt biker growing up and I got my first dirt bike at four years old. Mom said a dirt bike is a great way to learn clutch. Right now, I can walk out my back door to go do anything I want whether it’s biking, hiking or skiing, and nature’s my escape.”

Mateo the Mexican perro comes home to the high country

[  By Dawne Belloise  ]

There are situational times when one’s gut feelings scream way louder than the logic that insists you’re absolutely insane if you carry through with what your intuition is dictating. Such was the case with Gunnisonite Libby Marsden who went with her feelings instead of her mind’s argument that rescuing a stray dog in Mexico while on an arduous mountain biking trek was not a logical thing to even think about. But the unusual connection was undeniable between Libby and the dog she named Mateo and sometimes, when you heed your heart, things just fall into place to make it happen. 

Libby and her friends were biking through San Mateo, Oaxaca on a 240-mile journey when they acquired a shadow, the adorable-faced, spunky black pup who took a shine to the transiting group. “We expected him to stop after a short while, but he kept going, and going and going,” Libby retells. They even tried to shoo him away but to no avail and 10 miles later, that dog was still keeping up with them, dodging other menacing strays who were protecting their territory from the perceived encroacher. 

“He was happy as a clam, trotting along beside us,” Libby says. By the time they hit mile 15 with the pooch, the group decided they needed to carry Mateo so he wouldn’t suffer from exhaustion. Libby recalls that they somehow scored a potato sack from a local farmer in a tiny mountain town at about 9,000 feet. “We were so deep into the Mexican mountains that the prominent language was not Spanish, it was Zapoteca,” an indigenous language there. MacGyvering the potato sack with a little duct tape and Titan Straps, they fashioned a doggie backpack and flung it onto Libby’s back with the pooch comfortably happy inside. The group was planning on a 40-mile trek that day. “We could only have him in the sack for the downhills but luckily there was a 10-mile downhill coming up.” Libby recalls the extra 25 pounds of dog on her back made it difficult to navigate the narrow dirt road, and her lower back started to give out, but she was determined. 

The group only managed 32 miles that day of steep climbing and set up camp for the night. Mateo had matched their 20 miles of steep climb and Libby says, “He didn’t complain. He didn’t lollygag. He didn’t seem to be completely depleted of energy. Just a brave, determined soul who had chosen us as his family and that was that in his simple dog mind. He camped with us that night, somewhere around 9,000 feet in the height of the San Jose del Pacífico mountains. The next day I woke up and unzipped the fly of my tent and was immediately greeted by a wiggly butt and wet black nose.”

Mateo was ready to go the distance with them but as Libby tells, they were about to embark on the desert section of their biking trip and it would be too hot for Mateo, or for Libby to carry him. “We finally decided to ask the very kind woman who served us breakfast if they wanted a dog. They laughed at us and told us to just shoo him away. At the end of breakfast they said they’d hang on to him while we left but they couldn’t guarantee he’d be fed and he may die. So that was a no from me and into the potato sack he went for another long descent,” passing confused locals who had most likely never seen a dog in a potato sack on a biker’s back before. 

At the bottom of their run, they met a rancher saddling up his horse and Mateo bolted for some shade there. Wanting the best for Mateo, they somewhat jokingly asked the rancher if he wanted a dog, who immediately smiled and said yes. “He said he would take good care of him and he would be fed and live a good life.” It was just what they needed at that time as they couldn’t have their new buddy continue through hot pavement, scarce water and steep climbs. “It would be cruel. We still had 130 miles to go,” she says. So Mateo was left with his new caretaker. “My eyes swelled with big fat tears as I rode away. I couldn’t look back. I swear I heard him bark after us, calling to us to wait up. We couldn’t keep him and were leaving him with a stranger. I thought about this throughout that day, and the next day, and the next.” And that’s when Libby began imagining what life could be like for a Mexican dog in the mountains of the Gunnison Valley, but Mateo was now already far away, back down that dirt road with the rancher they left him with.

Three days later, at the end of their journey, while sipping a Corona by the pool of their hard-earned hotel, and still lamenting the dog they left behind, Libby had that illogical, questioning moment of, what if I went back for him? Oscillating between the reality of the cascading difficulties of getting Mateo back to Gunnison and her gut feeling of love for the pup, she finally gave in to the illogical conclusion that she wanted to go for it. Her friend Ellen jumped on the idea with her and committed to going back with her to find Mateo. 

In two hours’ time, they had a taxi driver willing to schlep them the three hours back over rough roads and steep climbs. They didn’t even know if they’d be able to find Mateo again. “This 25-pound dog in the middle of corn fields, agave rows and rock slides. I didn’t want to get too excited because it was a long shot that he was still there. He was a rancher in the middle of nowhere. We didn’t know if the guy even lived there, we only knew where we dropped him off.” They accepted their insanity and left on their quest to find Mateo at 5 a.m.

Some three hours later, they were standing in front of the deserted shack where they gave Mateo to the rancher. “The silence was screaming in my ears. It wasn’t going to work. We had lost him forever. It wasn’t meant to be.” They decided to head into the small town and ask around for the rancher but on the way there, they waved down a car coming up the road. With the taxi driver as their interpreter, and after being shown a phone photo of the rancher, the passengers miraculously knew who he was and where he was. Once in the town, they asked a woman in the street if she knew the rancher. Serendipitously, the woman happened to be the rancher’s daughter. As they drove slowly up the street to his house, they saw Mateo, happily rolling in the dry dirt of that small Mexican town, and Libby called out his name. “His ears perked up, his head jolted. I was out the door before I knew it. He excitedly started running toward us, all wiggles and making all sorts of noises. He recognized us. He knew who we were. He knew we were family, his family. I was crying.” 

The rancher understood their love for Mateo and with his blessing, Libby, Ellen and Mateo loaded up into the taxi and headed back to the hotel to begin the process of getting Mateo ready for his trip to his new home in the Gunnison Valley. 

It would not be cheap. They started a GoFundMe page and within days were $99 short of their goal of $3,000, with any leftover funds donated to the animal rescue shelter that had helped them. “All extra proceeds will be heading to Friends of Megan Rescue in Oaxaca City. Without them, I truly would not have been able to pull this off. They take such great care of their rescues and work so hard to make a difference to animals and humans alike who are in need of help.” 

Mateo needed documentation, vaccinations and Libby had to purchase a new plane ticket with a Mexican airline since United Airlines no longer allows pets in the cargo hold. Despite these obstacles, and their taxi getting T-boned by a drunk driver at 4 a.m. on the way to the airport (everyone was ok), Libby and Mateo landed in Denver last Saturday amidst the backdrop of the mountains that Mateo will now know as home. The two adventurers are back in Gunnison after the long but rewarding journey. Libby says she can’t wait for Mateo to experience his first snow. Welcome to the best place in the world for a dog, Mateo.

…with renewed zest September 21-25

[  By Dawne Belloise  ]

After a hiatus brought on by the COVID pandemic, there will be an in-person return this year for the Crested Butte Film Festival. Recently named one of the “25 Coolest Film Festivals in the World” by MovieMaker Magazine, throngs of movie lovers will flock to Crested Butte next week to attend this year’s Crested Butte Film Festival (CBFF), with the added bonus of the reopening of the beloved Majestic Theatre for the event. 

The event begins Wednesday, September 21 and runs for five days. Films will also be shown at the Crested Butte Center for the Arts. In an innovative move to continue through COVID, the film festival, now in its 12th year, went virtual in 2020, offering passes which allowed attendees to watch from home on TVs or personal devices. The virtual idea was so popular, and with people still skittish about all the variants of COVID, the CB Film Fest is offering both virtual and in-person passes to the screenings this year. 

Co-creator of the film fest Michael Brody says it’s all about evolving. “In 2020, we had a completely virtual festival and it worked really well for us. People were staying at home and watching. Last year was our first hybrid festival,” he explains. The “hybrid” fest had those attending in-person at the CB Center of the Arts while others were virtually attending from home. “Connor Hagen’s film really helped to sustain the numbers in 2020,” he says. 

Brody feels that this year is also looking good for both excellent films and attendee numbers. Virtual watching is good for 20 days. In other words, virtual pass holders can view all the films beginning September 21 through October 9 at their own leisure. Virtual passes are purchased through CBFF website which then enables the passholder to watch on a TV, computer, laptop or personal device.  

CBFF chooses films that locals can enjoy, relate to, or are thought provoking, as well as just excellent entertainment. Specifically, Brody says, “I think because we’re an activist community, we have a strong environmental, counterculture and hippie base so our documentary features play very well in CB. Also knowing that Buttians love a parade, on Friday, September 23, at 11:30 a.m., there’ll be a horse parade from First Street and Elk Avenue to the CB Center for the Arts. The parade is to introduce and highlight the film The Long Rider starring Felipe Leite and Clara Davel, who will lead the procession to the Center for the 1 p.m. screening in which Felipe rides horseback 2,500 miles from Calgary to Brazil. (Pedestrians are welcome in the parade but please, no bikes.)

The CBFF is also trying to develop an audience for cutting edge, sophisticated, foreign language films, Brody says. “This year, two of our biggest and best films are in foreign languages – one in Korean, Broker, which is an interesting fictional story about a woman dropping off her baby in a baby drop-off box. The broker is the main character who is trying to make a profit from the selling of unwanted infants to couples who can afford it. The other film is in Romanian and called R.M.N. which is an acronym for Romania but also an X-Ray process which is referred to in the film.” There are also Hebrew, Finnish, Croatian and Hong Kong films. All foreign films have English subtitles.  

Mutually and simultaneously, the Majestic Theatre and the CB Film Festival reached out to one other and Brody says excitedly, “The big news for this festival and Crested Butte is the reopening of the Majestic Theatre, which was spearheaded by the staff who used to work there and Carrie Wallace as the main motivator. People always asked what was going on with the Majestic, but she was able to sign the lease on August 1 and it was perfect timing for us. It was such a gift because we needed another venue to show the number of films we wanted to show. We didn’t have enough screens so now we get to show six more films, which is huge for us.” Films at the Majestic will screen both Saturday and Sunday, September 24 and 25.

Also, once the CBFF knew the Majestic was opening, they were able to program a few family-friendly and easily accessible films, like a Texas wildlife film, and another film about panthers living in the Florida Everglades. Through a generous donor, all six shows at the Majestic are free and meant for locals and passholders alike. Brody feels it’s a way to bring people out and get them going to movies again, into the collective experience of watching movies together once again. 

One of the exciting events of the festival is that home-grown Buttian, Sara Murphy, returns with her co-produced film Licorice Pizza at the CB Center for the Arts, September 25, at 7 p.m. Murphy was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Picture in 2022. She’ll be introducing the film and answering audience questions afterwards. It’s the closing event of the festival.  

There is also a first ever Locals Film Showcase – a program of both documentary and narrative, feature length and short films on the big screen. The event features local filmmakers, Benjamin Swift, Mark and Jenn Reeb, Laura Yale, Forest Woodward and Ben Knight, and featuring film participant, Jeff Banks.

Brody tells that his personal favorite film in this year’s festival is I Love My Dad. It’s a story about a father trying to get back into his son’s life, who has shut him out of all communication. The father decides the only way to reach his son is by taking on the false profile of a fictional attractive woman, and they begin relating to each other through this made-up person named Becca. “It leads to all sorts of weird situations, imaginative landscapes and awkwardness but it’s funny, deep and real,” Brody notes. “It’s really interesting in that the young man who stars in it, James Morosini, also wrote, directed and stars in it and it’s based on an actual experience with his dad.” I Love My Dad plays Friday, September 23, at 7 p.m. at the CB Center for the Arts. 

There are more than 80 films spanning the categories of narrative, documentary, outdoor adventure, children’s and short films over the five-day event. Additional programming sprinkled throughout the festival includes filmmaker talks, panel discussions, lively parties and engaging “Beyond the Screen” experiences. Brody says about the festival, “It’s this opportunity to come together as a community to watch films. The Majestic has been closed so it’s an opportunity to watch together which is important, I think, because it allows us to regather and ends a bit of isolation that we’ve perhaps been feeling for the past two and a half years. And the Majestic plays a big part in that because it’s a place to gather again, to bring your kids, go on a date or be with your best friends.” 

From probably the first time I rode it, I quickly came to realize there was one major flaw in the Snodgrass Trail: it’s not long enough. Whichever way you start, there’s some good uphill followed by a fantastically beautiful and flowy downhill. The smooth singletrack traversing thick foliage, wildflowers, mountain views and aspen groves is a mountain biking wonder in a place known for its mountain biking. There are of course other great local riding trails — 401, Doctor’s, Meander, The Gunsight Connector, Baxter’s, the list goes on. But Snodgrass is an old school classic and that is in part because of the ethic that helps make this place what it is…we collaborate. It doesn’t always come without disagreement and tensions, but collaboration and compromise are not dirty words in this valley. That is a blessing.

Some of the best of the Snodgrass trail flows through private property as it hits the Washington Gulch side of the mountain. The Allen Family Ranches have for years generously allowed bikers and hikers to use the trail on their property for the early part of the summer season until they bring their cattle to the property. That time has once again arrived as Snodgrass will close this Sunday at sunset.

Let’s remember that the Allen family is under no obligation to allow thousands of strangers to cross their land. But they have done so for decades and it is important that the users of that trail respect their request to now avoid that area. Their cattle will instead use the area to fatten up and it is easier to do so without mountain bikers whizzing through the herd every five minutes. It seems a fair request and a great deal given the joy Snodgrass can provide basically between May and the end of August.

Snodgrass is not the only trail demonstrating collaboration between recreationalists and private landowners. Baxter’s has sections that go across private property. So does Lupine and the Deli Trail. Green Lake and a section of Tony’s do as well. Think about the steep Long Lake hiking trail and the Bridges trail near the Upper Loop and Whetstone Vista. But through the efforts of passionate individuals and organizations like CBMBA, the outreach efforts to use trails not solely on public land continues. Similar efforts are successful in the winter with nearby Nordic trails as well. 

There is the promise that the users will respect the private property and not trash the place and for the most part, that has held true. Of course, there are always a few bad apples that think they are entitled to anything that is in front of them. They aren’t. Entitlement is the rotten core of any community and unfortunately, we can all smell more of it on all sides here of late. Entitled attitudes risk losing much of the good access we have to high mountain treasures here in the North Valley. 

Both not being afraid to argue but also being willing to collaborate is a hallmark of the valley. There is real effort to figure stuff out and honestly, it’s not always pretty. But it works. Snodgrass is but one example of that working. So is the current plan to eliminate mining on Red Lady while protecting recreational access to the Bowl so those winter ski tracks can continue to look over town. So is trying to figure out the best ways to keep workers living in affordable homes near their jobs. So is using the public RTA bus system to help get students from CB South to the school. So is the voluntary no-float period on the Upper Slate River to protect herons that are nesting. So is taking concrete action to not ignore climate change in a place that directly relies on a snowy winter for much of its life. 

Collaborative ideas can certainly lead to loud disagreements, but in the end, we as a place usually try to collaborate to keep moving forward. That all comes with communication, with respect, with compromise. To me, Snodgrass is a shining example of that. Thank you to the Allen family.

So, the Snodgrass trail will be closed for the season as of this Sunday. It’s another sign of the waning summer. If the connection between community collaboration and a mountain bike trail is too much for you, ride or hike it anyway before Sunday. It will clear your mind and make you forget the line at the Post Office. Consider it one of the many blessings of our valley. Snodgrass is worth it. The only thing that might disappoint you is that it’s not long enough. 

—Mark Reaman

[  By Dawne Belloise  ]

If you find yourself traveling up the meandering dirt road leading to Gothic and decide to stop in that tiny camp town full of research scientists and marmots, you might be greeted by Rick Horn, the manager at the Rocky Mountain Biological Lab (RMBL aka “Rumble”) Visitor Center. Rick, who was once titled information technician, is now the center’s manager and has spent nine summers at the base of the spired mountain. As info tech, he’d give talks about RMBL’s history and research. After his first summer there in 2014, he was asked to be manager. “I love the organization for so many reasons,” he says and notes that the tourist traffic into the visitor center has increased exponentially since he first started. “We’ve gone from about 10,000 visitors during the summer season to about 20,000. There’s certainly more people coming from other parts of the country who have found their way to Gothic,” he explains.

Growing up in Des Moines, Iowa, Rick touts that’s he’s a real Midwestern kid but quickly adds, “We love having grown up there, we just don’t want to live there as adults.” He also had the ideal American family life. “My father was a World War II vet and mom was a part-time librarian. We grew up in an Ozzie and Harriet household. I was a hardcore baby boomer.” 

Even though he was in a big city, Rick was very outdoors oriented. He’d often spend time with his grandparents who lived in small towns in Iowa and got him outdoors. “One grandfather was a farmer, the other hunted and fished every day and I was influenced by both.”

In his Midwestern school, Rick recalls that team sports ranked as most important for everyone. “I was too small, so I wasn’t going to make any of the teams, but I had a talent for writing and journalism.” He became editor for his school paper. “I really liked journalism and if you were the editor, you could have your own column on the front page.” Rick was part of the generation who was profoundly affected by the assassinations of President JFK, Martin Luther King and Robert Kennedy, the latter who died on his commencement day. There were 800 graduates in his class of 1968.

Rick was a good student but laughs that he wasn’t the greatest. However, he knew he was going to college because the Vietnam War was raging and the draft was in full effect and boys could get a student deferment. “My sophomore year in high school was when they had the first draft and my number was 80, and up to number 150 were going to Vietnam.” 

Rick enrolled at the University of Iowa, where there was a small ski club of about 30 people and as a freshman in 1969, took his first trip out to Colorado, spending five days at five different resorts. “I took a half-day lesson from a college-aged girl with a great tan and I loved everything about the experience – the fresh air, the beauty of the mountains, the snow, that beautiful blue sky. It was before the Eisenhower Tunnel was built so you drove over Berthoud Pass. It was just a life changing experience for me.” After that, during spring or Christmas break, “Whoever had a car that would run, we’d road trip to Colorado, usually Steamboat, Aspen and Vail where a lift ticket was only $6.50. So, for a couple hundred dollars, a college kid could go skiing in Colorado.” 

On May 4, 1970, four Kent State University students were shot dead and nine others injured by the Ohio National Guard for protesting the war. All hell broke loose across the country, and it was yet another life changing event for Rick and his generation. “Every campus exploded with riots and demonstrations. The school was shut down right after and they wanted us to leave campus and go home. It became really personal because now there were college students being murdered on their campus and it radicalized all of us. It was very personal,” he says of the shootings, “because a lot of us were going to be drafted.” 

Rick received his degree in business in 1972. It was a mere two weeks after graduation when Uncle Sam called up his number for the draft and Rick received his papers. He was determined not to get drafted and fortunately, he was rejected because he had grown up with asthma. “I was ready to go to Canada. I was not going to be the last person killed in Vietnam,” he affirms, as the war was declared over in 1974. “I put my dog, skis and road bike in my car, and I moved to Steamboat in the fall of ‘72.” 

With no affordable housing, Rick moved into a trailer park 11 miles west of Steamboat, essentially living in a closet and working as a diver at the Holiday Inn. He didn’t even make it to ski season there because of his housing situation. 

After a trip up north to see if there were any other desirable small town ski resorts in Montana or Wyoming, he headed to the newly opened Snowbird and moved to Salt Lake City where he felt confident that he could find work and housing, and eventually wound up in Sandy, Utah. “I spent four years waiting on tables at night and had a ski pass at Alta and Snowbird. It was an exciting time. I didn’t know how to ski that well, but I met a few friends who helped me learn. I just sort of followed them around,” he laughs. “We had over 600 inches the first two years I was there.”

Living the dream ski bum life was fine but Rick decided to return to the Midwest to seek a real career in 1976. “I thought I’d have better luck finding a job back in Iowa than in Salt Lake City, because of the Mormon influence, since you might not be hired if you weren’t a Mormon.” 

After a short, unfinished stint at Drake University in Des Moines, Rick had an opportunity to help open a restaurant in Minneapolis, which moved him into the Twin Cities. “I liked it because there was snow, better skiing and bike riding, it was better in a lot of ways.” He spent the next 22 years there entirely in the restaurant industry.

In 1984, after managing various restaurants, he was hired by a small company of restaurants called Applebee’s, he grins, and tells that there were only nine restaurants in the newly started franchise. Over the 15 years he was with them, he built out about 20 Applebee’s in various locations, including Washington state, and saw the company grow from nine restaurants to over 1,000. He eventually moved from the franchise side to the company side of business as VP of operations as well as VP of concept development.

With his background and now years of experience, Rick was snatched up by an Italian restaurant company in 1999. “They were expanding to Naples and Fort Myers, Florida, and they needed a guy who had grown a restaurant company before.” He traveled for work from Minnesota to Florida to open those new restaurants but after spending way too much time on planes, phones and in hotels for two years, he and his wife felt a change was needed. “My wife was tired of being a lawyer,” he tells of his spouse, Susan Holappa, who he met through Applebee’s where she was a lawyer. They married in 1989. 

 The couple had been spending their vacations in the West and one night after dinner and wine in Grand Junction they decided to make the leap. “We were returning from a Lake Powell trip, and we decided to sell the house and move to Grand Junction. We weren’t sure we wanted to live year-round in the snow and Moab is an hour and a half from GJ. I thought GJ looked like an undiscovered gem.” They bought a home there in 2001. Rick did some restaurant consulting but three years later, anxious to hit the slopes with a pass, he applied to be a CBMR ski instructor. To his utter surprise, they hired him. Rick and Susan bought a tiny studio condo at Skyland Lodge, splitting their time between CB and GJ since his wife still had her law practice on the Western Slope.

With his management skills, CBMR moved Rick into ski school supervisor his second year there. The following year, he was promoted to Adult Ski School manager. Unfortunately, two years later, CBMR hired a new ski school director who fired everyone and Rick returned to being an instructor with no salary or health benefits. But he continued to teach skiing in the winter until 2014 when he went to work as an information specialist up at Gothic. “I love being part of the RMBL team. I felt so fortunate to find a home like I’ve found at RMBL. I’m older than billy barr by one week,” he laughs, “so I’m the eldest there. I have a wonderful staff who come back to work every year at the visitor’s center. We keep growing each year and I’m thrilled that I’m making a contribution there.”

As with most Buttians, what he’s enamored with the most about this valley is, “The people who live here, the environment, the beauty. Just like the first time I ever went skiing, the beauty is overwhelming. I love the size of the town, going to the post office, grocery or having a beer on Elk Avenue and seeing people I know. There’s no place I feel better and no place else I’d rather be.” 

“I remember breezes…”

[  by Than Acuff  ]

Anyone else notice that the last two months of “erratic at best” cell service in the valley has returned our fates to the cosmos? What I mean is that sometimes a call or text goes through, sometimes they don’t. The cosmos is deciding what is and isn’t important and, who is and who is not important.

For instance, according to the cosmos, my daughter and her whereabouts are not important but, a video of Donna Jean Godchaux singing “From the Heart of Me” New Year’s Eve 1978 is because, while I could not contact my daughter recently, I could text that video to a friend.

The cosmos also has complete control over the parking lot at Clark’s, the local postal system, my aforementioned daughter and my bike because after a solid month of no mechanicals, a recent uptick in mechanicals has occurred just when the flies and mosquitos are peaking.

But do the cosmos control softball? That is the question. Mother Nature tried, but failed, and so we are now successfully into the post season in both leagues and the Lords of Dirt kicked off their playoff campaign with a win, only to lose the next game, but remain in the hunt in the loser’s bracket.

The goal was laid out in the simplest of terms prior to their opening playoff game against the Irwin Tuckers when one Lord of Dirt pointed out, “If we lose, we have to ump the next game, so don’t lose.”

Irwin Tuckers looked for a little post season magic having gone the entire regular season without a win, though they did come close to a massive upset early on against the league leading and undefeated Rainbow Unicorns.

They mustered some of that magic early in the game building a 2-0 lead as Elliot Manning tripled and scored and Luis Aguirre drove in a run with a high fly RBI double.

A hit from Prawit Durgan, sacrifice RBIs from Katie McKernan and Billy Watson and walks by Hunter Lucas and Jake Sunter had the Lords of Dirt on top 3-2 but the Tuckers came right back. Isabel Young and Tim Mahan connected for RBI hits and the Tuckers were set for more until the cosmos spoke as a pop up by Hannah Crofut turned into a chaos riddled, inning ending double play, or triple play or maybe even a quadruple play.

The Lords of Dirt seized on the cosmochaos to take the lead back as Morgan Holleran tapped a one-armed single and patience at the plate led to two more walks and two more runs.

Neither team could shake the other though as more pop ups turned into more cosmochaos. It took until the bottom of the fourth before the Lords of Dirt started to make their move as they turned a one-run lead into a 14-6 lead thanks to a seven-run outburst.

Lucas and Davis Collins connected for RBI base hits, Isabel Lucas cracked a high fly RBI and Holleran capped off the rally with a one-armed, two RBI sacrifice hit.

But the Tuckers just would not go away, and they came right back in the top of the fifth inning. Annika Engholm led off with an error-assisted triple and scored as Young smacked a double. Jack Foersling doubled and scored on a triple by Tish Sherman and when Crofut and Aguirre each connected for RBI hits, the Tuckers were just two runs down and full of hope.

The dream of early post season success was soon deferred though as the Lords of Dirt rattled off another five runs. Sunter started the scoring with a RBI double, Collins tacked on another run with a sacrifice hit, Collin Dill punched a RBI double and Holleran struck once again with a one-armed, two RBI single up the middle for a 19-12 Lords of Dirt lead.

The Tuckers mustered one last run, but they were tapped out from producing any last inning heroics and will spend their next playoff game in the loser’s bracket with elimination on the line.