The old, wise woman Bean Feasa travels alone over the green hills, on the fringes of dawn and dusk, gathering herbs to accompany her healing. For the best strength, she seeks solstices and equinoxes, mornings when dew hangs heavy on the plants, the brightest day near a full moon, or the resting place of souls on the darkest night. The ritual requires it. She plucks stems of yarrow to heal wounds, arnica for muscles, valerian for sleep. But it is her communications with the Otherworldly spirit at her elbow, chattering away to her companion on one arm, basket on the other, that wields her the greatest power.
I see Trudy Yaklich out Peanut Lake Road on one of my information-gathering saunters. She is hunting pussy willows, one of the first blooms of spring, that her father, Fred, would bring her mother, Leola, to put on the table around this time in May each year. Trudy’s hair is twirled on top of her head in a bun. Her willowy frame is clad in brown leopard print.
Trudy’s hand moves gently over the soft, white head of her blind dog Bubby, who was dumped on the side of the road by a previous owner. “At 102!” Trudy exclaims at the audacity of someone to commit such a crime. “He gets whatever he wants.” She gazes fondly down at him, amazed at his presence, calling him a little Buddha. Looking up, she smiles, “We’re out on his sniff-ari.”
The year Trudy was crowned Flauschink Queen, to celebrate spring with a bright, cheery hand-stitched orange-and-yellow flower, was the year they lit up Red Lady Bowl with flares reading “Fuck Amax.” She is also the descendant of one of the oldest and longest lineages in Crested Butte — the Kochevars.
Jacob Kochevar, Trudy’s great- grandfather, left his home country of Slovenia and arrived in Crested Butte on horseback from Salida in 1878. Jacob was a fur trader and prospector, but his grandest reputation was that of being the best carpenter in town. He built Crested Butte’s most historic still- standing, still-operating infamous bar of the same name, as well as the more respectable Old Town Hall. Once Jacob established himself in his new home, he sent for his wife, Marija, and their four children. Marija was a midwife, herbalist, and town saint who, Trudy’ll tell you, “delivered 350 babies and lost only one.”
Jacob and Marija had two more children including Frances Kochevar. Meanwhile, Phillip Yaklich of Yugoslavia was migrating to the United States at the ripe age of 17 with a mere 25 cents in his pocket and not a word of English in his mouth. His family had saved everything they had to send the youngster overseas. When Phillip arrived in Crested Butte, he and Frances fell in love and were married.
Thus begins the origin story of Trudy.
With a cow they received as a wedding present, Frances and Phillip opened the Mountain Glow Dairy, the building of which still exists on First Street. Eight months pregnant, Frances would trudge up the hill to tend to the cows they kept near the Woods Walk. Sometimes, Phillip would ride a cow up to the mine to work the ore and sell the milk. Other days, he walked the ten miles to the Buckley Mine only to labor in a space with ceilings so low he would have to crouch on his knees all day.
I remember a time in the off-season, standing in the middle of the street with Trudy, just outside the old dairy building her family used to own. We are talking about this and that. She tells me she is trying to sell her house, the winters are too long, and she is tired of shoveling. She has buried a statue of the Catholic Saint Joseph (upside down, of course) in her yard to assist in the endeavor.
Trudy then turns to the magpie who has just flown in, lighting near our feet, cocking her shiny black head right and left. “Well, hello,” Trudy greets the magpie. “Thanks for coming to our conversation.” We listen to the magpie, who gurgles and croaks, just as absorbed in the interaction as we are.
Bean Feasa is in charge of cosmological harmony. She navigates places of imbalance with humans and the Otherworld, traveling beyond the veil to converse with ancestors and deities, assessing how to right a wrong committed within the community, bringing back the cure. She is the holder of mystery, meaning, and significance. The reminder of taboos.
Trudy treasures the old days of community dances, when babies slept on the coats in the back and teenagers spent the evening avoiding the old people. They danced “bumper car polka,” slamming into each other all in good fun.
“There were so few of us, we were just one big family. We were poor, but for Pete’s sake, we caught fish, fried potatoes, and when someone showed up with an accordion, we had music,” exclaims Trudy.
“We didn’t need vacation; we lived in vacation. There were horses and cows out on the hills, and we stayed out till dark and no one worried about us. It was truly a village raising kids. We weren’t driven by greed because there was no point. We were really united by wanting the best for everybody.”
Folklorist Gearóid Ó Crualaoich of the University College Cork in Ireland sees the powerful, autonomous Bean Feasa as the embodiment of the Sovereignty Goddess of pre-Christian times, guardian of her territory, a kind of oracle who discerned the upset equilibrium between a land and her people, and set about restoring cosmic, social, and psychic harmony. At times she is prophetic, always showing up unexpectedly at just the right time. Some say she is a shaman. In more vernacular terms, she “travels with the fairies.”
She hasn’t seen any pussy willows, Trudy reports, back at Peanut Lake, asking, “Have you?” I make a promise to let her know when they start emerging so she can put some on her father’s grave. Memorial Day’s coming up after all. We exchange pasque flower notes — are they blooming yet? I tell her I’ve seen bluebirds; she responds with tales of red-wing blackbirds in her tree.
Trudy then launches into tale after tale of the animals in her midst, where she lives on the banks of the Gunnison River; how she notices the one deer is wasting away, but how the ducks feed politely, waiting their turn in a line, when she puts out some snacks for them. She laughs at the silliness of the juvenile mountain lion pressing his nose to her window, relays conversations she has with the geese and magpies.
“You have to stop, be still,” she admonishes, shaking her head at the seeming stupidity of others. “It has to do with silence.”
“Ah man neek,” I hear Southern Ute Regina Lopez-Whiteskunk echo. “Be still, quiet, listen.”
Trudy and I are stopped at the Wastelands area of Peanut Lake. I look out past the piles of mining waste rock onto the island in the navel of the lake, and the axis mundi tree growing from its center. A great blue heron flies in an arcing sunwise circle just 30 feet over our heads. Entering our sphere from the east, she swings south, west, and north. She is so close I can see the rust and black on the underside of her wings, normally invisible to the naked or even binoculared eye. This skittish and ancient bird, 54 million years our elder, older than even the bear or the wolf, settles just above us on the highest peak of black rock of the Wastelands, surveying Peanut Lake, undoubtedly listening in. We are all just utterly silent, for a moment, together. Trudy, the heron, and I.
When I speak again, it is almost a whisper. I tell Trudy about the geese keeping sentinel over the lake, honking furiously the moment anyone comes into the vicinity, even me, sneaking in on tiptoes like a crazy lady when no one is looking. Yes, she nods, “The ducks listen to the geese. If the geese sound the alarm, the ducks paddle away.” We talk about how the animals of this lake must know each other, generation after generation of interactions. I tell her I am adding her to my Council of Elders.
Bean Feasa, then, is the tenacious survival of the old ways, the old stories. She is not only a symbol of the goddess of the land, she is proof of the collective imagination to create, to morph, to find meaning, to instill tradition. She is cultural process. An intermediary, in the truest sense of the word.
Trudy nods again, then asserts, “I’m almost 80 years old; I do have wisdom… but some people don’t!” She’s flabbergasted at this absence so natural to her, but acquiesces, her eyes brightening as she looks up through the lake, up through the forests of spruce, fir, and pine, up to the pointed peaks of Paradise Divide. She is reflective, but clear.
“It’s because this land raised me. The ice water of Coal Creek runs in my veins. The land has taught me to see these things.” I follow her gaze to the heron on the hill, then smile back at my friend. There are indeed goddesses among us.
Author’s note: Trudy Yaklich was one of the greatest informants in my research of all things Crested Butte. Trudy joined the realm of angels in 2024. Running into Trudy always felt like a gift. This is in honor of her.