EDIBLE ASPEN

Beneath the visage of Mount Lamborn rising in the distance, Tom and Lynn Gillespie’s farm on the edge of Paonia spreads out in all directions. It’s a 212-acre operation, home to East Frisian sheep, heritage turkeys, chickens, hogs, beef cattle and a lone dairy cow. The Gillespie’s call it the Living Farm, and it’s hard to come up with a more fitting name.

Now in its fourth generation in the Gillespie family, the Living Farm is still alive, and that says a lot, given the challenges historic farms face trying to stay in business and keep their children from heading to the city. And like any living thing, the Gillespie’s farm keeps changing with the times, and that seems to be the secret of its success.

“We love what we do,” Lynn Gillespie says. “We love waking up every day and doing it all over again.”

The operation is as expansive as the farm itself, and it keeps growing. Its community-supported agriculture program supplies produce 50 weeks out of the year to members from Crawford to Carbondale. The farm supplies meat and vegetables to stores and restaurants, including Six89 in Carbondale and Good Health grocery in Glenwood Springs, and breeding stock to farmers around the country. In the summer it’s a farmer’s market, a school for aspiring farmers and a destination for North Fork agri-tourism pilgrims.

Oh, and don’t forget the gardening books Lynn writes or the documentary they produced, Locavore. Or the wool rugs they weave. Or the socks.

And more is on the way.

The Gillespies are planting 300 fruit and nut trees, the latest orchard in a valley famous for its fruit. And they’re hoping to launch a new farm-to-table restaurant in downtown Paonia by summer, putting son Mike, an aspiring chef, to work in the kitchen.

“The thing I like about the restaurant is it completes the circle,” says Lynn Gillespie, sporting a John Deere cap.

Mike, his twin brother Ben, and their sister Jenny, all in their early twenties, are the latest generation on the farm their great-grandparents George and Margaret Gillespie started in 1938. In some ways, it wasn’t so different then from the farm today: a diverse operation back before pesticides and chemical fertilizer took over. Like many Paonia farms, it transformed over the decades into a mostly cattle and hay operation relying on chemicals to grow the crops and kill the weeds.

That changed when Tom and Lynn took over. “My dad, he still shakes his head once in a while,” Tom says, chuckling. “I think we’re surprising him quite a bit, too, because we’re successful.”

Lynn started a greenhouse business on the farm two decades ago so she could work at home and not send the kids off to daycare. When Wal-Mart moved in to nearby Delta and started selling the same flowers and shrubs she was selling, they realized they were headed for trouble. So they changed course, offering local produce to local residents. But those residents were demanding organics, so the Gillespies went chemical-free.

“I had to learn what would make the land happy, the soil happy,” says Tom, with a burly mountain man frame and beard to match. “I gotta have happy microbes to have happy plants. Once you get rid of the fertilizers, you gotta have happy land. It took a few years, but the land healed itself.”

The lessons they learned over the years they now teach to a new generation of farmers, who swap free labor for a free three-year course on organic farming. Most are city kids who aren’t used to muddy work boots.

“I was just working in a brewery in Denver, but I didn’t want to live like a 23-year-old for the rest of my life,” says Benjamin Capron, 28, of Littleton, now in his third year in the program, who hopes to set up his own farm in the San Luis Valley. “I really want to be responsible for raising what sustains me as a person.”

The next generation of Gillespies seems ready to keep the Living Farm alive, Ben and Jenny on the farm side, Mike on the table side. “I’ve never been tempted to leave,” says Ben, who took the money his grandmother gave to send him to college and built a turkey house instead.

Strolling through one of the greenhouses (they’re all heated using nothing but sun and earth), Lynn spots new sprouts of joi choi, Chinese cabbage, popping up. “They just came up today,” she says.

Another season’s produce is on the way, as another generation prepares to keep the Living Farm alive.

Tai Jacober. David Frey photo.

EDIBLE ASPEN

In his cowboy hat and blue jeans rolled over muddy boots, Tai Jacober seems more Marlboro Man than green crusader, but he’s a little of both. Riding on horseback down Thompson Creek Road above Carbondale, steering a herd of 800 bobbing sheep with whistles, shouts and a border collie named Violet, Jacober appears like a vision of the Roaring Fork Valley’s past, when sheep here numbered in the tens of thousands.

He’s hoping it’s a vision of the future, though. Jacober doesn’t just drive sheep and cattle. He’s also trying to drive agriculture in a new direction, or maybe an old direction with a new twist. With brothers Rio and Forest and father Jock, he runs Crystal River Meats, supplying grass-fed beef and lamb, raised without hormones or antibiotics, to local restaurants, supermarkets and shoppers.

“The main focus is to create a healthy protein that’s raised locally and sold locally,” says Jacober. “Doing it locally is environmentally the right way to do it and it makes sense. I think there’s no question it’s better for the world.”

The model might not work everywhere, Jacober admits, but it’s custom-made for the Roaring Fork Valley, where plenty of consumers, schooled on books like The Omnivore’s Dilemma, are willing to pay premium prices for grass-fed meat raised close to home. Here, too, are landowners with historic ranches who have no desire to do the ranching themselves. That’s OK with Jacober. He’s a rancher with no land.

With his father Jock at right, Tai Jacober cares for an injured lamb. David Frey photo.

“Tai calls himself a pickup rancher. He lives in his truck,” says his wife Molly. Relying on historic ranches, like the Coldwater Ranch above the Crystal River, and on demonstration farms like Sustainable Settings and Rock Bottom Ranch, the Jacobers knit together enough acreage to graze about 750 cows and some 1,000 lambs, numbers that are growing every year.

“This is a nice way to be a poor-man rancher,” Jacober says. The brothers still lean on their other business, Jacober Brothers Construction, and on their wives’ income, to keep the ranch business afloat. But business is soaring. What began nine years ago with just five cows butchered and sold to friends has grown steadily ever since. Last year, the Jacobers sold 170 cows. This year, they’re poised to sell 450, and with new contracts with Whole Foods, they’re set to keep growing.

Crystal River Meats already sells to City Market in Aspen and El Jebel. Soon, its meat will appear in forthcoming Whole Foods stores in Basalt and Frisco. At Easter, Whole Foods plans to sell these lambs jogging down the road throughout its Colorado stores. That’s farther afield than Jacober likes to go. (He’s so insistent on selling local, his company refuses to ship gift boxes. People should eat where they live, he says, even if it costs him sales.)

“He carries the burden of the whole earth on his shoulders,” Molly laughs.

Lambs are corralled for the Jacobers sheep drive. David Frey photo.

In discussing his operation, Jacober ranges from the merits of grass-fed beef to the benefits of buying local; from preserving open space to feeding 7 billion people around the globe, and it all fits into his vision for Crystal River Meats. The sons of old hippies, the Jacober brothers were raised with an environmental ethic on a ranch in southern Colorado before coming to Carbondale by way of St. Louis. The boys went to prep school at Colorado Rocky Mountain School, often riding their horses to class.

After studying agriculture at Montana State, Tai Jacober returned to the valley and joined his brothers in the construction business. That taught him business strategies most ranchers never learn, he says, and while many ranchers are happier mending fences than conducting market analyses,

Jacober spied a niche in the valley for local grass-fed beef and lamb.

“Your average food travels 1,400 miles,” Jock Jacober says, as he leads to sheep by horseback to a lower pasture where they will fatten up for the Whole Foods refrigerator case. “I find that unnecessary. By changing our diet appropriately and by nurturing the land around us, growing food on it, we can significantly improve the carbon footprint of what we eat.”

Crystal River Meats sells to consumers at farmer’s markets and out of their Fourth Street store in Carbondale, a historic building that was a general store (and brothel) some 80 years ago. Mostly, though, they sell to restaurants from Aspen to Glenwood Springs.

“The beef is amazing, but for us it’s all about community support,” says Mike Mercatoris, a founding partner in ZG Hospitality, which serves Crystal River Meats at its Zheng Asian Bistro in Glenwood Springs and its new gourmet burger joint, GRIND Glenwood. “When you can look the rancher in the eye, he’s in the restaurant with dirt on his boots, you realize this is what you’re affecting.”

Buyers are also affecting something else. They’re preserving a ranching tradition fast disappearing from the valley, but one that began long before grass-fed beef was a buzzword; it was just the way it was done. “On a daily basis,” Molly says, “there have to be people who want to eat what we’re providing.”

Matt Cudmore, founder of Meier Skis, shapes a ski at his shop. David Frey photo.

ASPEN PUBLIC RADIO

If you’re a skier, you’ve probably heard of brands like K2 and Salomon. But what about Meier Skis? The one-man operation, which handcrafts custom skis from local wood, is part of a boom of boutique ski makers that’s making its mark on the industry.

David Frey reports.

(Listen to it here.)

[Sounds of sawing]

In a backyard garage in Glenwood Springs, a new pair of skis is taking shape. They’re long, fat, and surprisingly lightweight, and they show off the grain of the locally-cut aspen wood at their core. A new approach to ski making is taking shape here, too. Meier Skis may be a one-man operation, but it’s part of a wave of boutique ski makers muscling in alongside big corporations.

“There are definitely a few.”

Matt Cudmore is the founder of Meier Skis. In his day job, he’s a designer for the engineering firm Schmueser Gordon Meyer. But he’s hoping his new ski business will take off. After making skis for friends for the past few years, he’s selling and renting them to the public this year at Glenwood’s Sunlight Mountain Resort.

“The one thing we’re finding is everyone stamps the ‘handmade’ on their ski but when you look where they’re shipped from, it’s from a factory, whether it’s in Colorado or a factory in China.  So that’s what we’re really pushing is that they are handmade and handmade locally.”

About seventy boutique ski makers have opened up across the country, including twenty in Colorado. They include Wagner, near Telluride, Unity, in Silverthorne, and FloSkis in Vail. One of the most famous, Montana Ski Company, counts former N-F-L quarterback Drew Bledsoe as a top investor.

Kelly Davis, research director for the trade group Snowsports Industries of America, says custom ski manufacturers account for one in six ski sales in the country – enough to get the attention of top manufacturers like Rossignol and Dynastar.

“This is such a cool part of the snow sports industry, because we’ve got these really small boutique ski manufacturing operations. So much innovation comes out of that side of the market. Those little companies are really a shot in the arm for the entire industry.”

Another ski industry observer says the rise in boutique ski makers is much like the growth of microbrewed beer – it appeals to customers who wants quality and a homegrown type of product.   Eric Edelstein runs the website Exotic-Skis-dot-com, which tracks nearly three hundred small-batch ski and snowboard makers around the world.

“Originally back in the Alpine days of Europe, every little valley and little mountain resort area had their own ski builders that made skis for the people there and the mountain conditions there and then it’s kind of gone to the big corporate industry giant. Now people are learning that, hey, I can make a ski myself and there are a couple of Internet forums where people can learn how to do this and buy the equipment. It’s kind of resonated with a lot of people who say, ‘I can make my own ski and I love it.’

[saw sounds]

The skis that come out of Cudmore’s shop seem more like works of art than sports equipment. They have a sidecut for fast turns and a rocker-shaped bottom designed to glide through powder. Instead of fancy graphics, the skis show off their wood cores – aspen, poplar, maple, even beetle-killed pine – mostly made from local timber.

“Nowadays everything is made and shipped from China. That’s just the way it is. I think if we can get something local it will be a movement that people will follow locally. People love the idea of having it made with a wood core from a mountain peak that they can see from town.”

As popular as this small-scale ski business is becoming…competition is tough. Little guys don’t just have to compete with big corporations. They have to compete with each other.

“We’ve seen quite a few come and we’ve seen quite a few go and we’ve seen others absorbed by bigger companies. Every year there’s a fresh one, and sometimes there’s a missing one.”

Jason Flynn is a founder of High Society Freeride Company. He and his buddies started the Snowmass Village company nine years ago with a run of six skis. Since then, they’ve expanded to more than fifty stores in the United States and abroad, selling skis, snowboards and now, outerwear. Flynn says there’s still room for more start ups. Skiers and snowboarders are always looking for the next thing, he says, and they like finding it at a company where you can call up the ski makers themselves.

“I think there’s always a need or a want from the general ski and snowboard populace for something new and fresh. They don’t always want to ride on what everyone else is riding or what’s in the big box stores. Depending on whatever the company’s mantra is or what their reason for existence is, people get behind them. I think that’s what keeps it fun.”

For Cudmore, the mantra is quailty skis, handmade locally.

“You know with all the economic problems we’ve been having these days and stuff getting shipped overseas, nobody really cares what they buy anymore as long as it’s cheap, quality’s just gone out the window. I just want to, you know, in our small little valley, maybe bring that back a little bit.”

If his business catches on, he says, maybe when people think of Glenwood Springs, they’ll think, hey, that’s where Meier Skis are made.

For Aspen Public Radio News, I’m David Frey.

A conceptual design for the new Aspen Art Museum. Courtesy AAM and Shigeru Ban Architects.

ASPEN PEAK

The West End has long been Aspen’s most sought-out neighborhood. For many buyers, the stately Victorians and stunning modern homes along the West End’s leafy streets are the epitome of Aspen living. More and more buyers, though, are looking east as this often-overlooked part of town experiences a renaissance.

“Some people call it Aspen’s Upper East Side,” jokes Brian Hazen, a Realtor with MasonMorse.

And why not? It’s hard to think about gentrification in Aspen – not anymore – but for a long time, the East End was home to some of Aspen’s, well, less glamorous neighborhoods. In recent years, though, aging homes have been replaced with beautiful new houses and townhomes, often at prices much lower than their West End neighbors, with a convenience to downtown Aspen that the West End doesn’t have.

“In the last five years it’s kind of taken on a new dimension out there,” Hazen says.

The biggest changes are yet to come. Much of the east side of downtown is getting a facelift, with new commercial and mixed-use buildings replacing fading old buildings. The most revolutionary of these is the new Aspen Art Museum. Designed by Japanese architect Shigeru Ban using woven wooden trusses and glass and a rooftop sculpture garden, the new art museum will add a cultural anchor to the East End that’s been lacking.

“With the Wheeler Opera House to the west and the new AAM on the east, Aspen will now have cultural ‘bookends,’” says Heidi Zuckerman Jacobson, CEO and director of the AAM.

That could mean lots of activity on the East End that doesn’t involve grocery shopping.

“It just creates a new vitality in the downtown core,” says Adam Roy, a land planner with DJA Planning + Development. His firm is working with two major new projects on Spring Street: the redevelopment of the former Stage 3 theater into the 625 Aspen project, and the Spring Building. In all, Roy counts eight redevelopment projects on Spring Street, almost simultaneously.

“It can be perceived as too much going on at one time, but my hope and expectation is that there is a synergistic opportunity here,” Roy says. “All the different property owners can work to create a vibe.”

For many homebuyers, that’s the sort of vibe they’re looking for. The West End boasts being close to the Aspen Institute and the Aspen Music Festival. It has the Red Brick and Yellow Brick centers, too. But the East End is close to downtown restaurants, shopping and attractions.

“The West End will always be very popular,” says Realtor Scott Davidson, with Aspen Associates. “It will probably always be one of the most desirable areas, no question. But the East End will continue to grow in popularity as the inventory gets better and is more inviting to the new buyer, because you can walk to town from there. It’s all about access.”

That access is important for a lot of homebuyers. Many are looking to downsize, Hazen says, so the smaller homes and townhouses on the East End are a perfect fit, and at a better price than many parts of town. And like in that other Upper East Side, it offers easy access to the action.

“Many buyers are more concerned about convenience,” Hazen says, “in some cases walking into town, not having a car. In the East End, that’s what the amenity is. As people get older they simplify their lives. In a recession, they downsize. They make it simpler. A lot of urban people don’t find our downtown that congested, busy or loud. They really enjoy the ability to walk and not have to get into their car.”

Steve Borbas sits inside of a small shack at the top of Tenderfoot Mountain, waiting for a radio signal to flip the switch and light up a Christmas tradition that he and other volunteers have prepared for weeks and maintained for decades in Salida, Colo. (pop. 5,236).

On the Friday evening after Thanksgiving Day, a crowd of spectators has gathered below in downtown Salida to watch the city’s annual Christmas parade, capped off with a visit by Santa Claus and the lighting of Tenderfoot Mountain for the holidays.

“Ho ho ho!” Santa belts out before waving his arm to lead the crowd in counting, “One, two, three!”

As if by magic, the mountain suddenly glows with red, orange and white lights outlining a 750-foot-tall Christmas tree above the town. Complete with ornaments, garlands and even a star on top, Tenderfoot Mountain transforms into Christmas Mountain while local firefighters shoot off fireworks overhead.

“This mountain is the heart of Salida,” says Felicia McQueen, huddling on the sidewalk with her daughter, Jordan, 4, during last year’s lighting ceremony. “This is something this town looks forward to every year. It’s a symbol of what Salida is.”

Old West meets New West in Salida, where the Victorian-style downtown district hearkens back to the town’s 19th-century mining days. A thriving arts community dots the city with galleries. Running alongside, the Arkansas River is a playground for rafters, kayakers and anglers. Fifteen nearby peaks top 14,000 feet, drawing hikers and adventurers during all seasons.

Most of the year, Tenderfoot Mountain is adorned with a giant lighted “S” for Salida, and a big red heart, a nod to the town’s nickname “Heart of the Rockies.” Come Christmastime, however, these symbols must share the hillside with thousands of festive lights in the shape of what locals call the world’s largest Christmas tree.

The holiday tradition began in 1989 when electric contractor Chris Schirmer enlisted his crew to decorate the mountain with 220 colored floodlights powered by 22,000 watts of electricity. However, the effect—which looked fabulous from overhead but like a bunch of big light bulbs from the town—wasn’t quite what he hoped for.

“I’m not one to say die,” says Schirmer, who went back to the drawing board to come up with another plan.

The next year, surveyors sketched out a mountain-size tree, and volunteers strung extension cords and Christmas lights in accordance with their specifications. When the switch finally was flipped, Christmas Mountain was a shining success—and a tradition that townspeople have embraced ever since.

“It’s taken on a life of its own,” says Schirmer, 61. “It’s really cool that it’s been loved so well through the years.”

Weeks before the holiday lighting, Borbas and about 20 other volunteers string 4,500 bulbs in a mile-long strand that zigzags the mountainside. Another 12 volunteers take them down again six weeks later.

“I really enjoy the spirit of it and of all our volunteers,” says Borbas, a local motel owner who has kept the tradition going, and glowing, for the past 14 years.

Private donations have covered the cost of burying a half-mile of wiring and purchasing longer-lasting LED lights. Now when stringing lights,volunteers simply plug them into green electrical boxes that dot the mountain. Local realtors cover the cost of electricity—$1,200 to light up Christmas Mountain, plus another $800 a year for the “S” and the shape of a heart. Students at Salida Middle School hold a penny drive to help out. Local residents chip in with donations and manpower.

The payoff comes each Thanksgiving weekend when Santa arrives, Borbas flips the switch and Christmas Mountain shines over Salida.

“The big thing,” says longtime volunteer Stew Brown, “is seeing the reaction of the town and kids—how proud they are when the lights go on.”

Red trees, the telltale sign of beetle kill, rise amid the snow in Eagle County, Colorado. David Frey photo.

ASPEN PUBLIC RADIO

Many trees on the White River National Forest are dying. Bark beetles are killing lodgepole pines. Aspens are experiencing what biologists call sudden aspen decline. So the Forest Service is trying to actively manage for the future forest. It’s part of a national priority called “forest resiliency.” But some critics wonder if humans should be trying to play Mother Nature. David Frey reports.

(Listen to the story here.)

[Sound of helicopters]

Could this be the sound of a new forest coming to life?

In the hills behind Aspen’s exclusive Starwood neighborhood, crews are cutting down dead trees and hauling them away by helicopter. The trees were killed by bark beetles – part of an epidemic that has destroyed lodgepole pine forests across millions of acres in the West. Getting rid of these trees will help protect these multimillion-dollar mansions from wildfire. It’s also meant to slow the spread of the deadly beetle. And, it’s part of a plan to pave the way for a future forest.

[Fade helicopter sound]

“We can wait for Mother Nature to do it and in meantime suffer the consequences. That’s not a choice that most people want to make. They want to do something in their lifetime and make a difference.” [13 sec]

Bill Kight is a community liaison for the White River National Forest. He’s working with a group of forest users called the Future Forest Roundtable to plan similar projects throughout the forest to improve habitat, decrease fire danger and help the forest re-grow.

The work on the White River National Forest is part of a national priority to improve what the agency calls “Forest Resiliency” – the ability of a forest to recover from disturbances like fire, drought and beetle outbreaks.

“What you’re seeing there on the White River is the type of work that’s occurring on a lot of different national forests across the country.”

U.S. Forest Service Chief Tom Tidwell says those disturbances are becoming more catastrophic, due in part to global warming. Fire seasons in some parts of the country are two months longer than they were just a decade ago, Tidwell says. Droughts are more severe. And beetle outbreaks are worse, partly because warmer winters don’t kill the beetles like they used to.

“Those are the things that have added to the overall concern about forest resiliency today.”

As in many forests across the West, much of the White River National Forest is dying. Beetles are killing off pine and spruce trees. Aspen trees are dying due to a mysterious phenomenon called sudden aspen decline. Animals like deer and elk are watching their habitat disappear.

So Forest Service officials are trying to actively shape the future forest. They’re working with diverse groups, from environmentalists to mountain bikers, from local governments to ski areas, to create a healthier forest than the one there now.

[Sound of helicopters]

The portion near Starwood, where well-heeled residents from John Denver to Saudi Prince Bandar have owned homes, is just the beginning of a ten-year project with a seven-million-dollar price tag on more than 62 thousand acres. In parts of the forest, like here, that project means cutting dead pines. In others, it will mean thinning out old aspens to make room for young ones. In still others, it will mean encouraging tender young oak brush — which deer and elk like to eat — by clearing out older oak. In many cases, Forest Service officials plan to use fire to do the work for them.

[Fade helicopter sound]

[Sound of Smokey Bear PSA: “Fire! Fire! Run for your lives!”]

Fire, forest officials say, was once an important part of the ecosystem. But that was before decades of wildfire suppression, symbolized by Forest Service icon Smokey Bear in advertising campaigns like these.

[Sound of Smokey Bear PSA: “Remember, only you can prevent forest fires.”]

That policy may have put out wildfires, but Forest Service officials say it also led to today’s explosive conditions. So the Forest Service wants to use fire again, to bring the forest back to life.

“We want people to understand that not all fires are bad and that fire is a necessary element if we’re going to restore the ecological element of forest to what it used to    be – a healthy forest.”

Critics question whether humans really can – or should — plan a future forest. Sloan Shoemaker is executive director of the environmental group Wilderness Workshop. He’s a member of the Future Forest Roundtable, but he’s also a skeptic. He says that old fire policy should teach us a lesson – that when humans try to plan a forest, it can lead to unintended consequences.

“Gardening the forest in order to have the viewscape that we want seems misguided and potentially a very faulty approach to our relationship with the forest.”

Shoemaker says disturbances like the beetle outbreak are part of a natural cycle. Left on its own, he says, the forest is already regenerating by itself.

“I guess I question the very need for us to be designing and controlling and engineering a future forest.”

Forest Service officials hope that by inviting a wide array of public opinion, they can reduce conflicts, and spread beyond forest boundaries to work on private land. In some cases, like at Starwood, they also hope for funds from landowners to help pay for the work.

“The more people understand the benefits of having a healthy forest, a resilient forest, they’ll also understand there are some benefits to invest to help in that. I think we’re just fortunate to have the communities we have in Colorado to recognize that. It’s going to take all of us working together.”

[SMOKEY BEAR SONG: “You can take a tip from Smokey that there’s nothing like a tree. Cause they’re good for kids to climb in and they’re beautiful to see.” [Music fade under outro]

She had three dogs at her feet, and her girlfriend sat beside her on a motel lobby couch. The two cats were at a kennel. Their VW van was full of climbing gear, and their motel room had a couple changes of clothes.

“I’ve been thinking a lot about impermanence,” Ashley Woods told me. That was a year ago, when the Fourmile Fire came raging through the outskirts of Boulder, Colo. For four days, the house she shared with Lisa Polansky had been off-limits to them — one of hundreds of homes residents were forced to evacuate when the Fourmile Fire came raging. The couple holed up in a motel, surrounded by the few things they were able to grab before firefighters told them to leave.

“It makes me wonder,” Woods said, airing out a Buddhist scroll she had bought on a trip to Nepal and managed to salvage from the house. “Should we just live more simply?”

Polansky just laughed. “I think you should live more simply.”

What do you take? What do you leave behind? For a lot of Westerners who live in danger of wildfire, it’s not just cocktail party banter; it’s a serious question – one that we might have to answer with minutes to spare. As I write this, West Texans in the path of raging wildfires are dealing with the same problem. The locations change. The questions don’t.

As a reporter who has covered more than my share of wildfires, I’ve seen a lot of answers to those questions. What do people take? Usually, it’s a mix of the practical and the sentimental. Legal papers. Birth certificates. Medical records. Passports. On the softer side, it’s almost always photos. Kids’ photos. Parents’ photos. Family vacations. When we have to leave everything else behind, paper, as flimsy as it is, is what we cling to.

Not that everyone is so sparing. I’ve seen families take hours to load trailers with record collections, NASCAR posters and tattered stuffed animals. Some people just plant their feet and refuse to leave.

“It’s my house,” one man once told me as he watched the flames approach. “If it’s gonna go, I wanna see it go.”

For most, though, the threat of fire presents split-second desert-island decisions. What do I need to take? What do I really, really want to keep? What can I leave behind?

Fear makes it easier, when it comes to making agonizing and heartbreaking decisions. When the flames advance, a world that seemed calm and still, that had seemed unchanging, is suddenly tossed by winds that gust like hurricanes. The sky turns black. Trees blow sideways. Smoke and hot embers streak the sky. The world we knew is suddenly gone, and in the chaos, we can’t guess what lies ahead. All the things that make up our world could vanish in a gale of cinders – and our lives along with them.

It’s not just stuff, after all. It’s stuff that we love, objects that remind us of our identities and the people we love. It’s the family silver, the Pinewood Derby racecar, the honeymoon Champagne bottle. It’s barns full of horse tack, sheds full of skis and bikes and snowmobiles, garages full of old cars this close to running again.

What gets left behind? Woods and Polanski, who have long enjoyed the classic Boulder outdoor lifestyle, lost a fortune in climbing gear and bikes. They left behind artwork collected from world travels –– sculptures and paintings and photographs, much of it too big to fit in the car.

At least they ended up with a home to go back to, though. I watched one couple whose home had gone up in flames wheel all they could rescue from their house on two or three luggage carts through the motel lobby. Some had even less.

“I have treasures from all over the world,” April Story told me. “I have a huge art collection.”

She meant to say “had,” but using the past tense about her home of 25 years was still hard to do. Her house was gone. Her barn was gone. An artist who works with wildflowers, she lost 35 years’ worth of flowers she’d gathered.

She fled with her computer and a toiletry bag. She saved her cats and rode her horses to safety. Everything else burned to the ground. “If you get out with your health, if you have insurance, you realize, you know, I’m here,” she said. “I’m still standing. I’m still breathing.”

In the end, that’s enough.

Civilian Conservation Corps laborers in 1933 work on the foundation for the Tigiwon community center, a building intended for pilgrims coming to view the Mount of the Holy Cross. US Forest Service photo.

ASPEN PUBLIC RADIO

In the midst of the Great Depression, thousands of out-of-work young men from across the country found jobs in Colorado in the Civilian Conservation Corps. The government relief program hired laborers to build roads, cut trails and raise buildings on public lands throughout the United States. Nearly eighty years later, their work can still be seen in some of the most popular trails and landmarks on the White River National Forest. Now, some of those sites are getting a little extra protection to preserve their legacy into the future. David Frey reports.

(Listen to the story here.)

[Sounds of rock chipping]

The Hanging Lake trail in Glenwood Canyon is well-loved, and well-worn. It’s short – just one point two miles – but it’s steep. The big payoff comes at the end, when hikers reach a spectacular turquoise lake filled by cascading waterfalls.

“It almost feelsl like you’re in a tropical paradise once you get up to the top. It’s just a beautiful turquoise. It’s just like nothing I’ve ever seen in Colorado.” [10 sec]

Jill Wilson, from Denver, was among some one hundred volunteers clearing away boulders and building rock steps on a recent workday. The Forest Service says eighty thousand people hike the trail each year. That’s a lot of hikers. They can thank volunteers like these, from Volunteers for Outdoor Colorado and Roaring Fork Outdoor Volunteers, who are taking part in a two-year trail maintenance project at Hanging Lake. And they can thank crews from the Civilian Conservation Corps, who were doing similar work here almost eighty years ago.

[Newsreel sound]

CCC workers built this shelter house on Notch Mountain as a way station for pilgrims coming to view Mount of the Holy Cross. US Forest Service photo.

“In many parts of the country are regions which depend largely upon the tourist’s trade as the local industry. Areas of great scenic beauty have been made available to thousands of visitors through the development of roads in national and state parks and at other centers of attraction for tourists. Many of these vacation spots were completely inaccessible before the assistance of the works program made road construction possible.”

Between 1933 and 1942, the CCC hired two-point-five million young men from across the country to work in national and state parks and forests. Thousands of them came to camps in Colorado, where they planted trees, thinned forests, cut roads, and raised buildings. On the White River National Forest, CCC crews built the first ski trail on Aspen Mountain, started a ski hill in Glenwood Springs, and dug Chapman Dam above Basalt. And they built trails in places like Crater Lake, Avalanche Creek and Trappers Lake – trails that remain popular today.

“These are kids who had no skills yet and they were under instructors to learn how to build bridges and preserve the walls, stack rocks. There’s signs of CCC elements everywhere.” [10 sec]

Andrea Brogan is Heritage Program Manager for the White River National Forest.

“The forest benefited from their hard work. I think the kids benefited from the experience.”

Over the decades, weather, animals and vandals have taken their toll on the cabins and shelters they built.  Many have crumbled and some, like the shelter at Hanging Lake, are nearly gone.  Last year, the Forest Service spent about two hundred thousand dollars in American Recovery and Reinvestment Act funds to hire local contractors to restore historic CCC buildings.  It was recession stimulus money shoring up projects built with depression stimulus money.

Hikers visit the shelter house on Notch Mountain, which affords a stunning view of Mount of the Holy Cross rising behind it. US Forest Service photo.

Workers last year hiked in with only hand tools, using mules to haul materials, to refurbish a shelter house atop Notch Mountain, much as CCC workers did when they first built it in 1934. With its two-foot-thick walls built of local stone, the house was built as a way station for pilgrims to view Mount of the Holy Cross. Today, many hikers come just to see the house.

Crews also repaired the rock-and-timber Tigiwon community center below, a staging area for Holy Cross pilgrims, and the Piney Guard Station, a ranger cabin north of Wolcott.

Heritage Program Manager Andrea Brogan says, like the legacy in the White River National Forest, CCC structures across the country are being renovated, partly for their historical value, and partly because many are still used and loved.

“The part they played in it is worth preserving. It’s part of fabric of the forest. As long as we can continue to be good stewards I think we have an obligation to take care of those resources.” [11 sec]

Bill Kight is the White River National Forest’s community liaison and an archeologist. For him, this preservation work is personal. His father was one of those CCC boys back in the 1930s.

“I think a lot of people who talk about socialism and all this social this and social that in a bad way don’t have a clue about what those programs did to help our country. I think that’s a shame because the record is there. It speaks for itself.”

“Once I built a tower up to the sun, brick and rivet and lime. Once I built a tower, now it’s done, brother can you spare a dime.”

Brogan is nominating both the Tigiwon community center, near Red Cliff, and the Notch Mountain shelter house, for National Historic Landmark status. If approved, they would join six existing landmarks on the forest, including the Independence town site, the Ashcroft ghost town and the Tenth Mountain Division training site at Camp Hale.

MUSIC up under copy

“Say buddy, can you spare a dime?”

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For Aspen Public Radio news, I’m David Frey.

TALES TOLD FROM THE ROAD

When I remember the events of 9/11, I first remember the evening of 9/10.

I had traveled to Martha’s Vineyard with my then wife and her family. Off-season had settled and the island had a sense of letting out a sigh and settling in for autumn. We went to a concert of sea shanties. One of the musicians daylighted as a photographer and described his favorite time of day to take pictures. It wasn’t sunset, he said. It was just after, when the water is glassy and reflects the colors of the sun-streaked sky as if it were glowing from within. It was that moment as he spoke, and looking out to the harbor, I understood why he loved this moment so much.

The next day, we watched the horrific news unfold on the TV in our bed-and-breakfast. It was suddenly awkward to be vacationing amidst tragedy. Shopkeepers and restaurant owners couldn’t decide if they should close or not. There was no etiquette for dealing with this kind of tragedy. Amid the chaos that followed, the ferry to the Vineyard shut down.

Boston’s Logan Airport, the departure point of one of the hijacked planes, became a crime scene. Even after flights resumed elsewhere, Logan was locked down. We were stuck for days, unable to find plane, train or automobile home from Massachusetts, merely inconvenienced while we watched so many suffer so much more.

But what I remember most came before that: an evening of tranquil waters bathing in the last light of day.

Fiberforge President and CEO Jon Fox-Rubin. David Frey photo.

ASPEN PUBLIC RADIO

At a time when many businesses are downsizing, FiberForge in Glenwood Springs is expanding. The company began with a plan to make super-efficient cars. Now it manufactures high-tech parts for everything from skateboards to military helicopters, and business is booming. David Frey reports.

(Listen to the story here.)