I had a baby in April 2024, and the last uncomfortable months of pregnancy, combined with her first fussy year of life, have meant almost exclusively broken or interrupted sleep — many nights with just a couple of hours of actual zzzz’s. It’s a joyous sleeplessness, though, as my husband and I had hoped (and tried!) for six years to have another child.
When Olympia came, my doctor proclaimed her a miracle child, considering my advanced maternal age (actual term, geriatric), and despite living in a community of familiars that regularly invites comments like, “Man, you look dead tired,” I’ve found a beauty in living on the razor’s edge of consciousness.
For one, I get to hang out with Olympia in the middle of the night, watch her smile and reach for me. We talk without language and speak through sounds and smiles. Eventually, I watch drowsiness wash over her and steal her back to sleep while I lie awake, sifting through the day’s debris and listening to the valley’s soundscape. Snowplows scraping the streets, vibrating our house. Ice sliding from the roof. A coyote’s singular wail. In the spring, these sounds give way to the tenor of a valley thawing. The occasional bear tussling with a bent-up trashcan. New calves braying for their mothers. Red-winged blackbirds’ song as the sun crests Red Lady.
I listen to the sonics of Butte Avenue and often think about the currents of Buttians, mid-sleep cycle, inextricably linked to one another through the shared reciprocity of life at 9,000 feet. Here, relationships are tightly woven around rituals of skill, and outdooring as we teach and learn from one another in an endless cycle. In this issue, we learn about Buttians doing incredible things for this community, and, not unlike waking from a powerful dream, the people featured in these pages influence us in our own pursuits by mere proxy, whether we realize it or not.
I’ll mention that each issue of the Crested Butte Magazine seems to star at least one Kevin Bacon, six-degrees-of-separation character who connects multiple stories. This time, it’s former Crested Butte Community School teacher and ultra athlete Pat O’Neill, who, coincidentally, is our neighbor and whose Toyota I often hear starting up before dawn. He figures largely in Betsy Welch’s piece on ultra-athletes’ brains, and how some of the toughest Buttians mentally push through the most insane endurance races. He’s also a main cast member in Sandy Fails’ fundraising story for his athletic feats, raising hundreds of thousands of dollars for local nonprofits. Pat is a living inspiration, motivating many to live larger, give more, and be our best.
Other stories explore the innovations, philanthropic efforts, and creative projects that members of our local community have helped create and that shape our experience of the valley. From Beth Buehler, a piece on the hundreds of runners who descend on the valley each summer as part of the Team Prep USA camp, and the incredible arc of its founder, Trent Sanderson. Photographer Petar Dopchev gives a stunning visual essay of local blacksmith Ben Eaton and his artworks that add depth and beauty to our streets through the use of ancient traditions. This volume also kicks off a new science partnership with the Rocky Mountain Biological Laboratory, and we look forward to sharing some of the incredible research happening in our backyard.
Widening the view, journalist Katherine Nettles examines how we arrived at this particular moment in what is being called Crested Butte’s “amenity era” and what the future might hold for our little town, now suddenly on the map.
Sleepless spells come for us all at some stage in our lives. This one hits at several fault lines converging in my life — new baby, starting this editorship, building a new house, and saying goodbye to our old house (and its sounds) on Butte Avenue. Much to muse about at 2:37 a.m. But this wakefulness has also been an accelerant in finding and making meaning in my life. It’s these hours, void of the obligations and distractions of regular life, when we consider what’s important. It helps to be among so many bold, caring, and inspiring people, and I’m honored to help tell their stories.