posted by Sandy Fails
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Those of you who have followed Luke Mehall’s writings in the Crested Butte Magazine know he’s not your typical office-cubicle kind of guy. He’s written about his graffiti-painted car “The Freedom Mobile”; the art of couch surfing; the Butte Bouldering Bonanza, which he helps mastermind; the Zen of dishwashing; his digital Climbing Zine; the Peaceful Warriors; and other climbing and community-oriented topics.
Luke’s an earnest, honest, smart and funny guy – and a heck of a climber. Now you can help him attain another dream objective – being an underwear model for Patagonia. Really. Maybe.
posted by Sandy Fails
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Not a one of my fellow Christmas Eve diners this year was Italian, but a few of us would now like to be. Those Italians have the right idea on a number of things, including our new Christmas Eve tradition – the seven-fishes dinner.
Long-time friend MJ Vosburg suggested that our two families should borrow that Italian custom, so I took a quick look online to find out more. It seems that religious constraints initially called for fasting on Christmas Eve. The Italians conveniently interpreted this as not eating meat, which gave permission – perhaps even a mandate – to have a culinary heyday with seafood. What a cultural accomplishment – fasting turns to feasting, guilt free.
posted by Sandy Fails
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I hear the winter Crested Butte Magazine has hit the stands, the chairlifts are running, and people are cross-country skiing at Lily Lake. That all seems slightly surreal to me. I’m sitting in shorts and sandals on a 28-foot sailboat, which bobs at the end of ten feet of docking line near its slip at Marina San Carlos, Mexico. My husband Michael and I are hanging out here waiting for the tide to rise. I don’t use that phrase as a maritime metaphor for relaxation. I mean it literally.
posted by Sandy Fails
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Today I woke to the quacking of ducks flying southward past my window. This afternoon I’ll proof pages before we send the next Crested Butte Magazine to press. Meanwhile, I’m sitting here craving bacon and eggs while sipping my purifying lemonade. We must be headed into winter.
If you’ve ever done the Master Cleanse (during which your daily menu consists of fresh lemonade with maple syrup and cayenne), then we share the bond of those who have triumphed over a common, worthy ordeal.
posted by Sandy Fails
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Molly Murfee is in my writers’ group, and this month she submitted her winter Crested Butte Magazine essay for the group’s critique. Her essay discusses the extremes of abundance and scarcity that make up our lives in Crested Butte. In reading a paragraph where Molly waxes poetic about July’s lush carpets of wildflowers, almost hallucinogenic in their colors, fellow writer Peter suggested that she tone down her hyperbole. The other folks at the meeting looked at each other, and someone asked, “So, were you out of town this summer, Peter?”
posted by Sandy Fails
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Watching the USA Pro Cycling Challenge yesterday, I felt like Gil in the movie “Midnight in Paris,” seeing in person all these characters I knew so well from a different reality.
I've “known” Versus commentators Phil Liggett and Paul Sherwin for years. Their British banter has long been the sound track to my family’s annual three-week obsession with the Tour de France. For the entire 20-stage tour, we eat dinner in front of the TV, watching Lycra-clad butts wiggle on their bike seats and analyzing strategies, alliances, attacks, crashes and breakaways as though Cadel Evans might call any minute seeking our advice.
posted by Sandy Fails
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I’m one of those impatient book readers who skim over the descriptions, greedy to get back to the plot. So, though I always admired the nature writings of Thoreau and Muir, I read them like a carnivore at a vegetarian buffet, scanning the bounty for some beefy entrée that seemed to be missing.
Still, I found myself waxing rhapsodic this morning as I strolled among waist-high wildflowers on the ditch trail out Brush Creek. Maybe I should give old Henry David another chance.
posted by Sandy Fails
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Sitting here writing while it snows (and snows and snows), I find myself thinking: April is the month when our deep connection with nature turns into an abusive relationship.
As waves of snow and chill besiege us, it’s easy to personify Nature as some intentionally cruel snowflake-hurler (if we can’t control the weather, we might as well enjoy being victimized by it). Now I understand how the Greeks came up with all those gods and goddesses with serious personality disorders.
posted by Sandy Fails
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I recently skied out with ten friends and family members for an overnighter in the Maroon Hut at Gothic (see this winter’s Crested Butte Magazine for hut info). We skied in well laden with cheese and sausage hors d’oeuvres, bacon and eggs for breakfast, spaghetti and homemade sauce for dinner, pear-walnut-feta salad, wine, beer and zebra cake (sneaked in for Tyler McIntyre’s 24th birthday). We did not go hungry. But looking back on our little outing, I see that it wasn’t just about the consumables; it was really about the other ways we feed ourselves.
posted by Sandy Fails
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This winter the pipes burst and water flooded my family's Skyland condo, and while it's being repaired, we're living downtown (at Seventh and Red Lady) for the first time in 15 years. Today as I walked my dog around the block, I remembered the joys of being a Crested Butte "townie."
