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 courtsy of www.fs.fed.us

    In 1962 my dad’s wander lust compelled him to answer a summons from his sister who had just discovered a dying mining town in Colorado that in her opinion was the perfect spot to spend summers. She had purchased a house, fully furnished, built in the 1880’s when the mines were running full tilt boogie, producing silver, tin and even a little gold now and then.  Eighty years later the mining was played out, just enough to keep commerce on Main Street operational: drug store, grocery, hotel, a movie theater (that used to be a dance hall) and oh yes, a real saloon.

 

courtesy of www.theepictimes.com

 

 Thinking that this would be an interesting spot to visit on our annual summer idiot trip, my dad packed us all up into our Rambler American, (just to review for those of you who have not read previous posts; that would be three kids sticking to the seats in the Texas heat, a mom, a dad, and one Eskimo spitz/ border collie mixed breed named Teddy) and hauled us through the desolate plains of West Texas, the deserts of New Mexico and north to the high country. As always the trip itself proved to be an adventure. We got stuck in the mud in a campground in Texas, chugged through the mountains at two miles per hour (my brother got out and raced the car up the highway until he threw up-altitude sickness will do that to you-what did we know: we were flatlanders, left the dog behind at a rest stop, had to go back and get him, but he was used to that by now.  We left him somewhere every trip we took him on. We didn’t leave my sister anywhere on this trip, that would come later when she was a little older.

 

 We pulled into town and I immediately hated the place.  What I didn’t know that June, was that this was going to be the site of three of the most idyllic summers of my life. 

 

  My dad got busy right away as my Aunt had been scouting out properties that she thought he could afford.  Property at the time in this location didn’t cost too much.  The location was a good two hours travel over some of the highest and most scenic mountains in the lower 48 and from any town of considerable size. By considerable size I am talking population 5,000.

 

  What my dad settled on was a one room school house situated in a Valley, ten thousand feet in elevation, with a two thousand foot drop into a gorge located about two hundred feet from our new mountain home.  School houses come with some interesting amenities such as blackboards –very fun on rainy days (of which there are not many in the summer in the high country)-two bathrooms, boys and girls, and this one had two wood burning stoves; one for cooking one for heating. My mother, who one would think would have been ready to run screaming for the exit, loved her wood stoves.  In her own way she was as eccentric as my dad. She had grown up on a farm on the North Dakota prairie so cooking with wood was not something with which she was unfamiliar. The place was covered in pack rat shit, but what the hell, we had running water, electricity, and plenty of deadwood lying around; we were good to go.

    One of the first items of business (after cleaning up all the rat doo-doo) was to install snow fencing to create a yard to contain my sister who was only two. It’s probably not a good idea to let a toddler run free with a two thousand foot drop off in the side yard.  However my brother and I, it was assumed, had good sense so we were turned loose.  I also assume we were told not to jump off the edge, but you never know.  My dad always said that Darwin was right, so maybe that applied to us as well. My brother and I spent that first summer exploring the valley from end to end. The sounds of the rustle of the quaking aspen and the roar of the river in the gorge were the accompaniment to the long summer days.  There were mountains springs to wade, fish to attempt to catch, arrowheads and fools gold to collect, rocks to turn over and wildlife to watch. 

  One morning early, I awoke to what sounded like sheep.  Not a sheep, sheep plural, lots of sheep plural.  I got up looked out and announced to my sleeping family that our yard was a sea of sheep.  And so it was.  Native American drovers on horseback and their dogs were taking their sheep up to higher pastures and our place, not having been inhabited for quite some time was on the route up the mountains.  It took the better part of the morning for those woolies to pass through.  Watching the herd dogs work to keep every individual animal moving along with the group was fascinating. What wasn’t so fascinating was boiling our drinking water for several days afterward as the sheep had their way with the spring that was our water source.  Not really  clean critters, sheep.

 

  Weekly we drove the fifteen miles to the mining town to shop and hang out.  My favorite spot was the drug store where I developed a gourmand’s taste for milkshakes. I could kill an afternoon sitting at the counter drinking my chocolate shake.  I had to save my allowance to buy those treats, until one week my grandfather showed up to visit.  He let me drink ‘em as fast as the barkeep could set ‘em up.  I learned I could only hold three before I exploded and was off milkshakes for a time.  Same thing happened with gin in later years.

 

  I saw The Unsinkable Molly Brown and How the West Was Won in the dancehall movie theater.  I peeked under the swinging doors of the saloon every chance I got and was shooed away for my troubles.  The Fourth of July in this tiny town was amazing; the fireworks detonating against a backdrop of rugged mountain peaks.  We watched from the picture window of my aunt’s house.  I competed in my first and only greased pig chase.  Didn’t get near the pig but had a lot of fun running with the pack.

 

  If there is a God, He/She surely resides in the San Juan Mountains just south of that small town. Or at least did once upon a time in 1962.  Maybe like  my family, God moved on as all the people moved in.  In the summer of 1964 my father heard rumors that “movie people” were looking at properties to buy around our valley.  In this I am a lot like my dad, I don’t appreciate too many people and popular places.  I crave solitude and quiet where I can think, reflect, and without constriction breathe in and out.  That is what I find at the top of mountains and have been willing to climb thousands of feet to attain. So my dad sold our place and made what seemed to him at the time a tidy little profit.  Not too long ago my Aunt sent me the listing for her old house in that dying mining town.  She bought it for one thousand dollars in 1960.  It was listed recently for two million.  So the “movie people” saved Telluride, Colorado.  If that is what saved is.

 

  Once one is an adult going back is never a good idea.  The yard at the old house that once seemed so huge suddenly isn’t, the long arduous walk to school is a lot shorter in grown up strides, spaces are closer together, what was once magic isn’t, mainly because seen through an adult’s eyes the mystery is solved.  And sometimes it is because, what was simply doesn’t exist any more.  So it is with the Telluride, Colorado of 1962.  It is gone as surely and completely as if it never was. 

 

  Our gypsy summers took us other places, many filled with as much beauty in their own way as the mountains.  But I can not get over the high country and probably never will. Did I mention the last time I was at Rocky Mountain National I saw the Bighorn Rams?  That is a sheep worth waking up to.