All of that is technically true, but these types of adven- tures represent— for most people, anyway—a step outside of their comfort zone. And they should be mentally and physically prepared for exactly how thrilling and challenging it will be. I remember thinking as much on my first Via Ferrata, crossing the Main Event section with a death grip on the iron rungs, cursing my father-in-law, a climber who had assured me it was “just like climbing a ladder.” I hadn’t really expected to be on a sheer wall hundreds of feet off the ground; yes, ultimately it was a great experience, and one I’ve repeated since more comfortably, but that’s my beef with sandbagging. Just come clean—if it’s going to be daunting, I’d like to know exactly how daunting. In that spirit, meet the newest extreme experience in town: Telluride Canopy Adventures. Essentially it is a zip line tour, with five “spans” or zip lines, two rappels, and two sky bridges. Most of the course is high off the ground—the maximum height is just over 200 feet, and the sky bridges, made of cable and wood, are forty to fifty feet in the air. The longest span exceeds 1,800 feet. Zip speeds range from ten to forty-plus miles per hour, depend- ing on the riders, who are able to check their pace by grazing their hand (special gloves are provided) on the zip line above them. “It’s not for everybody,” says Noah Sheedy, who oversees the canopy tours. “But it is an awesome experience. You build confidence very quickly, and from there it’s a blast.” As intimidating as it might be to step off that first platform, suspended in the air in a harness connected to an overhead cable, it is perfectly safe. All the gear is state of the art, and the course is carefully designed with an eight percent grade off the top platform to get moving, and then an uphill climb and retract- able brakes to slow the rider down as they alight onto the land- ing tower. Every tour has a lead guide and a tail guide to teach you the mechanics and coach you through the process. “You go up Lift 4 to the start of the tour, for ground school,” says Sheedy. “It starts with an overview—talking about safety protocols, get- ting folks geared up in a full harness system. Then it begins with a mini-zip, low to the ground, to get used to the equipment and learn how to use it.” SUMMER/FALL 2021 TellurideMagazine.com 51
52 • FEATURE REALLY THE MOST IMPORTANT FEATURE OF THE COURSE, THOUGH, IS THE SCENERY. UNLESS YOU’RE A BIRD, OR A FLYING SQUIRREL, YOU DON’T OFTEN GET THE OPPORTUNITY TO EXPERIENCE FLYING AMID THE TREETOPS, SKIMMING THE ROOF OF A FOREST. The gear includes harness, helmet, and too much. “It’s definitely an active participation gloves, just like any great adventure; but in this experience, not just sitting back and cruising case, the gloves are reinforced with leather, a along. You’re involved with your experience from “bear claw” sleeve, to allow riders to gently touch start to finish.” the guide line above if they want to slow down a bit. The course specs are created for riders The sky bridges, says Sheedy, are also fun. They between seventy and 250 pounds; less weight, involve a traverse across thin, wooden planks, with and there won’t be enough momentum to make guide ropes, and it’s done clipped in for safety— the span, and more weight would mean coming but is still exciting. “Very Indiana Jones-esque,” in to the landing too hot. So the technique of says Sheedy. “It’s an adrenaline-filled activity.” feathering the guide line to scrub speed or keep- ing hands off to gain momentum is in addition The rapelling—there are two rappels on the to the existing safety mechanisms; it just helps course, one about twenty-five feet long, the other make for a smoother, more enjoyable ride. The about fifty feet—is controlled and hands-free, guides discourage gripping too hard; it’s a flat slow and steady. “After a few hours in the air, it palm touch, like a quesadilla, or maybe folded a can be a funny feeling putting your feet back on bit like a taco, but grabbing it like a burrito is the ground,” says Sheedy. Really the most important feature of the course, though, is the scenery. Unless you’re a bird, or a flying squirrel, you don’t often get the opportunity to experience flying amid the tree- tops, skimming the roof of a forest. A canopy is like a mini-atmosphere, but instead of wrapping the entire earth, it just blankets its own little family of flora and fauna, creating a forest sanc- tuary. John Muir wrote: The majestic crowns approaching one another make a glorious can- opy, through the feathery arches of which the sun- beams pour, silvering the needles and gilding the stately columns and the ground into a scene of enchantment. Flying through a forest canopy is an intimate way to explore its beauty from a unique vantage point; there is nothing quite like it. The course was built before the summer of 2020, but didn’t open because of public health concerns due to the pandemic. It opens this summer, on June 19, with private tours of up to six people. The tours take approximately three hours, from the chairlift ride up, to the canopy adventure, and the ride back down on a side-by- side four-wheeler. Sheedy and his team of guides have been pre-running the course to prepare, and the excitement is building to finally share the experience. “Getting people off the ground and flying through the air and seeing from a dif- ferent perspective is what this is all about.” \\ TellurideMagazine.com SUMMER/FALL 2021
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54 • FEATURE RenWaESiTssENaDnce From ranching and mining to recreation and tourism By Sarah Lavender Smith WHEN I DROVE UP HIGHWAY 141 FOR THE FIRST TIME LAST WINTER TO EXPLORE THE HISTORIC TOWNSITE OF URAVAN, ABOUT NINETY MINUTES WEST OF TELLURIDE, I WAS SEARCHING FOR DRIER TRAILS TO RUN. AT 5,000–6,000 FEET ELEVATION, THIS HIGH-DESERT TERRAIN OF STEEP, RED ROCK CANYONS CARVED BY THE CONFLUENCE OF THE SAN MIGUEL AND DOLORES RIVERS BECKONS HIKERS AND BIKERS WHEN WINTER WHITE BURIES THE HIGH COUNTRY. LIZZIE FIKE I was searching for something else, too: a I used to skirt this area without pausing to stop deeper understanding of family history. My grand- while driving between Telluride and Moab, never father, the historian David S. Lavender, spent win- detouring to a trailhead and never getting a bite to eat ters in the 1920s and early 1930s working here at in Naturita or up the road in Nucla. Those two side-by- the Club Ranch, one of Western Colorado’s largest side small towns sit about twenty miles west of Nor- ranches. His stepfather Ed Lavender owned it for wood on the way to Uravan. Perhaps the boarded-up several years until the double whammy of cancer storefronts and aging mobile homes flanking Naturi- and the Great Depression took his life and fore- ta’s main street, which spoke of hard living and lost closed on the land. The ranch sprawled between opportunity, kept me in my car. Or perhaps the myopic the Paradox and San Miguel River valleys fifteen idea that Telluride and Moab were the places to be, miles northwest of the town of Naturita. and the region in between less interesting, fooled me. TellurideMagazine.com SUMMER/FALL 2021
In any case, better late than never, I started tak- metal brackets suspended halfway up the canyon LIZZIE FIKE ing day trips to the towns and outer edges of the West wall. Erected in the late 1880s by workers dangling End, so called because it sits at the west ends of Mon- from ropes, the metal supported an engineering lier in life, to discover these remote trails and trose and San Miguel counties, not far from the Utah feat known as the Hanging Flume, a wooden water stunning vistas. What took me so long to get boarder. The region’s history, its network of trails, and chute some twelve miles long used for hydraulic here, to marvel at this land and its history? the pride and resiliency of every local I met there drew mining. (The flume’s remnants also can be viewed me to the gorgeous landscape and its communities. My from an overlook along Highway 141 at mile marker Practically speaking, it took finding perspective entirely changed, from viewing the area as 81, a vista point above the two rivers’ confluence.) out about the West End Trails Alliance a drive-through to thinking of it as a destination. (westendtrails.org), a nonprofit devoted to The flume shut down only a few years after building, maintaining, and promoting trails I’m not alone in this discovery and curiosity construction because the gold mine it serviced for non-motorized users. Hunters have long appre- about the West End. Following decades of decline wasn’t viable, and locals salvaged its timber. My ciated the West End’s public lands, but hikers, and an exodus of working-class households, more grandfather’s writing desk, which my brother still bikers, and runners like me have been discovering day-trippers, campers, entrepreneurs, and fami- uses daily, is made of wood from that flume. the area more recently thanks to WETA’s work to lies are coming here, some setting down roots and provide maps, signage, and improvements for the revitalizing the economically hard-hit towns. I asked myself why I hadn’t ventured here to area’s trails. explore and retrace my grandfather’s hoof-steps ear- Off-road vehicle enthusiasts are discovering Residents in this conservative, rural region backroads around here, too, since the completion traditionally relied almost entirely on ranching in 2017 of the 160-mile Rimrocker Trail connect- and mining to make a living. Thanks to my grandfa- ing Montrose to Moab. Officials from Montrose ther’s memoir One Man’s West, I can vividly picture County, San Juan County (Utah), and the U.S. Grandpa and other cowboys on horseback driving Forest Service linked and promoted the route for hundreds of head of cattle from the ranch to sum- OHVs, 4WDs, and mountain bikers to showcase the mer grazing at the base of the Lone Cone in the scenery and promote tourism. The route travels last decades before vehicles pulling stock trailers, directly through Nucla. and fenced-off private lands, made cattle drives on horseback a relic of the past. They’d camp along the way as they covered a wild territory in the West End about a thousand square miles in size. First gold, then another yellowish earthy min- eral in the hillsides called carnotite, attracted a rush of miners. Carrying Geiger counters, the mod- ern-day prospectors searched for carnotite, a radio- active mineral, because it contains uranium and vanadium (an element used to strengthen steel). The region’s heyday of uranium min- ing during the Atomic Age gave rise to the bustling company town called Uravan—a portmanteau of uranium and vanadium— northwest of Nucla along Highway 141. Uravan grew to about 1,100 people when World War II and then the Cold War created a demand for uranium to build atomic weapons. Eerily, no signs of the homes, mill build- ings, stores, or its community swimming pool remain. A twenty-year, $120 million cleanup starting in the mid-1980s demol- ished all the structures due to their radioac- tivity and buried the materials under fields of rock, fenced off with warning signs, that can be seen up County Road EE22. Iparked near the historic Uravan Ballpark, where Nucla and Naturita old-timers gather annually to celebrate the memories of their parents’ and grandparents’ home- town. I ran north on the highway’s shoulder a short way to connect to the dirt County Road Y-11, which hugs the San Miguel River, and from Y-11, I picked up the Shamrock Trail that climbs a rugged 500 feet before transitioning to a mesa where cattle used to range. Abandoned mining roads and trails crisscross piñon-juniper forest, and lumpy sandstone formations rise like giant sculptures. In his book, my grandfather describes riding down the Shamrock Trail on Christ- mas Eve 1934, braving snow and icy footing to get back to the ranch headquarters in time for a festive dance in Nucla. Descending the canyon trail, he and the other cowboys rode “with just the tips of our boots in the stir- rups, ready to leap clear if the horses fell.” Gazing over the gorgeous reddish and blond striated sandstone cliff walls that plunge down to the San Miguel River, I spotted a row of dozens of SUMMER/FALL 2021 TellurideMagazine.com 55
56 • FEATURE two-thirds of families with children under five live CampV started in 1942 as housing built by the below the federal poverty rate. Vanadium Corporation for engineers and manag- This October 23, more runners and hikers can ers at the nearby uranium mill. A trio of Tellu- tour the trails around Uravan by participating in I interviewed Sheriff in a building on Main Street ride locals—Natalie Binder, whose grandmother an inaugural ultramarathon, the Hanging Flume that symbolizes new hope in Naturita: The Collective worked for the Vanadium Corp., along with archi- 50K (hangingflumerace.com), started by three Mine co-working space, opened five years ago, which tects Bruce and Jodie Wright—purchased the Telluride guys who are enthusiastic about the West features office space, conference rooms, and a com- property in 2018 and attracted investors to create End’s trails and want to support the nearby towns. mercial kitchen. The building buzzes with the activ- a unique glamping retreat with funky art and lux- ity of regional nonprofits and entrepreneurs. ury cabins that remain rough around the edges, One of the race’s founders, Sheamus Croke, preserving the structures’ original features. cares deeply about the area because his mother Three miles up the highway from Naturita, lives in Nucla, and Croke works for the Tellu- CampV, a new lodge that calls itself “a boutique Four miles away in downtown Nucla, a new ride Foundation on various initiatives to bolster camp” combining art, history, and design, sits on café, Genesis Coffee Roaster, sits across the street the West End’s economy and livability. He’s also a hilltop as the most fanciful and striking sign of from a recently opened bed-and-breakfast called been working on a long-range plan to expand the optimism in the area. Combining fourteen refur- the Vestal House. One block up, the colorfully region’s network of trails for mountain biking. bished historic cabins with Airstreams, camping painted Wild Gal’s Market, established in 2019, spots, and a whimsical outdoor chapel imported sells locally grown organic produce, homemade Croke says it’s only a matter of time before from Burning Man, CampV drew DJs, hipster rev- food, and other health store staples. more people relocate to the area and develop elers, and curious tourists to its remote outpost it, which inevitably will lead to mixed feelings when it fully opened this spring. The pandemic last summer prompted more vis- among locals and culture clashes with newcom- itors to discover the West End, thanks to its camp- ers. “There’s a contrast between wanting to bring grounds and the area’s high-speed broadband that development and wanting to preserve the allows remote working by urban escapees. The hidden nature of the place. Once more Nucla-Naturita Telephone Company invested in mountain bikers and Sprinter vans are bringing fiber optic cable to the West End, so the there, there definitely will be people who region has internet connectivity that are the envy wish Nucla could go back to the good old of other rural pockets of Colorado. days,” he says. He hopes the community can guide growth in a way that preserves the Sheriff ticks off other signs of renewal in Nucla area’s character and jibes with locals. and Naturita: a hot housing market for relatively affordable fixer-uppers and rentals, a surge of kin- The region’s economy needs a comeback dergarteners signaling younger families moving in, because Nucla’s New Horizon coal mine and heightened interest from guides and outfitters ceased production in 2018, and its Tri-State to do business in the area because of the outdoor Nucla Station coal-fired power plant shut recreation opportunities. down a year later. The communities lost 130 good-paying jobs when those major employ- She echoed a sentiment I heard from others: ers closed—a severe blow to a population of that as much as they want economic recovery, about 1,500. they don’t want the Nucla-Naturita communities to become “another Moab.” “We really want this Now, locals are banking on recreation, to be a small-business atmosphere. We don’t want residential, and retail growth to reanimate Starbucks, and we’re not looking to bring in a City their historic towns, and recent develop- Market,” says Sheriff. “We’d much rather elevate ments give them reason to hope. “People our existing grocery stores.” get out here and say, ‘This is the most gor- geous area I’ve never seen in Colorado.’ Sheriff relocated to Nucla when she took her job We’re trying to help them find it,” says and fell in love with the region because, she says, “it’s Deana Sheriff, executive director of the so quiet, and we don’t have a stoplight for a hundred West End Economic Development Corpora- tion, which is tasked with economic recov- miles. It’s the outdoor nature. And this sounds ery for the region where annual household a little woo-woo, but the energy here and the income averages about $37,000, and roughly people here are amazing. Their determination to stay as a viable community is remarkable.” The first time I hung out in downtown Nucla, driving past wide pastures full of cows to get there, the word “sleepy” came to mind while surveying its main street. Few cars or people moved about, and the well-maintained park with a playground looked deserted. But I’m told Nucla gets busy during summer and fall with Jeeps, bikes, and hunters. I heard construction noise up the road and went there to meet Aimee Tooker on the sidewalk. Perhaps no one better per- sonifies pride and love for Nucla and its neighbor Naturita than her. The sound came from workers improving the exterior of the liquor store that she and her husband own and sprucing up the empty lot next to it with planters and outdoor tables. The Tookers also own the Tabeguache Trading Co. a couple of doors down, a general store named after the Ute band who first lived here. The store caters to visitors by selling out- erwear, souvenirs, ammo, and maps. And early this year, she and her husband opened the Vestal House B&B (named after one of Nucla’s TellurideMagazine.com SUMMER/FALL 2021
founders) next to the liquor store, an inn with four rooms and GET a couple of RV spaces. “I want people to know we’re open for FRESH business, and good things are happening here,” she says, taking WITH me in to the B&B to tour its themed guestrooms. US The Uravan-theme room sports yellow and gray tones to represent “yellowcake” (uranium oxide, derived from carnot- telluride | colorado ite ore) and industrial accents. Historic photos of the uranium mill decorate the wall, and bedside lamps are shaped like the atomic energy whirl. A sign over the door reads, “Buried on the hill under tons of rock our beloved town lies. Through our loving memories will the town stay alive.” Tooker and her husband both grew up in Nucla, and their parents and grandparents raised them to weather boom-and- bust cycles with hard work and resiliency. “The older generation taught us to be self-sufficient,” she says. “You can your goods, you stock up on things, and you don’t rely on other people. So when COVID hit, that didn’t really affect us. We had our little grocery store and local produce, and everybody stocks up anyway.” She says she used to know pretty much everyone in Nucla and Naturita, but that’s changing. “When I go to basketball on Fridays with my kids, I look around and think, ‘Oh my gosh, who are these people?’ A lot of people have moved here and are starting their businesses, taking pride in their yards. Young people who lived here before are bringing their families back.” After spending time with Aimee, I bought a delicious and sophisticated kale salad from the Wild Gal’s market and then drove a couple of miles outside of town, just past the public rifle range. This town loves its guns—Nucla made national news in 2013 when the anti-gun-control town board passed an ordinance mandating gun ownership for all its house- holds—but it apparently loves its trails and recreation, too. A trailhead next to the rifle range sports a brand-new kiosk full of information about the region’s 118-mile Paradox Trail. I hiked up the hillside and broke into a run on a rocky, sandy portion of the Paradox Trail that meanders through a landscape defined by wind- and water-sculpted rocks dotted with juniper bushes. The snow-capped La Sals rose on the horizon to the west, and the San Juan Mountains beckoned to the east. I saw not another soul, and my cell phone showed “no service.” It was a thrill adventuring alone in this frontier between Colorado and Utah, so unspoiled and far from the maddening Moab crowd. I felt the sweep of history—from the Utes and gold miners, to ranchers and uranium and coal miners, to a new generation of workers, seekers, and outdoor-lovers. I also felt pretty certain I’d look back on this outing as a special time here, being immersed in nature without running into other hikers and bikers, before the West End became another hot destination in southwest Colorado. \\ farm fresh delicatessen dine-in + 11 am take-out to e at e ry 9 pm LIZZIE FIKE w w w .Li tt l e H o u s e E ats. c o m SUMMER/FALL 2021 TellurideMagazine.com 57
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60 • FEATURE Mitakuye Oyasin: WE ARE ALL RELATED Native Americans rise in response to 2020’s Crises by Christina Callicott W ITHOUT WATER, THE AVERAGE HUMAN CAN ONLY SURVIVE A FEW DAYS, MAYBE A WEEK, DEPENDING ON THE CIRCUMSTANCES. BUT EVERY YEAR, THE STANDING ROCK SIOUX GO FOUR DAYS—FOUR DAYS—WITHOUT DRINKING WATER, A SACRIFICE TO REMIND THEM HOW VITAL WATER IS, SAID LADONNA BRAVEBULL ALLARD IN AN INTERVIEW.
JONATHAN THOMPSON It was Saturday, September 3, 2016: Labor Day fled the army’s bullets, plugging their children’s dozed the graves and constellation so that they could weekend, and the anniversary of the Whitestone noses to silence their cries, tying them to horses and no longer stand in the way of the pipeline’s progress. Massacre, one of the bloodiest—and most forgot- then whipping the horses to make them run away, That morning, a ceremony had taken place to ten—of the Indian Wars. Allard, Standing Rock tying their babies to dog travois and making the dogs bless protestors, known as “water protectors,” who tribal historian and descendant of the massacre’s run until the soldiers began killing all the dogs too, then marched to the site, planning to plant tribal survivors, was telling Democracy Now! about the and then the babies that they carried. Just upriver flags to in order to claim the land for what it was, massacre and the founding of the and what it remains, both legally and protest movement against the Dakota morally: the unceded treaty land of Access oil pipeline, a black snake that the Oceti Sakowin Confederacy, or the was slithering its way across North WHEN THE VACCINES CAME, THE UTES Great Sioux Nation. When protectors Dakota, toward her home and the VACCINATED EVERY ADULT ON THE RESERVATION, arrived, they found bulldozers flatten- graves of her son and her ancestors. “I ing the gravestones of their ancestors don’t understand why America doesn’t AT WHICH POINT THEY STARTED VACCINATING and crushing their bones under several understand how important water EVERYONE ELSE AS WELL, OPENING VACCINE tons of machinery that tracked back is. So we have no choice. We have to and forth across the site. The private stand. No matter what happens, we CLINICS TO ALL ADULT PEOPLE WHO SHOWED UP, security firm working for the construc- have to stand to save the water.” tion company sprayed the protectors Halfway through the interview, the WITH SPECIAL PLANS TO VACCINATE THE with pepper spray and attacked them phone rang: the bulldozers had arrived. REGION’S HOMELESS PEOPLE. with dogs. Within hours, video of the The pipeline was slated to cross event, as well as photos of wounded the Missouri River at its confluence protectors and dogs with blood drip- with the Cannonball River. The confluence was a from the confluence, numerous grave sites had been ping from their jaws, had hit social media. The Wall sacred and culturally important area, being a place located, as well as an outline in stone of the sacred Street Journal ran a story that night. Democracy where the swirling waters formed sacred stones constellation Iyokaptan Tanka, the Big Dipper. On Now! uploaded video to YouTube on Sunday and ran (Lewis and Clark’s “cannonballs”), where people Friday, September 2, the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe the full story on Tuesday. Within a week, the trickle from various tribes had once built villages and lived went to court to notify the government of the sites, of mostly regional news on the #NoDAPL protest in peace, a place where Allard’s grandfather, Tatanka which laid in the path of the pipeline. The next day, had turned into a flood of international coverage. Ohitika, led Sun Dances, and a place where the sur- the pipeline company trucked in heavy machinery America and the world suddenly discovered that, yes, vivors of the Whitestone Massacre landed after they from the construction site forty miles away and bull- indeed, there are still Indians in America. SUMMER/FALL 2021 TellurideMagazine.com 61
62 • FEATURE Not everyone in the U.S. was following the culture, specifically the multigenerational house- CARES Act funding, and the insufficiency of those Standing Rock saga that winter though. They didn’t holds that make up many Latinx and Indigenous funds to meet the task at hand. read about white ally Sophia Wilansky, who lost her communities. This narrative was easier to grasp, Indeed, what we now know, what the last four arm after police hit her with a concussion grenade; and its results easier to disregard, than the more years has taught non-Native America, and what most or the one about Vanessa Dundon, Navajo mother complex and demanding issue of structural inequi- Native Americans themselves would have told us all of four, who lost her eye when police hit her in the ties. For the Navajo, for example, these structural along, is that when the federal government keeps face with a flaming canister; or about Comanche inequities included factors like high rates of diabetes its promises—promises that it made to Indigenous protestor Eric Poemoceah, who was forced to walk and obesity secondary to multiple generations of con- North Americans in exchange for land; and prom- out after police tackled him and broke his hip. They finement to reservation living and a diet of govern- ises that it made to itself to ensure a free, fair, and weren’t watching Facebook Live as just society—when America keeps its police sprayed protestors with water promises and gets out of their way, then cannons and rubber bullets on the Native American people are perfectly Backwater Bridge on a cold Dakota IN THE LANGUAGE OF THE NAVAJO, capable of taking care of themselves, winter night, injuring 300 and sending and, it turns out, others as well. twenty-six to the hospital. Not every- OR THE DINEH, AS THEY CALL THEMSELVES, THE When COVID hit the Ute Mountain body got the memo that winter that NOTION OF TAKING CARE OF EACH OTHER HAS Ute, they instituted a strict lockdown, the First Nations of North America are barricading the roads into their commu- alive and well and ready to fight back. A NAME: “K’E,” SOMETIMES DEFINED AS nities with blockades and checkpoints If Americans didn’t get the memo that remained there well into 2021. But that winter, they certainly got it four “FAMILY,” “KINSHIP,” OR “A DEEP MUTUAL they also took care of each other: They years later, when America, united in RESPECT FOR OTHERS.” started a logistics team that organized our isolation, anxiety, and sorrow, sat and delivered food and supplies to 600 at home and watched as COVID crip- homes. When schools closed, the tribal pled the nation, disproportionately government issued Chromebooks to impacting communities of color including Native ment-issued commodity staples; high rates of asthma their students and, because most didn’t have internet American reservations. The basic tenets of medical caused at least in part by living downwind of one of at home, they set up hotspots on the reservation. They anthropology—for example, the existence of racial America’s worst-polluting coal-fired power plants; modified the annual Bear Dance to make it socially disparities in health, or the emergence of zoonotic lack of access to clean water for hand washing; and distant so that people could still have a ceremonial life. disease as a function of ecological degradation— lack of access to the internet, or even to electricity, Some of the young people made a film about the Ute became common knowledge. Unfortunately, for too that kept people literally in the dark about the new response to COVID, encouraging each other and their many white people, and the public health and gov- disease lurking at their doorstep. As the disease pro- elders to stay strong. And when the vaccines came, ernmental agencies who represented them, the dis- gressed, these factors were exacerbated by special the Utes vaccinated every adult on the reservation, at parate impact of COVID boiled down to one thing: rules written for tribes that delayed their receipt of which point they started vaccinating everyone else as CHRISTINA CALLICOTT TellurideMagazine.com SUMMER/FALL 2021
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64 • FEATURE well, opening vaccine clinics to all adult people who ing, ‘Oh, Native Americans still exist?’” She said After Trump’s election in 2016, Four Directions con- showed up, with special plans to vaccinate the region’s that Indigenous youth themselves have also taken a ducted an analysis and found that in seven states— homeless people. They’re not alone: The Southern Ute greater interest in their cultures and their languages. Michigan, Wisconsin, Arizona, Minnesota, North and Navajo, as well as several tribes in Alaska and For Native American voting rights activists, 2020 Carolina, Nevada and Colorado—the Native Ameri- Oklahoma, also ran vaccine clinics for the general was a major success. “It was one of the first times can voting population either equaled or exceeded the population. Helping everyone else helped the tribes where I have seen different tribal organizations and margin of victory in the last presidential election. “We as well. Boundaries are porous and the disease doesn’t tribes actually working together to ensure that the knew that in those seven states, we had the Native stop at the edge of the rez. Besides, it was the right natives in all the states participated in the 2020 elec- votes to tip the scale in our favor.” As it would so thing to do. They had the capacity to help, so they did. tion,” said O.J. Semans of Four Directions Vote. “It happen, all but North Carolina went blue—and Ari- In the language of the Navajo, or the Dineh, as was really historic in how united everybody was with zona by the particularly narrow margin of .3 percent. they call themselves, the notion of taking care of each one goal, and that was to make our voices heard.” Polling data indicates that a whopping 72 percent of other has a name: “k’e,” sometimes defined as “fam- He cited the many insults of the Trump administra- Native Americans in the state voted Democrat, and ily,” “kinship,” or “a deep mutual respect for others.” tion: the destruction of sacred sites, the failure to county-by-county results showed that 82 percent of “Everything starts with family on the reservation,” Dr. put lands into trust, the continued construction and the Navajo Nation voted Harris-Biden. Rosie Jumbo told me. “K’e is the only reason we do the operation of the Dakota Access and Keystone XL While Native Americans might lean Democrat things we do.” For the Dineh as for so now, this hasn’t always been the case. many other Indigenous peoples, the idea One apocryphal story holds that some of family extends beyond immediate or tribal elders used to swear they would even extended family to include the never vote Democrat, for theirs was the human community as well as non-hu- party of Andrew Jackson—the populist man nature. A related term in Lakota president responsible for the Trail of is “mitakuye oyasin,” which means “all Tears. Semans pointed out that Rich- my relations,” “we are all related,” or ard Nixon did more for Indian Country “everything is related,” and was a rally- than most presidents have. He expects ing cry for water protectors at Standing the Native vote will alternate between Rock who talked about “living in right Democrat and Republican depending relation” with each other as well as with on who does the most for Native people. the land and water. But so far he’s happy with President When COVID lockdowns hit the Biden’s approach: “Biden is keeping his nation last spring, Jumbo, who was liv- promises to Indian Country,” he said. ing in Flagstaff and teaching at North- Biden may have halted operation ern Arizona University, went home to of the Keystone XL pipeline—a major Chinle to visit family. When she saw victory for Indigenous environmental- how bad things had gotten, she orga- ists—but the Dakota Access pipeline nized a system to collect and deliver is still up and running. Oil is flowing food and supplies to households despite the fact that courts have around the Chinle Chapter. She saw agreed the permitting process was that she could help and decided to run bungled from the start. Water pro- for local office, speaking to the elders tectors and their legal defenders are in their own—and only—language “I DON’T THINK A LOT OF PEOPLE KNEW continuing to fight imprisonment and and incorporating traditional Dineh retaliation. People of the Standing concepts like respect, reciprocity, and THAT WE EVEN EXISTED. I STILL SEE COMMENTS Rock Sioux Reservation and surround- responsibility into her plans for local ing areas face racist attacks that have economic development. Last fall, they ON SOCIAL MEDIA SAYING, only worsened since the #NoDAPL elected her chapter president. “The ‘OH, NATIVE AMERICANS STILL EXIST?’” protests. And around the nation, the elders saw an original naabaahii,” hotspots of extractive industry, espe- she said, using a term that means both cially oil and gas, are also hotbeds of “leader” and “warrior.” human trafficking and the disappear- Jumbo’s election was part of the wave of Native oil pipelines. Others have noted Trump’s reduction ances and murders of Indigenous women, girls, and American civic engagement and anti-racist activism of the Bears Ears monument, the renewed calls for Two-Spirited people. that swept the country last year and that helped put uranium mining of the Grand Canyon, his attacks on Biden did something else consequential. He Democrats in the White House. When COVID hit, tribal sovereignty, and his suppression of the Native nominated Debra Haaland, a member of the Laguna Dineh screenwriter and activist Allie Young returned vote as factors that drove Native American turnout. Pueblo tribe who represented New Mexico in Con- to the reservation from her home in Los Angeles and Likewise, few Native Americans have forgotten the gress, to serve as secretary of the interior, charged founded an organization, Protect the Sacred, whose ceremony in the Oval Office in which President with managing federal land and natural resources. Instagram posts encouraged young people to ride Trump, while giving war-hero awards to elderly She is the first Native American to hold a Cabinet their horses to the polls. Chantel Jones, Hozhoni Navajo Code Talkers, referred to Senator Elizabeth position in U.S. history. With Haaland now at the Ambassador for Fort Lewis College, sees it as an Warren as “Pocahontas.” “Pocahontas was one of the helm, there is cautious optimism that Native voices Indigenous youth movement—unnamed, decentral- first sexually abused and kidnapped women in this are finally being heard in Washington, and that ized, without boundaries—that erupted in the wake country’s history,” Semans pointed out, referring to Native issues will finally get the attention that they of COVID and particularly the Black Lives Matter the current epidemic of missing and murdered Indig- deserve. What’s more, the nation now knows that protests of the summer. “We’re taking back our tradi- enous women and girls. Invoking Pocahontas in the there is a formidable voting block of real, live Indi- tions and our culture and calling out cultural appro- way Trump did was not only a racist slur but an insult ans out there, Indians who are resilient in the face priation,” she said, citing the Washington Redskins, to the Navajo men he purported to honor. “Basically of vulnerability and who are on the path not only to the Cleveland Indians, and Land o’ Lakes butter, all what you had was an administration and its cabinet survival but to triumph. If the Native American expe- of whom have decided to alter their racist branding. members who specifically targeted Native Americans rience this year has taught the rest of the world any- She notes that both BLM and COVID, as well as the around the United States because they thought we thing, it’s that taking care of each other and living in prominence of the Navajo Nation in the mainstream were the minority of minorities and couldn’t do any- right relationship with other human and non-human news, gave a new visibility to Native peoples. “I don’t thing about it,” Semans said. beings—the Earth, the water, the air, and all the liv- think a lot of people knew that we even existed,” As Semans knew and the rest of the world would ing creatures—is the only way we’re going to weather she said. “I still see comments on social media say- eventually learn, that assumption was a big mistake. the greater crises that face us in the years to come. \\ TellurideMagazine.com SUMMER/FALL 2021
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66 • FEATURE AMEmPbHracIeBthIeAN WITHIN Four Corners Guides helps human beings transition from land to water By Rob Story | Photos by Steve Fassbinder IT’S NOT AS IF FOLKS DREAM ABOUT BEING AS SMART AS A FROG. EVER STUDY AMPHIBIANS’ MENTAL CAPACITY? THERE’S NOT MUCH THERE, THERE. BIOLOGISTS RECKON THEIR BRAINS ARE LESS DEVELOPED THAN EVEN THOSE OF BIRDS AND REPTILES, DISMISSING THE AMPHIBIAN CERE- BELLUM AS A MERE “CONNECTING BAND” OF ROUGH TISSUE. But let’s forget brainpower for a moment, and instead appreciate amphibians’ signature capability: their seamless transitions between land and water. This is where Four Corners Guides comes in. An adventure outfitter based in Mancos, Colorado, Four Corners Guides has devised innovative tours that move clients from land-based mountain bikes to water-plying rafts. Sure, outfitters have combined activities forever; what’s new here? What’s different is that Four Corners’ trips include zero time-wasting shuttles on underpowered school buses. These “bike-rafting” excursions, see, are completely self-con- tained. The raft rides your bike with you when pedaling; your bike gets lashed to the watercraft’s stern when paddling. The key is the packraft: a one-person inflatable boat that’s portable. According to Steve “Doom” Fassbinder—who’s not only co-owner/ lead guide at Four Corners but also a global legend in human-pow- ered expeditions—the latest vessels from a company named Alpacka open new galaxies of possibility for amphibious adventure. In the 1990s, Doom says, “I used old style army-surplus store inflatables that leaked so much air they’d need five pounds of tape every time they were used.” Earlier this century, in 2001, Alpacka began construct- ing “packrafts” with high-tech combinations of proprietary nylon and polyurethane laminate that don’t freak out if grazed by gears, pedals, or other semi-sharp parts of a bike. Because I don’t currently enjoy an ability to breathe underwater, I joined Doom on a warm, sunny day last July in Dolores, Colorado. McPhee Overlook Trailhead served as the starting point of my first truly amphibian adventure. The plan: pedal shoreline along a southeastern appendage of McPhee Reservoir till the water deepens, unfold and inflate Alpacka packrafts till seaworthy, secure bikes to the bow, plop
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68 • FEATURE derrieres in the hull, paddle a couple miles north through the photogenic reservoir, take out at House Creek campground, eat lunch (ideally delicacies from the renowned Dolores Food Market), then mountain bike the undulating singletrack of McPhee Overlook Trail back to our original trailhead. As we lashed tightly rolled rafts to the underside of han- dlebars and stashed telescoping paddles into bike hydration packs, the perpetually cheerful Doom exclaimed “Let’s see if this can go!” (though he surely knew that it would). Doom’s zeal for amphibious exploration has earned him a feature in Outside and recognition from Bikepacking.com as “Adven- turer of the Year.” He vibes positivity and quickly convinces his charges that anything is possible. For instance: pumping up an inflatable at the put-in with nothing but bellows. How rudimentary is a bellow? Well, the technology dates to the fourth century, and a bellow remains a bag of air operated by squeezing. At McPhee, we employed bellows made of nylon versus the ox hide favored by the ancient Chinese. While inflation took a few minutes and induced copious perspiration, the process was gratifying and liberating; I felt incredibly self-reliant to push air without a pump, much less a compressor. Bike-rafters are advised to remove ATTACHING THE PARTLY DISSEMBLED BIKE TO BOW INVOLVES their drive-side pedal and at least one or both wheels. Attaching the partly dissem- CAREFUL LAYERING, AS IF PREPARING AN ADVENTURE-SPORTS bled bike to bow involves careful layering, as if preparing an adventure-sports lasa- LASAGNA. BALANCE IS CRUCIAL, AND EVERY INDIVIDUAL gna. Balance is crucial, and every indi- BIKE PART MUST BE TIGHTLY STRAPPED DOWN. vidual bike part must be tightly strapped down. We launched. A mild breeze slowed our water-borne progress a bit. I also had to pull to shore once to add air to my Alpacka. Overall, it felt good to row with upper bodies—sav- ing lower-body exertion for the biking. McPhee, the largest lake in the San Juan National For- est, looks gorgeous, with clear waters sparkling up at the surrounding mesas. After lunch, we deflated the boats, rolled them into tubes, and re-attached them to re-assem- bled bikes. As they evolved from lunged fish, amphibians had to make certain adaptations for living on land, includ- ing the need to develop new means of locomotion. In the water, the sideways thrusts of their tails had propelled them forward, but on land, quite different mechanisms (namely, stronger leg muscles) were required. Similarly, Doom and I reverted to locomotion that required shifting gears, spin- ning pedals, and steering handlebars. “I love going amphibious at the drop of a hat,” Doom raved. “I feel bike-rafting is totally unique. You can go any- where at any time with this set-up. On a mountain-bike-only trip, a big water crossing can be daunting if not impossible. It’s great to be self-contained, packing your own solution.” No more liquid interruptions. Not far from House Creek campground, the McPhee Overlook Trail tilts upward through piñon and juniper trees, sagebrush wafting gently through riders’ nostrils. We noo- dled in and out of three distinct ravines, breathing hard on ascents and grinning wildly on downhills. The trail’s 8.8 miles pass beneath one’s tires relatively quickly, thanks to its humane (for Colorado, anyway) elevation gain of 935 feet. Ice cold beers at the car punctuated a memorable day in the backcountry. The COVID pandemic of 2020 bloodied the travel industry in general and Four Corners Guides in particular. But Doom’s outfit survived and for 2021 is offering a variety of packraft- ing, biking, and bike-rafting tours, including new excursions near Utah’s Lake Powell, on the Animas, San Miguel and Dolores Rivers, and on Southwest Colorado’s Rimrocker Trail. Expect ruddy canyons, fast water, and Marlboro Country vis- tas. Mostly, anticipate with glee your unprecedented oppor- tunity to explore both surf and turf. You’ll never feel more amphibian — which, after all, is an ancient Greek way of praising “both kinds of life.” \\ TellurideMagazine.com SUMMER/FALL 2021
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72 • INNOVATION SHOT IN THE ARM A primer on mRNA technology By Hannah Docter-Loeb You’ve probably read a lot of at Washington University in St. Louis. scary things about vaccines; “They just changed the sequence if you’re not a molecular from a Zika protein to a SARS-CoV-2 biologist with a PhD in the protein, and they were able to deploy field, it can be difficult to parse the that and do it on a monster scale,” science from the social media noise. Pyle says. “The exact same technology A cursory Google search might per- can be deployed [for other applica- suade you of things like “the vaccine tions]; you just make a message that will alter your DNA” or “the vaccine encodes that thing, you jab the per- contains a microchip so Bill Gates son, and they can start making it on can track you.” their own. The beauty of it is instead The truth is, the COVID-19 vac- of a protein that has been made in a cines do none of these things. There lab, when it’s made in you, additional is not just one vaccine for the dis- little bits and pieces get added to it ease; worldwide, nearly ninety vac- that make it more compatible with cines are currently in clinical trials, the individual person. It’s far better and eight different vaccines have to be making our own proteins from been fully approved. There are two a drug RNA than receiving medicines basic types of vaccines: traditional that are proteins.” vaccines that insert a viral protein or an inactivated virus into our bod- With solid technology in place, the ies in hopes of mounting an immune WHILE MRNA TECHNOLOGY real challenge in getting the mRNA response, and the new mRNA vac- MAY SEEM NOVEL TO THE GENERAL vaccines to market was the time cines, like those produced by Pfiz- required to conduct clinical trials and er-BioNTech and Moderna. create large-scale production capac- To understand how the new vac- PUBLIC, IT’S ACTUALLY BEEN USED ity. Now, there are several significant production facilities, and the country cines work, it’s important to under- FOR MANY YEARS. is much better equipped to quickly dis- stand how the virus itself works. seminate vaccines that will work well RNA, or ribonucleic acid, is a mac- for new variants. “We can easily start romolecule similar to DNA, but it is churning out custom-made vaccines single-stranded and it can carry the genetic infor- for the variants,” Pyle says. “That’s the beauty of an While mRNA technology may seem novel to mRNA vaccine. It’s super easy to change the tem- mation of viruses. Beta coronaviruses, which are the general public, it’s actually been used for many plate sequence. I can do it in my lab on a machine I the ones that cause the COVID-19 disease, are RNA years. In fact, Moderna Inc. was created in 2010 to have where I just type in a sequence and the synthe- viruses. “They propagate solely through RNA and utilize mRNA technology for something completely sizer makes a new template.” they make messenger RNA and it gets replicated in different, namely to enable people to make their COVID-19 was a catalyst for its acceptance our cells—and we make their proteins for them,” own proteins when they are unable to do so nat- and general use, but even when the pandemic Anna Marie Pyle of Yale University explains. “They urally. This is very important for various genetic is over, mRNA technology will not be going any- pirate our equipment for making proteins.” diseases such as hemophilia, which occurs when where. Its successful use in vaccines will likely The vaccine inserts a sequence of mRNA that the body isn’t making an important blood-clotting smooth the FDA approval process for other appli- produces the COVID-19 spike protein. This pro- factor. For the private sector, providing solutions cations including protein replacement therapies tein, once created, triggers an immune response. for people with debilitating disease was a viable currently in development to treat heart disease, The protein by itself is harmless. There is no live investment plan. It was generally understood that endocrine disorders, and various types of cancer. virus inserted, and there’s nothing added that the technology could be applied to vaccines, but With everything that the COVID-19 pandemic took would change the bodies’ DNA. the need wasn’t yet on their radar. “Creating vac- from us, at least it gave us one thing: a crucial tool Despite strong evidence of the vaccine’s safety cines was not considered very profitable,” Vadim for scientific progress in both combating disease and efficacy—the two mRNA vaccines authorized Backman of Northwestern University explains. and preventing it. by the FDA range from 94.1 percent to 95 percent “Their idea was to use mRNA technology for induc- Anna Marie Pyle, Ph.D., is the Sterling Profes- effective— there is still some wariness among the ible pluripotent STEM cells. When COVID hit, they sor of Molecular, Cellular & Developmental Biol- U.S. population. But as Pyle explains, it’s natural adapted the technology. It was almost like a seren- ogy at Yale University and President of the RNA to be skeptical. “It’s not a bad thing that people dipity moment.” Society, and Vadim Backman, Ph.D., is the Walter in this country are very skeptical. We should ques- Because the mRNA technology had long been Dill Scott Professor of Biomedical Engineering at tion,” Pyle remarks. “That’s another thing about established, Moderna took only forty-eight hours Northwestern University. Pyle and Backman both American society that’s very hard-baked into our to develop the RNA sequence needed for the also serve on the Board of Directors of the Telluride culture: to question even when everyone tells us it COVID-19 vaccine. The mRNA technology used Science Research Center. To learn more about Tel- must be true. Sometimes that bites us back, but it specifically for the COVID-vaccine was built off of luride Science, visit telluridescience.org. \\ is who we are.” a Zika vaccine created by a group of researchers TellurideMagazine.com SUMMER/FALL 2021
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74 • NATURE NOTES FRAOSMHETSHE Wildfire catalyzes forest changes By Deanna Drew Not all change is bad. All organisms change on forest ecology in Colorado. “The combination of excluded for many years, young trees are allowed throughout their lifespan, and entire spe- really dry trees, really dead stuff on the ground, to mature and forests grow denser, causing a cies change over a long period of time. real low humidity and real high winds, was just a buildup of fuel. This type of fire burns very hot and However, even this natural pattern of recipe for disaster.” can destroy nearly all vegetation and even dam- evolution can be altered by human-caused or natu- Despite the apparent devastation that follows age the soil. The forest will take a longer time to ral disturbances, and one of the most powerful and a wildfire, Colorado’s forests depend on fire as an recover, while the scorched land remains vulnera- long-lasting influences on nature is fire. essential part of their life cycle. Fire removes dead ble to erosion, threatening water sources with sed- The year 2020 marked Colorado’s most devas- trees, branches, and needles from the ground, imentation. “In Colorado, more than 42 percent of tating and prolonged wildfire season on record. clearing the way for new growth. It improves the homes are in a wildland/urban interface,” added More than a thousand separate wildfires, Rodman. As more people seek woodland including the three largest in state his- settings for their homes and recreation, tory, burned in excess of 600 million acres the prevention, control, and suppression in the western part of the state. The last OVER TIME, CERTAIN TREE SPECIES of wildfires has become more urgent, and fire was not contained until mid-Decem- DEVELOPED VARIOUS MECHANISMS fewer forests are allowed to burn periodi- ber, after nearly $300 million was spent THAT ENABLE THEM TO cally to regenerate themselves. “Even if it on suppression efforts and at least a thou- is good for the forest, if homes and lives sand structures and homes located in or are there, we must put it out.” near the flaming forests were destroyed. SURVIVE AND REPRODUCE IN A Human fire suppression, a hotter and The largest fires burned with intense FIRE-PRONE ENVIRONMENT. drier climate, and an abundance of dead heat and consumed nearly everything in and dying trees are setting the stage for their path; even the tallest trees were more frequent and catastrophic forest blackened or reduced to smoking stumps. fires like the ones Colorado experienced Other areas experienced smaller surface fires, chances of survival for stronger, healthier trees in 2020. Scientists predict climate change will burning closer to the ground and causing less dam- by thinning small trees and removing those weak- cause a 25 percent increase in large fires and fire age, leaving a patchwork of burned and unburned ened by insects and disease. Ashes blanket the for- frequency across the west by mid-century, while trees on the landscape. Scientists say the excep- est floor after a wildfire to create an ideal growing large wildfires could triple in frequency in the dry tionally hot, dry, and windy weather along with environment for seed germination and regenera- Southwest. an accumulation of parched vegetation and dead tion of plants. Fire influences forest succession by Over time, certain tree species developed trees is what set 2020 apart from other wildfire promoting trees of mixed ages, in a self-sustaining various mechanisms that enable them to survive seasons. “It was a historic drought year, and it took cycle of life and death. and reproduce in a fire-prone environment. Coni- a long time for the snow and humidity to show up,” But for all their benefits to the forest ecosys- fers like lodgepole pine depend on heat from fire explains Kyle Rodman, a postdoctoral researcher tem, wildfires still pose a threat to communities to open their serotinous cones and release seeds who studies the effects of wildfire and bark beetles and lives. In some forests where fire has been that bring new life to the area, and others like TellurideMagazine.com SUMMER/FALL 2021
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76 • NATURE NOTES ponderosa pine have limbs that grow high off the lish, the climate is no longer suitable for the grasslands and shrublands—resprouting species ground and thick bark that can withstand heat same tree species that were there to begin with.” that don’t require seed to recover—will grow back that destroys other species. Gambel oak and aspen in their place. “There are a lot of hurdles. If tree are resprouting species that store nutrients in the Rodman and his team project that in a hot species in a given area don’t make all the hurdles, soil and base of the stem, so after they burn, they and dry future, large percentages of the South- you can get dominance by other species or little can grow back in the same place. ern Rocky Mountains may become unsuitable plant cover at all.” for important seeding tree species such as pon- But even though many western forest types are derosa pine and Douglas-fir. “The amount of Only time can tell how Colorado’s forests will adapted to wildfire, Rodman’s research and that moisture and temperature in different places recover from the epic wildfire season of 2020. of other scientists throughout the West indicates is a big driver in the different types of forests Across the state’s broad range of elevation, Rod- that some forests have become less resilient to fire in Colorado. With a degree or two of warming, man says forests don’t respond as a whole but as as the climate has become warmer and drier, espe- places that were marginal to start with—forest individual species with a range of conditions each cially in the Southwest. edges at low elevation—are now outside the can tolerate. Generally, the science suggests trees range to recover. ” at higher elevations with more precipitation and Most conifers in southern Colorado, says Rod- cool temperatures and burn areas with surviving man, reproduce by seed and rely on seed to regrow The forests of the southern Rockies are expe- trees will have a better chance of recovering after and generate new seedlings, but as a general rule, riencing drought stress; it is now warmer at higher a severe fire. “The climate of a place is ingrained Colorado’s tree species can only disperse seed up elevations and the treelines are advancing up in the DNA of that population. Every ecosystem is to about a hundred meters. “For a forest to recover the slope. “Trees want to move upslope as it gets a little bit different because the climate in that after a severe fire where all trees were killed, the warmer and dryer, but because they reproduce by area is different.” seed has to come in from somewhere else.” With seeds that can’t travel very far, they are limited large fires, often the size of the burn is too large by where they were to begin with.” In a warming Trees are resilient—their existence predates compared to how far the seed can move. “They climate, the life zones are shifting upward faster humans, and they are still here—but forests are need to have a surviving tree nearby that will pro- than trees can regrow after a disturbance like destined to change. Perhaps there will be different duce seeds and get to the burn area from wind or fire. It is possible where some forests have burned types of trees, or fewer of them, and we might have water, or occasionally a bird.” These trees typically intensely, we will lose forest cover and over time to go to higher elevations to recreate in a forest. produce seed every few years, but seed less often when it’s warm and dry. If the trend for humans to live closer to nature continues, if temperatures And even if a seed gets there, keep getting warmer and if periods Rodman’s research indicates seeds of drought persist, land management from trees in some lower elevations agencies will be forced to balance the that burn very intensely may not be needs of society with the needs of the able to regerminate, take root, and forest ecosystem. And forest manage- grow in today’s warming climate. ment won’t look the same everywhere. “Even if conditions are right for seed “It is not a one-size fits all approach. to germinate and seedlings to estab- Over time, conditions change.” \\ SCIENTISTS PREDICT CLIMATE CHANGE WILL CAUSE A 25 PERCENT INCREASE IN LARGE FIRES AND FIRE FREQUENCY ACROSS THE WEST BY MID-CENTURY, WHILE LARGE WILDFIRES COULD TRIPLE IN FREQUENCY IN THE DRY SOUTHWEST. TellurideMagazine.com SUMMER/FALL 2021
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80 • HISTORY Inside the Telluride Film Festival during its 3rd Decade (1994-2003) FRIDAY NIGHT RAINBOW FAYE DUNAWAY LENT SOME STAR POWER TO TFF #21 MURIEL’S (LYNN RAE AND BF’S) WEDDING IN 1994 TBy Paul O’Rourke | Photos by Phil Borgeson dedicated as it would be to classic and rare films twenty years—were tributes to notable careers in he 21st edition of the Telluride Film like Lonesome. And here it was, just over twenty cinema, first-time North American screenings, a Festival (TFF) opened on Friday, years later, Lonesome was programed for a 9:30 pre-festival party, an after-the-festival festival, an September 2, 1994. Bill Pence was, Saturday morning screening, accompanied, this opening night feed, a Labor Day picnic, and spe- as always, excited, a little nervous time, by the festival’s favorite three-man ensem- cial events. One such special event was the softball perhaps, but very much looking for- ble, the Alloy Orchestra. Bill Pence couldn’t help game that closed out festival #21, highlighted—if ward to experiencing what he and but wonder how the more things change, the more you chose to overlook Lynn Rae Lowe’s cartwheels co-founder and co-director, Tom Luddy, considered they stay the same. on the base paths—by Ken Burns being called out the “best” films available for that year. Knowing by umpire, star of the Negro Leagues, and hero of what had been programmed for the next morning, Telluride is the one major American Burns’ Baseball documentary Buck O’Neil, who Bill may have been also thinking back to July 5, film festival that’s still committed to showing surprised Burns on stage at the opera house when 1973, when he and wife Stella, along with friend presenting the director his Silver Medallion in 1994. and film preservationist, James Card, watched films you can’t find any place else. intently as the Sheridan Opera House filled to The festivals featured student symposiums capacity as an eager audience took in Lonesome, Howie Movshovitz (TFF Student Symposium and noon seminars in Elks Park with moderator, a 1928 silent film from Card’s extensive collection Faculty Member), L.A. Times, September 3, 1999. film historian, author, and Columbia University of classics. It was perhaps the combination of the professor Annette Insdorf who, according to festi- enthusiastic standing-ovation appreciation for this There are things film festival goers have val chronicler Peter Shelton, possessed “an aston- film along with Mr. Card’s abiding affection for the always counted on at Telluride, at least by way of ishing ability to lead a panel discussion in three or Sheridan Opera House (“this is a jewel box…just what’s not there: no paparazzi, no red carpets, no more languages, always with a smile, and always waiting to be filled with gems,” he’d told Bill and limousines, no press junkets, no cutthroat compe- in heels and red lipstick.” Festival goers could also Stella) that led Card, Luddy, and the Pences to the tition between filmmakers or studios, and since rely upon the annual arrival of “tech genius Ross fortuitous decision to stage a festival in Telluride, 1977, no earthly idea which films will be screened Krantz, up from New Mexico, in his beat-up Chrys- until “opening day.” ler Imperial and his uncanny capacity to keep the big projectors humming.” What there was to experience during the TFF’s third decade—as well as for most of its first TellurideMagazine.com SUMMER/FALL 2021
All of which was expertly choreographed by a PETER O’TOOLE TAKING A SPIN ON BILL PENCE’S BIKE (2002) who that person would be. Stella provided cau- seasoned staff and hundreds of dedicated volun- tionary advice: “don’t mention Three’s Company to teers in a congenial atmosphere where the well- restaurateur Bertrand Lepel-Cointet was beyond John Ritter; he’s beyond that now.” known mingled freely with several thousand film ecstatic to have the French “goddess” in town. lovers during a four-day, often frenzied but fun-filled He offered to prepare a special lunch for Cather- It’s a bit of a haul from Junction to Telluride, viewing of silent era, contemporary, documentary, ine at La Marmotte. When approached by Bärbel during which driver Vince Egan was likely rumi- revival, art house, domestic and foreign, indepen- with Bertrand’s heartfelt invitation, Deneuve dis- nating over but never verbalizing anything about dent, unknown, and soon-to-be appreciated films. missed her and it offhand: “I didn’t come all the Ritter’s TV show. Seems Thornton and Ritter had way to Telluride for a French lunch.” Not to be made the acquaintances of two young females on Nowhere else does a place become put off so easily, Bärbel knew the star’s schedule their train trip from L.A., both of whom were in a film festival like Telluride; there are over and responded, in her best French, “The meal has Vince’s car as the five of them made their way already been planned; there will be no one there south from Grand Junction. 1,700 film festivals in the world, but you and whoever you wish to bring. I will pick yet everyone is here. you up at noon. Please say yes.” Catherine said yes. “It was a cozy, fun ride for the four of them,” said Vince, “I was pretty much doing my best Drivin’ Miss Bill Pence Bertrand was forever grateful. Four years later Daisy.” Completing the considerably more quiet and and in his final days, Bertrand told Bärbel, “You made less entertaining drive after dropping the women off Through its first twenty years and into its third my dream come true. It is still with me.” Catherine in Ridgway, Vince delivered his Sling Blade passen- decade the number of folks directly involved with Deneuve, in her special way, was appreciative, too, gers to their Telluride accommodations. As he got out the art of filmmaking who were invited to the TFF calling her meal at La Marmotte, “the best lunch I’ve of the car, Ritter hesitated, smiled at Vince, and said, grew by leaps and bounds, from one year to the next. ever had,” hesitating for a moment, “in America.” “Have you ever seen Three’s Company?” Early on it was decided the invitees may require some gentle attending to, and that “hosts” should “You get to know the guests—with all respect for Life is easier when you plow be available to make sure those who were consid- their work—as people,” says Bärbel. “The intimate, around the stumps. ered a critical component of one or more programs relaxed festival setting allows the artists to talk with be where they were supposed to be, when they were their peers and even watch some of their movies. Vince Egan supposed to be there; to make sure all invited guests And that is what is so special about Telluride; it’s why were treated to a true “Telluride experience.” everyone wants to come back, year after year.” Stella Pence had a somewhat unusual request for Leslie on Saturday afternoon during TFF #29. She can say NO, and they say thank you. I don’t have a fear of flying; “Peter O’Toole wants to go hunting and I can think I have a fear of crashing. of no one else for this job but Vince,” Stella said, Stella Pence on Bärbel Hacke “Peter’s free all day tomorrow and he says he wants Billy Bob Thornton to shoot some bunnies. Of course, Vince shouldn’t Bärbel Hacke remembers well how she got bring up Lawrence of Arabia.” involved in “hosting” at the TFF. The year was 1984 “Bärbel and I were always in touch with one and the enigmatic and often volatile—some said another during the festival,” said Leslie Sherlock, Said movie critic Roger Ebert, “Some actors certifiability deranged—German actor Klaus Kinski, TFF’s Lodging and Transportation Manager. “We are eager to please, but O’Toole is eager not to be a Silver Medallion recipient in 1979, was invited to worked hand in hand. I helped get the guests to annoyed.” Proving that he was anything but both- the festival at the behest of his friend, director, and and housed in Telluride; she and her team took ered, or, as Bill Pence warned, “Peter is generally sometimes antagonist, Werner Herzog. Bärbel, along care of them after they got to town.” regarded as unapproachable,” the two Irishmen, with friend and neighbor Elisabeth Gick—both of Mr. O’Toole and his host for the day, Mr. Egan, had whom are German—were asked to pick up Kinski Billy Bob Thornton had a breakout year in 1996 a fine time of it, indeed. at the Montrose Airport, only he wasn’t there. He’d after Sling Blade was screened for its first North deplaned in Gunnison. Apparently, the star of Agu- American audiences at TFF #23. Festival directors, “I decided to take Peter to Norwood,” Vince irre, Wrath of God had succumbed to a serious attack Pence and Luddy, anticipating what the Academy remembers, “a friend of mine had a lot of guns and of air sickness. After driving to Gunnison and with would recognize during its award ceremony the fol- he even had a cannon that we fired off after a little some gentle and some not-so-tender cajoling the lowing spring, wanted Thornton and his film at the sippin’ and shootin’—Peter got a kick out of the two festival assistants loaded Klaus into Elisabeth’s festival. A minor glitch in getting the movie’s direc- cannon. But we didn’t shoot any bunnies, though we Subaru and managed to deliver their charge to Tel- tor, writer, and star to Telluride, said Leslie, “was did see a bear crossing the road—Peter got a kick luride. Displeased with his accommodations at the the very real fact he didn’t—and wouldn’t—fly.” out of the bear, too. We shot skeet and sat out on our Sheridan among a host of other imagined affronts, When asked by TFF’s general manager Stella Pence back porch and talked on and on about guns and almost immediately upon his arrival and over a span to arrange for Thornton’s and supporting cast mem- politics and Ireland, of course; we were convinced of several hours Klaus channeled his innermost “Fitz- ber John Ritter’s transportation to Telluride from our ancestors knew one another.” On the way back carraldo” and melted down in a series of profane out- the Grand Junction train station, Sherlock knew to Telluride, Peter leaned over to Vince, smiled and bursts. Bärbel would have none of it. “You need to asked, “Did you ever see…Lawrence of Arabia?” find an asshole who’s going to take this,” she growled in German at Kinski, turning away from his latest “Oh, yes,” Vince smiled back, “Wasn’t that the rant, “that’s not me!” one with Anthony Quinn and some Irish guy?” To which, Vince recalled, “Peter burst out laughing.” Stunned, Klaus ran after her, fell to his knees on the sidewalk in front of the Excelsior Café, and CHUCK AND MARIAN JONES IN FRONT cried, “I’m your slave. I’ll be good.” And so it was: OF THE SHERIDAN OPERA HOUSE Klaus Kinski was reformed, or at least quieted tem- porarily, and for the rest of the weekend appeared to act the perfect, albeit reluctant, gentleman. Tom Luddy loved the story. From that moment forward he introduced Bärbel as the “person who tamed Klaus Kinski.” TFF’s Project Manager, Lynn Rae Lowe, offered Bärbel a job as “roving host,” reasoning that anyone who can handle Klaus Kinski, can deal with anyone. Catherine Deneuve wasn’t just “anyone,” however. Honored at #26 (1999)—32 years after Belle de Jour introduced her to American audi- ences—she was, in Bärbel‘s estimation, “more beautiful than the photos you see.” Telluride
82 • HISTORY I watch the ripples change their size/But never leave the stream. —David Bowie CHUCK AND MARIAN JONES AT THE PATRON’S BRUNCH FRIDAY NIGHT PANORAMA BÄRBEL AND DAUGHTER CHARLOTTE AT SKYLINE RANCH At Telluride the audience is king. special events; one of which was Saturday’s Turkey “We were beginning to get a little crowded,” Dinner (with all the fixin’s) at the top of Coonskin said Brandt Garber, in a 2001 interview with Erin Jim Bedford, Director of Operations Lift, where an all-star cast of characters, including Spillane in the Weekly Planet, just before the gala Meryl Streep, Clint Eastwood, Ken Burns, and Wer- opening of the “Galaxy,” the new 500-seat celes- During its third decade the TFF dramatically ner Herzog (it was his birthday, too) offered their tially themed venue, constructed at the Telluride transformed how its programs were presented to its fondest recollections of Telluride and festivals Middle School’s new gym. Even with the opening always appreciative audiences. And while those pro- past. Bill Pence used the occasion to announce of the Chuck Jones’ in 1999, the closing of the grams were, as always, as strong, as unique, and as that a new venue would come online for next year’s Strand in 1996 and the Community Center in 1998 transformative as anything in the film festival universe, festival, to be located, the co-director intimated, prompted concerns over how to best accommo- the case could be made that the theatres themselves to no little eyebrow raising, “in the conference date the festival’s audiences. became big hits at the festival, too; at the very least center in the Mountain Village. Though we don’t the newly designed and constructed venues shared the yet have a name for it,” Bill said in an interview In yet another example of the TFF’s ongo- spotlight at the SHOW during those years and beyond. with Mike Ritchey in the Telluride Daily Planet, ing collaboration with the Telluride School Dis- “you can bet we’ll come up with the perfect name.” trict, “The festival’s long-term lease on the new The 23rd TFF (1996) reminded Bill Pence gym helped fund the addition and allowed us to of #6 (1979) with its screening of Abel Gance’s The 500-seat Chuck Jones’ Cinema (the per- contribute to its design, including the Dolby Sur- 5-hour epic, Napoleon; it was a breakout year for fect name) opened at #28, sadly, without its name- round-Sound system and the ultra-high-tech pro- the festival. Director Mike Leigh was honored in sake present. Said the creator of Bugs Bunny and jection booth,” said Brandt. If the technology was 1996, an auspicious selection as Leigh’s Secrets Wile E. Coyote and 1976 festival honoree, “I’m ramping up inside the theaters, it was just begin- and Lies, like Billy Bob’s Sling Blade, went on really sorry I can’t be there. Unfortunately, I had ning to take hold in operations. to garner several Oscar nominations. But per- to make a choice between going and breathing.” haps the big star of 1996 was “The Max,” the new The venue’s debut was highlighted by the screen- We just did what we had to do to 700-seat art deco, Egyptian-themed movie house ing of three films starring Charlie Chaplin, Oliver get the job done, no matter what that was, which, for eleven months of the year, served as the and Hardy, and Buster Keaton respectively, each new high school’s gymnasium. Designer Lynn Rae accompanied by the always inspired Alloy Orches- whatever it took. Lowe and architect Brandt Garber were in charge tra. The first feature film programmed for the of the transfiguration, and L.A. philanthropist and Chuck Jones’, to the surprise of some and perhaps Leslie Sherlock movie producer Max Palevsky and his wife Ellen to the delight of Bärbel, was Werner Herzog’s doc- anted up the first $100,000 of the $300,000 fund- umentary, My Best Fiend, a close look at the direc- “Remember, computers and cell phones were raising blockbuster. Said Jim Bedford of the new tor’s sometimes intimate and oftentimes strained just beginning to come into widespread use,” said venue and its up-to-the-moment sound and projec- relationship with friend and nemesis, Klaus Leslie, recalling the mid-1990s at the TFF. “Before tion technology, “Without the Max there would be Kinski, who’d died in 1991. Accessible from town that I charted the arrivals, departures, and the hous- no Telluride Film Festival.” by way of a 12-minute gondola ride, a W2 (Wabbit ing assignments on a grid, with pencil and paper. And Weservation) or the newly created Acme Pass, the we used walkie-talkies. If you had a walkie-talkie you The TFF’s Silver Anniversary was celebrated in Chuck Jones’ Cinema had a way of stretching the were important,” she said, with a wry smile. 1998. Another new venue—crafted as it was from limits yet, at the same time, enhancing the reach the high school’s gym annex, the 125-seat “Minnie” of the TFF. But as Bugs could have said, “That’s Hunt Worth was the festival’s “Computer King,” debuted to rave reviews. To commemorate the fes- (not) all folks.” a position of immense significance, concerned as it tival’s 25th birthday an extra day, on Thursday, was was with inputting and saving all of the information added to the schedule, requiring additional volun- It’s very Galileo. critical to every facet of production and operations. teers and planning, not to mention food. Festival “We had a database of 400 names for housing and chef Ann Cooper served 22,000 meals that week- Brandt Garber, TFF Production Manager transportation,” Leslie remembers, “and a sugges- end, including 1,700 for each of the festival’s three tion was made to consolidate the databases from the computers in New Hampshire (where the Pences TellurideMagazine.com SUMMER/FALL 2021
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84 • HISTORY THE LAST NIGHT OF #24 WITH BILL AND STELLA PENCE AND TOM LUDDY (CENTER) AND KEN BURNS “IT’S VERY GALILEO” THE GALAXY BANNER OFF TO THE LEFT ALREADY CELEBRATING #25. were) and Telluride (where Hunt operated) in order Park often hinted at who would be honored that maux, Director of the Cannes Film Festival, to improve efficiency. The outcome, considering it year. On Wednesday night prior to #30’s opening, the institute had paid tribute to the pioneering was during the early days of the automation revolu- Muriel’s Wedding was shown. A big hit back in Lumiere brothers in 1995 at TFF #22 during the tion, was almost predictable. With that year’s festival 1994—where Lynn Rae and Jim Bedford, with 100th anniversary of the birth of cinema. This gift about to commence, Leslie and the Computer King, hospitality manager Roger Knapp officiating, of Dans la Nuit—that program presenter and who was reported to have been skeptical about the exchanged faux wedding vows at the “Down Under Pordenone Silent Film Festival founder, Paolo merger idea, stared at their frozen screens with Reception”—the movie’s real-life star, Toni Col- Cherci Usai, called “gorgeous”—offered further equally frozen (if not slightly horrified) expressions lette, was honored in 2003. Peter Shelton, in his confirmation of Telluride’s abiding affection for for quite a while. “I went back to pencil and paper festival diary, observed that what was remarkable and enduring commitment to cinema’s silent era. that year,” recalls Leslie, “From then on I backed up about Collette was not so much what she’d accom- everything, every day. My zip drive was with me at all plished—which was considerable—but where she From one year to the next, like well written times; I think I slept with the thing,” she laughed. was headed. And that prompted comparisons to chapters, each edition of the Telluride Film Festi- Jennifer Jason Leigh, an honoree ten years earlier, val is unique, a story unto itself. But so, too, does Don’t trust anyone over thirty. who was at a similar moment in her career. each festival seem to complement, like a well scripted storyline, its predecessors. Dans la Nuit Jack Weinberg, “Free Speech Movement,” If 2003’s TFF served at times to magically sum- could be viewed as one end of an expertly directed Berkeley, CA 1964 mon recollections of and comparisons to festivals cinematic thread, tracing to TFF #1 and its tribute past, we can only imagine what Polish director to Henri Langlois and his special program of rare Thirty years is a long time. No one, with the Krzysztof Zanussi was thinking when he stepped films from the Cinémathèque Française. lone exception being festival co-founder James onto to the opera house stage on Sunday to receive Card, could have “had the audacity to imagine we his Silver Medallion. Twenty years earlier he stood If each TFF over its first thirty years has pre- might be here thirty years later,” said Bill Pence very near to the same spot when he translated from sented a reverential look back, they have also as #30 opened, memories and memorials a part of Russian to English: my intuition tells me that this offered a glimpse at the here and now and a peek the annual celebration of film in 2003. In the lives audience is in a very critical moment now, that they into the future. Bill Pence referred to #30 as “the of people and film festivals a few commonalities are willing to find in cinema something different— passing of the torch festival,” alluding perhaps to #1 endure: The more candles on the cake, the fewer not an entertainment—but something deeper and and Silver Medallion recipient, Francis Ford Cop- are those near and dear at the party. more substantial. Zanussi was Andrei Tarkovsky’s pola, whose daughter Sophia was at #30 with her translator at TFF #10 when the Russian director latest and very well received film, Lost in Transla- TFF #30 was dedicated to longtime festi- was honored, and he was with Tarkovsky when Tom tion. And who would have thought in 1974 that Ted val contributor and advisor Stan Brakhage, the Luddy drove them all from Las Vegas to Telluride via Turner would be honored at Telluride thirty years experimental filmmaker whose work, wrote The Monument Valley prior to that year’s festival. later, like Henri Langlois before him, for his contri- Guardian’s Ronald Berger, “was difficult for those butions to the work—and the art—of saving and unwilling to shed the conventional wisdom that The Telluride Film Festival’s mission, in a nut- preserving classic cinema? cinema was narrative—with a beginning, middle, shell, is connecting the past and present and end.” Brakhage, along with Kenneth Anger, in astonishing ways. The TFF could be excused if it beamed with presented their program, “The American Under- pride at having reached the ripe old age of thirty, ground” at TFF #1. “We gauged how things were Geoff Hanson, The Denver Post not so much because it had survived for three going based upon how he felt,” said Bill Pence, decades, but because the festival had remained “keeping Stan happy was a priority.” “I want you to know this is the earliest I’ve ever stubbornly committed to being as vibrantly fresh gotten up for a Telluride program,” said Annette and as respectful of the past as it had on day one. Notable absences at TFF #30 were found on Insdorf to Bill Pence in front of the opera house And while the more things changed—more ven- the list of festival dedications, begun in 1992, that on that Sunday morning in 2003. The reason for ues, more programs, more staff and volunteers, included Louis Malle, James Card, and Chuck Annette’s early rising, according to Peter Shelton, increases in ticket prices and expense, not to Jones. Festival co-director from 1977 to 1987, Wil- was a special screening of the rediscovered 1929 mention the many transformations in Telluride liam K. Everson was toasted during a memorial silent film, Dans la Nuit, a thirtieth birthday pres- itself—the more they stayed the same, for the breakfast in 1996, at the Community Center, Bill’s ent from the Lyon, France-based Institut Lumiere. Telluride Film Festival has always been and will 16mm venue of choice. always be about the SHOW and a celebration of the Represented by TFF advisor and past Guest art of cinema. It was and is a festival for people And like it was—and still is—at most Tellu- Director, Bertrand Tavernier, and Thierry Fre- who love film. \\ ride Film Festivals, a pre-festival screening at Elks roll the credits when and where” for this article. Thanks to Jim Bedford, the-scenes reflections on the festival. The writer is very grate- Vince Egan, Bärbel Hacke, Lynn Rae Lowe, Bill and Stella ful for Phil and Gerry Borgeson and their splendid archive of Jeffrey Ruoff’s fine history, Telluride in the Film Festival Galaxy, Pence, Peter Shelton, and Leslie Sherlock for their behind- images that have truly made the festival’s history come alive. and Jason Silverman’s “TFF History: The First 30 Years” lent perspective to as well as provided some of the “who, what, TellurideMagazine.com SUMMER/FALL 2021
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88 • FICTION Anything Could Disappear By Danielle Evans Illustrations by Stephanie Morgan Rogers VERA WAS MOVING TO NEW YORK ON A GREYHOUND BUS, CARRYING ONLY A DUFFEL BAG. THE MORNING SHE LEFT MIS- SOURI, THERE WAS A HEAT ADVISORY AND AN ORANGE-LEVEL TERRORISM ALERT. AN HOUR OUTSIDE OF CHICAGO, THERE HAD BEEN AN OLDER WOMAN, CRYING AND DEMANDING THAT THE BUS PULL OVER TO LET HER OFF. FROM CHICAGO TO CLEVELAND, SHE HAD SAT NEXT TO A PERFECTLY CORDIAL MAN WHO HAD JUST FINISHED A TEN—YEAR PRISON SENTENCE AND WAS ON HIS WAY HOME FROM TEXAS WITH NOTHING BUT HIS BUS TICKET AND TWENTY DOLLARS IN HIS POCKET. BETWEEN CLEVELAND AND PITTSBURGH, THERE HAD BEEN A MAN WHO KEPT TRYING TO GET HER TO SHARE A BLANKET WITH HIM, CITING THEIR PROXIMITY TO THE AIR-CONDITIONING VENT, AND BETWEEN PITTSBURGH AND PHILLY, A TEENAGE RUNAWAY HAD SAT BESIDE HER AND TALKED HER EAR OFF. AND NOW THERE WAS THIS: A SMALL, WOBBLY CHILD WHOSE MOTHER HAD DEPOSITED HIM IN THE SEAT BESIDE HER WITH A SIMPLE “KEEP AN EYE ON HIM, WILL YA, HON?” TellurideMagazine.com SUMMER/FALL 2021
Vera tried to catch the eye of another pas- away. She made faces at him that made him “Come on, William,” Vera said. “Let’s get senger, maybe the woman two seats ahead of giggle. She tried to engage him in a game of something to eat.” her on the other side of the aisle—he looked patty-cake, but he seemed more interested in like the sort of person who would turn around the clapping than the repetition. Vera took him to a McDonald’s and and say, Keep an eye on him your damn self, watched him nibble at his French fries and lady; he’s yours, ain’t he?—but nobody looked When the bus finally pulled into Port chicken nuggets. She considered dropping up. The boy was around two years old, brown- Authority, Vera squeezed past the boy’s seat him off on the steps of a police station and skinned with a head of curls that someone to retrieve her duffel bag from the overhead just walking away, but that felt fraught with had taken the time to properly comb. He was bin. As she scrunched her face at the weight unsavory possibilities. He might follow her and dressed in a clean, bright red T shirt, baby of the bag, the boy began to giggle again. She get more lost than he already was. Someone jeans, and sneakers nicer than Vera’s. The smiled back at him, then looked over her might see her leaving him and try to stop her. mother was a thin, nervous white woman, with shoulder for his mother and sister. The peo- There’d be more questions asked than she had wispy hair in three shades of blond. She smelled ple in the back of the bus were walking off answers for. She had one thousand dollars in strongly of cigarette smoke and chocolate milk. one by one, but there was no sign of the blond cash tucked into the lining of her handbag, She had gotten on the bus with the boy and a woman or her daughter. Thinking maybe and when she went to drop this package off girl, about seven, who looked like her in minia- they’d somehow passed her already, Vera tomorrow she’d have ten thousand dollars ture. The little girl was chewing purple bubble picked up the little boy, balancing him on her more, and her whole life in front of her. gum with the kind of enthusiasm that would hip, and rushed off the bus, into the parking have prompted Vera’s own mother to ask, “Are lot. No mother. She put the boy down and The year before she’d dropped out, she’d you a young lady or a cow?” The mother had a watched the rest of the passengers exit the fulfilled her university’s mandatory community cell phone pressed to her ear and was having a bus, until it sat there, empty. Still no mother. service requirement by working with a liter- terse conversation with someone on the other acy program at a women’s prison. There were end. She kept the phone cradled between her “Excuse me,” Vera said to a heavyset older women not much older than she was doing ear and shoulder, even as she leaned over the woman. “Did you see a blond woman and a lit- ten years for holding, selling, transporting— baby to kiss him on the forehead before walking tle girl? They were just on the bus with us.” mostly their boyfriends’ drugs. A classmate said farther toward the back of the bus. once that they’d bargained their lives for a few “Woman on the cell phone?” thousand dollars, which just emphasized for “I feed him, don’t I?” she said into the “Yeah,” said Vera. Vera how much the classmate had missed the cell phone. “When was the last time you did?” “Think they got off in Jersey. Sounded point—most of these women weren’t getting like someone was supposed to meet her money in the first place. They’d done it for love. The little boy made Vera nervous. He there.” The woman grabbed her suitcase was a quiet, happy baby. He would occa- from beside the bus and walked off. Fuck love. This was not a love story. Josh sionally clap his hands together, applauding Vera looked around at the rapidly dispers- was in his late thirties, already balding and something only he could appreciate. Still, ing passengers, wondering what the hell was prone to wearing button-down Hawaiian he was so small. Vera was overcome by the wrong with them that none of them had noticed print shirts. He’d half-heartedly hit on Vera unreasonable belief that he might break if a child being abandoned. But as she uninten- once, but even he couldn’t take the flirtation she looked away from him. As she watched tionally tightened her grip on his hand, Vera seriously enough to be offended by her rejec- him, he seemed to be watching her back. In realized that to the crowd it looked like he’d tion. He owned the record store, which had the window on the other side of the boy, Vera been her little boy all along. In the lazy Amer- been a hardware store until his father died. could see her own hazy reflection, nothing to ican vernacular of appearances, Vera, with her For at least the last decade he’d been making write home about one way or the other. She color and hair that matched his, looked more more money selling pot and small-time quan- had been on buses, at that point, for sixteen like his mother or sister than his own mother tities of pills out of the back room than he of the last twenty-one hours. She was wearing and sister did. Had that been why the mother had selling records out of the front room; not jeans and an old T shirt from the college she’d had chosen her? Maybe she’d intended to leave because he’d started selling more drugs but dropped out of two years earlier. Her hair was him all along. Or maybe something terrible had because people had stopped buying music. pulled back into a ponytail that was start- happened to her at the rest stop, she’d been Until now, Vera had strictly worked the front- ing to frizz. Vera was a few months past her dragged off by a stranger and was hoping some- room business, maintaining plausible deni- twenty-first birthday, which had happened one would notice she was missing before it was ability of whatever else her employer was without any of the fanfare and excess people too late. Or maybe she’d just gotten distracted, doing. She kept a blank face while ringing tended to associate with turning twenty-one. smoking a cigarette for too long, and was now up music of questionable taste, pornographic Josh and her coworkers at the record store frantic because the bus had left without her. album covers, actual pornography, and ciga- had ordered her a pizza at work and opened In any case, the obvious thing was to rettes that twentysomething men purchased a few beers to toast her. That was it. go to the police, to let them straighten the for the fourteen-year-old girls lingering whole thing out. But there was this little boy, outside. Vera got good at pretending not to Somewhere on the Jersey Turnpike, the who was holding on to Vera with his left hand notice people who didn’t want to be seen. bus pulled into one of those rest stops that while he sucked the thumb on his right. And appeared up and down 95 like punctuation there was this duffel bag, where, between The revival downtown had been promising marks. Vera went into the travel plaza to get two layers of clothing, wrapped in a layer of her for years sputtered and stopped when the a cup of coffee. In the women’s restroom, she plastic, and then a layer of gift wrap, Vera had recession hit. Even after she’d dropped out of stretched her arms above her head in the carefully placed a package containing twenty school, it had seemed better to stay put than mirror and rolled up on the balls of her feet, thousand dollars’ worth of cocaine. It was the to go an hour backward and end up at home then down again. She splashed water on her last favor she was ever doing for Josh, and again. Her father had suggested she get her face, then pulled a small bottle of mouthwash new as she was to this, she knew better than cosmetology degree and work at the nail salon from the duffel bag she’d carried in with her to walk into a police station with it. that had opened in town, and Vera said, You and swirled a capful around in her mouth “What’s your name, sweetie?” Vera asked want me to get a job literally watching paint before spitting into the sink. the little boy. dry? When she called her parents back to He shook his head. She scanned him for signs apologize for her tone, she made it sound like When she got back on the bus, the little of a name tag, finally finding one on the inner Josh’s store was really something and she had boy was still sitting in the seat beside her. lining of his T shirt—someone had scrawled wil- big plans, when in fact every day she felt like Vera felt more charitably toward him now liam, in black Sharpie, on the tag inside. she had less energy to even imagine what bet- that she had seen how easy it was to walk ter version of herself she might become. SUMMER/FALL 2021 TellurideMagazine.com 89
90 • FICTION Beneath the renovated downtown lofts She called the phone number she had seen on tail sat behind it. A sign on the wall behind that nobody had moved into were boarded up the side of a city bus, and made an anonymous her read BROOKLYN DELIVERS. windows that were supposed to be art galleries. tip that a woman and a little girl may have been The stoners who hung around the record shop hurt near exit 9 of the Jersey Turnpike. No, she “Can I help you?” she asked. were positively comforting in comparison to the didn’t know their names. No, she didn’t know “I need to talk to Derek. My name’s Vera.” kids who hung out in the downtown parking lots where they were coming from or where they The woman hit a button on the phone. A tweaking, flashing her the singed remainders of were going. No, she couldn’t say why she thought few seconds later, a man with short dreads their teeth. Josh had refinanced the shop and they might be in danger. No, she couldn’t stay on and a T shirt featuring a band she’d never then blew the money on a bad investment and the line. She caught a cab, checked into a hotel, heard of came out to greet her, a perplexed had trouble paying the mortgage. Vera worked put the baby to bed, and called her mother to tell look on his face. there for two years and made minimum wage her everything was fine. “I’m Vera,” she said again. the whole time. She had no savings and Josh Derek stared at William, who Vera had knew it; he had more than once spotted her a In the morning, she took the train to the propped up on her hip. twenty for lunch and dinner when it was close to address Josh had given her. She took William “You brought a baby?” he asked. payday and he saw she wasn’t eating anything. with her because she wasn’t sure what else “He’s two,” Vera said, as if this were an Through someone he knew he’d gotten ahold of to do with him. The building was unspectacu- adequate explanation. this drug, which was not meth, which was not lar from the outside, a grim brownstone. She “Hold on.” Derek disappeared into the heroin, which was a flittery thing, a onetime rang the buzzer twice. On the second buzz, a back room, but before the door shut behind thing. He wasn’t going to chance selling it in his female voice answered and asked who it was. him, Vera could hear him say, “Who the fuck own backyard—the cops had let him slide on are we dealing with? He sent a girl with a kid.” the weed, but they were getting antsy. He knew “I’m Vera,” she said. “Josh sent me.” A second man, this one with scruffy blond a guy in New York though, and all she had to do The door buzzed open. Vera walked up hair and thick black-framed glasses, came was get it there and she could take a fee. Josh the narrow stairwell and opened the door out of the room. would get out of hot water with the lender, and in front of her. She thought at first she must “I’m Adam,” he said. “Josh sent you?” she could get the hell out of Missouri and not have written the number down wrong. She “Yes,” said Vera. She gestured toward Wil- look back. was in an office—polished hardwood floors, liam. “I’m sorry about him. I didn’t know where bright accent colors on the walls, sunlight else to leave him. I just got here yesterday.” When William had finished eating, Vera took coming in through the loft windows, a sleek “It’s cool. You want to leave him out here his hand again and went outside to a pay phone. red couch, and a waiting area near a front for a minute? Liz can keep an eye on him.” desk. A woman with a blond-streaked pony- TellurideMagazine.com SUMMER/FALL 2021
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92 • FICTION Vera eyed the woman behind the desk. She anticipated. Josh’s money was wired. She herself into. He was quiet, he was happy, and hadn’t looked up from the computer screen. put her cash in the bag where the drugs had he imposed a certain order on her life. Meals Vera deposited William on the floor and followed been. She walked out to find William safely had to be eaten at set times. There was bed- Adam to the back room, which looked like a where she’d left him, and exited the building time, and time for waking up. Vera rented a more posh version of the front room—hardwood feeling an anticlimactic sense of relief. U Haul and picked up furniture around the floors, plush couches, walls of file cabinets. city. When she went to buy a baby bed from a Vera opened a bank account and depos- woman in Park Slope, the woman cooed over “This is not what I was expecting,” she ited two thousand dollars. She sat in a coffee William and threw in a stroller for fifty bucks. said to Adam. shop with William, calling through the rent- By the end of the week, the apartment was in als section on Craigslist. A few hours later, a order and the money was half gone. “We’re a courier service,” said Adam. “We Russian woman in Red Hook rented her an deliver things. Mostly documents and pack- attic apartment. Vera had a list of friends Vera had intended all along to look for a ages for small businesses. Sometimes not.” willing to serve as fake landlord references, job once she got here, but now there was the but the woman asked few questions once it problem of having William. She couldn’t very “Oh,” said Vera. became clear to her that Vera planned to pay well take him along for interviews, or even to “You’re not what we were expecting both the first month’s rent and the security drop off résumés, because what if they wanted either,” said Derek. deposit in cash. The first night in the apart- to talk to her then and there? Formal day care “Sorry,” said Vera. ment, they slept on the floor. She watched the seemed likely to involve more paperwork than “I didn’t say it was a bad thing. Just, rise and fall of William’s chest, the delicate she currently possessed, which meant she’d Adam met Josh a while back on a road trip. flaring of his tiny nostrils. He’ll need a bed, need a babysitter, which meant she’d need to From what he described, you don’t really she thought, and as soon as she thought it, spend some time figuring out whom to trust seem like the kind of girl he’d be hanging she realized that the idea of giving him back with him. She felt a pang of guilt at her ner- around with. That his kid?” had gone out the window. He would be hers vousness about leaving him with a stranger. “No,” said Vera. unless and until someone took him away. After all, what was she? She googled “William,” “A woman of few words,” said Adam. “It’s “missing child,” and “New Jersey,” setting the a good instinct.” For the time being, William seemed like dates within the past month, and found no evi- They finished their transaction quickly, less trouble than anything else she’d gotten dence that anyone was looking for him. without any of the sinister fanfare Vera had On Sunday, Vera took William for a walk in Prospect Park. She bought him an ice pop from one of the street vendors. While she sat in the grass with him, feeding him ice and singing, to the best of her abilities, “Little Bunny Foo Foo,” she heard a voice call her name. She turned around to see the man with the short dreads approaching her. “Vera, right?” he asked. “Yeah,” said Vera. “Derek?” He nodded. “So you’re sticking around?” “Hopefully for good. I was just doing a favor on my way out here.” “Expensive favor.” Vera shrugged. “So what’s your son’s name?” “William,” Vera answered without hesita- tion, though she had not yet used the word son in reference to him. Derek sat down and began to play peekaboo with him. “His dad around?” “You see anyone but me around?” “OK then,” said Derek. William uncov- ered his face and looked disappointed that Derek had stopped playing with him. Derek reached out and tickled William’s belly until he laughed his high-pitched baby giggle. “You know anyone who’s good with kids?” Vera asked. “I’m not good enough?” Derek laughed. “I thought little man and I were getting along fine.” “I need someone to watch him,” said Vera. “I need to find a job.” “What do you do?” “I used to be a cashier.” “Just a cashier, or you kept records?” “I kept records.” “You ever answer phones?” “When they ring.” “Look,” said Derek. “Our receptionist just quit. She’s moving to LA. You interested? You TellurideMagazine.com SUMMER/FALL 2021
answer phones, you file papers, you schedule spoke their own language, comprised entirely of time stories at night and taught him his colors pickups and deliveries, and ninety-five per- shared memories. They claimed to live unteth- and letters. She had no one to ask how to do this cent of what we do is legal.” ered lives, apparently oblivious to how helpless right. At the first threat of snow, Derek bought they would each be without the other. Adam him a winter hat, which Vera interpreted as “And the other five percent?” always left a coffee on Vera’s desk in the morning. part friendly gesture, part admonishment. “Is why you’d be making twenty dollars an hour instead of eleven. We try not to get in the Derek made her playlists or left her notes That night she gave William a bath with middle of the messy stuff. We get everything in with her name drawn in fanciful script. A few lilac baby soap. She washed his curly hair and small quantities here and there and then we years ago, Derek had been trying to start a his chubby body. He splashed in the bathtub. overcharge for it because there’s a market of graphic design business, about five years kids who want their drugs but are too lazy or too late. Adam had been a bike messenger, “Are you happy?” Vera asked. “Am I tak- scared to find their own dealer. We’re middle- who figured that if he were the person run- ing good care of you?” men, basically. Not even middlemen, because we ning things instead of the person delivering don’t even do that much buying straight from the things, he could make more money without He flashed his baby teeth at her. Vera source. We mostly stay under the radar.” damn near killing himself in city traffic. scooped him into a towel, dried, lotioned, “What about William?” Adam convinced Derek that he could turn and powdered him, and put him in his fleece “As long as he doesn’t fuss, you can bring his design business into a courier business pajamas. He fell asleep with his head nestled him until you find someone to watch him.” if Adam went in for half, which, thanks to into the crook of her neck. Even as kids, some William grinned, and then covered his a loan from an uncle, he did. After a rough girls were about babies the way other girls mouth with his grape ice–stained fingers, as first year, they started splitting their business were about bands or horses or witchcraft, but if to show how unfussy he could be. between legal and illegal goods, and three Vera had never been like that. Babies were So just like that, Vera’s life fell into place, years later, here they were. loud and sticky, and part of why she’d started or out of it. She worked seven to four at the college in the first place was sex ed made it office, answering phones, filing papers, keep- And now here was Vera, wiping her old seem like it was one or the other—either you ing two sets of books. She learned the last life clean. She could have explained New got a degree or an infant would be assigned to receptionist’s filing system—the bike mes- York, probably even the job, maybe even the you. On the same block as Josh’s record store sengers without a C next to their names were money, but there was no accounting for Wil- there’d been a coffee shop where one of the only to carry documents and other innocuous liam. She deleted her Facebook page. She girls who worked there brought her toddler packages for businesses that needed to get closed her old email account and opened a sometimes. The owner told her not to, and something from one part of the city to another new one that only people who knew her now whenever she saw his car go past to pull into before the end of the business day. The ones were aware of. She canceled her old cell the parking lot, she’d run out the front door with a C could make both regular deliveries phone service and bought a new phone. She of her shop and into the front door of Josh’s and irregular deliveries. She liked the mes- called her mother once a week, using a phone and leave her son to sit until her boss left. sengers—they came in and out of the office card and a pay phone at the laundromat. I’m Josh didn’t care because the girl was pretty, to pick up assignments, packages, schedules, fine, she said, over and over again. I love you. and anyway he didn’t do shit but plop the lit- checks. They consulted with each other about I don’t know when I’m coming home to visit. tle boy in a corner. It was Vera who’d have the fastest routes and the best bike locks. They to play games with him and turn safety haz- called her, sometimes, sheepish and lost in a William began to talk more, and Vera took a ards into toys, and even though she tried, he city that some of them knew in their blood and certain pride in hearing him say her name. He always just started screaming, and wouldn’t others were perpetually perplexed by, even as called her Ve-ra and not Ma-ma, which seemed stop until his mother got back. He wouldn’t they pretended that no address daunted them. only fair, and which she explained by telling even smile for her. That William was so calm They were her age, or even younger, and they people she’d felt too young to be anybody’s with her seemed like its own argument, like all had something urgent to be doing with mama when she had him. She read him bed- the universe telling her he belonged with her. their lives, only it hadn’t happened yet. They competed against one another and their own personal bests to set records for transit time. They were paid by the number of deliveries they made. She could identify some of them by their scars—the accident scrapes and scratches or, in one case, the thin jagged line left by a bike thief ’s knife. Most of the messengers were oblivious to William’s pres- ence, but a few gave him candy if they had it or sat down on the floor and played with him while they waited for Vera to finish doing what they needed done. Since no one seemed fazed by William’s presence in the office, least of all William, the idea of finding him a babysitter gradually faded away. One day she came into the office and found a playpen behind the desk, with a note on it from Adam and Derek, and the matter seemed settled. Adam and Derek had grown on her. They were only a few years older than Vera was, but they seemed younger sometimes, both prone to fits of silliness and then mercurial sulking. They’d been friends since high school, some- where in the Jersey suburbs, and sometimes they SUMMER/FALL 2021 TellurideMagazine.com 93
94 • FICTION One night in November the city was blan- In December, they threw a holiday party herself as a separate entity. She opened the box keted in unexpected snow. Business operations at the loft. Derek had given her, and then put on the glass- shut down early. The trains were running slow beaded necklace it contained. Derek kissed her. and cabs were near impossible to flag. Vera Vera hung garlands and mistletoe and wasn’t looking forward to the icy walk from the purchased and decorated a small plastic tree. “I love you,” he said. office to the train, or from the train to her apart- Everyone got drunk on rum-soaked eggnog “You love rum,” said Vera. ment. She accepted Derek and Adam’s invitation and, when that ran out, cheap beer. People “I love you and rum,” said Derek. He to stay the night. They lived on the upper floor of took slightly pornographic pictures making out kissed her again. the loft that housed the office. They put William under the mistletoe. At a dollar store, Vera had Later, Vera went into the back room to call to bed on the couch, and made her toaster pizza found a box of ornaments that were meant to her parents. It was an hour earlier on central and hot chocolate with shots of rum in it. Though be written on with permanent marker. She gave time, but still past her mother’s bedtime. she teased them about their bachelor dinner, it one to each of the party guests, and before long “Why are you waking me up?” her mother felt good going down. It had been months since the tree was covered in bulbs that said things asked. “Is everything OK? Why is it so loud?” she’d spent an evening with people her own age. like New York I love you but you’re bringing “I love you,” said Vera. me down. William was passed around from “Are you drunk?” said her mother. “What Somewhere after their third cup of cocoa, person to person like a particularly lifelike doll, are you doing out there?” Derek kissed her, or she kissed him, or in any and Vera was feeling charitable enough to let “I’m happy,” said Vera. “I’m not going to case she spent the night with him, and then him be a part of everyone’s fantasy of domes- call for a while. I just wanted you to know.” the next, and the one after. Within a week she ticity, instead of just hers. People had brought Keeping William made the past firmly had a toothbrush and a few changes of clothes him toys and stuffed animals. Derek bought him the past, the Vera who’d left home a Vera who upstairs in the apartment, and William had a set of wooden blocks. When he presented a couldn’t exist anymore. She committed to the a second bed. She saw less and less of the second box, Vera started to protest that he was present. She liked waking up with Derek, the attic in Red Hook, and when she was there spoiling William, but he indicated it was meant feel of something solid beside her. She liked she could sometimes see the landlady in the for her. Vera stared for a minute. She’d been the way he looked at her and the way he was window of the building next door, marking her counting William’s presents as her own and with William and the way he surprised her. comings and goings with suspicion. couldn’t remember when she’d stopped seeing She liked the pattern of her life now, the TellurideMagazine.com SUMMER/FALL 2021
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96 • FICTION domestic monotony tempered with the rush face the day he’d bent down to give William It didn’t explain how William had gotten of feeling always close to the edge of some- the lollipop. She thought of his mother’s grief, from Chicago, where his father lived, to a bus thing, the sensation of having the thing she filtered through legalese. One night she imag- on the Jersey Turnpike. In the second picture, loved and valuing it all the more because she ined the irrevocable loss of William. Even the William was an infant. Both the man and the knew it could all go wrong at any minute. flicker of pretending he was gone left her with woman were smiling broadly, their eyes spar- a feeling so complete and unfamiliar that she kling. At the bottom of the post, the man claim- And then everything did. Jacob, one of the was wrecked, lay there sobbing so loudly that ing to be William’s father had listed the numbers couriers, swerved to miss a puddle and slid William woke up and cried too. She couldn’t for the police tip line and his own cell phone. into an eighteen-wheeler in Manhattan on a bring herself to get up and go to him. rainy day. Jacob was a nineteen-year-old with Vera dialed the second number. startlingly blue eyes, an orthodontically per- At the office, she searched for the first “Hello,” she said. “May I speak to William fect smile, a part-time bartending gig, and an time in months for evidence that whoever Charles Sr.?” unrealized aspiration to be an actor one day. had lost him wanted to find him. She clicked “Speaking,” said a steely voice on the He had been in Vera’s office the day before, halfheartedly through pages of missing-child other end. picking up a check and giving William a lol- announcements, neither wanting nor expect- “I’m a reporter,” said Vera. “I came lipop. He had been at the holiday party a few ing to find William’s face. There was photo across your post about your son. I wondered weeks earlier, drinking flaming tequila shots after photo. A gap-toothed blond boy on if I could talk to you about his case?” and kissing a girl with pink highlights and a his mother’s lap. A cocoa-colored girl with “You in New York?” asked the voice. “Your crescent moon tattooed on the inside of her beaded braids, grinning and clutching a number came up New York.” wrist. There was a somber memorial service, teddy bear. A seven-year-old with a pink bike. “Yes. We’re a small paper, but we cover attended by dozens of his friends and fellow Some of them, Vera knew from the news, had national news sometimes if it’s of interest. couriers, some wearing black bike helmets in already been found dead. For the others, she I’m doing a series on missing children.” solidarity. Vera had bought a black dress and imagined improbable scenarios, scenarios in “I can barely get the Chicago cops to pay clutched William close to her chest at the ser- which people like her had rescued them and attention, let alone the papers,” said the man. vice. He had been the only one not crying. taken them off to some other life. “I’m listening,” said Vera. “He was supposed to be with his mother Jacob’s mother was a doctor in Connecticut. On the third page of results, she found a and next thing I know she stops letting me talk She hired a law firm. The complaint charged the bulletin board for parents of missing children, to him on the phone. She moved to Jersey, to city with failure to institute proper regulations to and under the headline MY SON WILLIAM— be with some guy, and said she didn’t want me ensure the safety of bikers. It charged Brooklyn MISSING SINCE OCTOBER, Vera finally saw calling. Sometimes I’d call anyway, and get the Delivers with being reckless by expecting unrea- the picture she’d been terrified of seeing: little girl—not mine, but I’d been around since sonable delivery times and overlooking the myr- William, the way he’d looked when she found she was little—and when I’d ask her about Wil- iad ways in which their employees violated safety him, his eyes unmistakable. She tried to rea- liam she’d start crying. Then the guy they were protocols. All of this was true and—in spite son that she’d had her William since August, living with took off, and my ex turned up dead. of the unenforceable liability waiver that the and so this must be another child, but she read Overdose. Poor kid found her mother like that. employees signed—probably actionable. In the on anyway, sick to her stomach. At the top of They gave her to her grandma, who never liked somber aftermath of Jacob’s death, Adam and the page was his date of birth. He’d be three in me any, and she either can’t or won’t say what Derek underreacted for the first few weeks. For April. The man posting the picture said he was happened to my boy. All she says is that he wasn’t the better part of a month, they were uncommu- William’s father. There was a second picture, in the house. But he’s two. How far could he go?” nicative and high most of the time. Vera stopped of him with William and William’s mother, the “I’m sorry, sir,” said Vera. spending the night. same wispy blond woman from what felt like “I just want my son.” so long ago. It didn’t explain why she wasn’t For the next week it was Vera who walked At home in her attic apartment Vera the one looking for him. around in a fog. Derek and Adam had gone stayed up some nights, thinking of Jacob’s into panic mode. They’d been cooperating while stalling when they could, but Jacob’s mother wouldn’t accept a settlement offer until their financial records had been released in discovery. They were worried that a thorough audit would reveal too many irregularities. On Monday Derek asked Vera to stay late. When they locked up for the day, he led her into the back room. “We’re taking off,” he said. “New IDs, enough money to lie low for a while. Eventu- ally we’ll figure something out. There’s a guy with a grow op who thinks everything will be legal soon.” “Where?” said Vera. “When?” “Cali,” said Derek. “Two weeks. Adam knows a guy.” “What am I supposed to do?” “You can come with us,” said Derek. “You should probably get out of town for a while anyway.” The possibility dangled in front of her like a brass ring. She’d come this far. She could go farther. She could keep William. She could keep Derek. She pictured William all TellurideMagazine.com SUMMER/FALL 2021
grown up, the chubbiness stretched out of She pulled out the sofa and told Vera to make Back at Eileen’s, Vera found William circling his cheeks. “I grew up on a farm,” he’d say. herself at home. Vera turned on a cartoon the living room, clutching a teddy bear while “I’m pretty sure my parents did something show and combed William’s hair. She kissed Eileen typed a paper. Vera made grilled cheese shady for money, but man were they in love.” the top of his head and told him she loved for lunch. She told Eileen that she and William She tried to picture California but found she him. She remembered being a child, seated had another bus to catch, all the way to Califor- didn’t even have an image of it in her mind, between her mother’s legs watching TV while nia, and would be gone that evening. In the after- only a vague fear of earthquakes. her mother parted and braided her hair, and noon, Eileen left for class, and told Vera to lock “Get me the paperwork,” said Vera. “Let felt, for the first time in years, homesick, sick the door behind her on the way out. Vera hugged me think about it.” for everything she could still lose. her goodbye. Eileen ruffled William’s hair. She packed what would fit in her suit- She slept poorly. Over coffee, Vera asked “Lucky boy you are,” she said. “Such a big case, and sold the rest. When William’s bed if Eileen could keep an eye on William while trip, for such a little person.” was gone she kept him with her, on a blanket she ran a quick errand. Vera took a cab to Wil- The moment Eileen was out the door, Vera on the floor, clinging to him. She gave notice liam’s father’s address. It was an old brick row set fire to William’s forged birth certificate to her landlady and came home from work house, beaten up a bit, but not neglected. The with a cigarette lighter, afraid she’d be unable the next day to find the apartment already lawn was mowed, and the shutters had been to resist the temptation to keep him other- being shown to a daunted would-be subletter. recently painted. She walked around the block wise. She started a letter three times. On the At the end of the week, Derek left an enve- a few times and feigned interest in a house for first attempt, she emphasized that she hadn’t lope on her desk, with a California ID with sale across the street. BANK OWNED! read meant to take him, that it felt like he’d been her picture and the name Jessica. There was its sign. On her fifth circle around the block, given to her and she just hadn’t questioned it. also a birth certificate for William, who’d she saw the door to the house open, and the A paragraph in, she realized this wasn’t her been renamed Joshua. At the office, their man from the photograph come out, then turn story anymore, that the point was not her own days were measured in shredded paper, the behind him to help an older woman down the defense. In the second version, she focused on whir of the shredding machines a threat and stairs. Both of them resembled William. He all of William’s milestones: her favorite things a promise. If everything could be erased, had a father. He had a grandmother. He had about him, his best days—she wanted to show anything could disappear. If you could erase never been hers. They looked up. For a second, he’d been happy and unharmed, but when she everything, you could start again. Vera thought William Sr. was pointing at her, reread the letter it seemed cruel, to emphasize She wanted to see the father before she and she was ready to confess. Then she real- the time his father had missed and wouldn’t made any decisions. She equivocated on mak- ized he was pointing past her, at the foreclosed get back. In her third and final effort, she ing Derek any promises. She didn’t love him house, its overgrown lawn. tried to account in a matter-of-fact way for the enough to make up for William’s potential time she’d kept him, to assure his father absence, and so she didn’t see the point that she’d done her best not to damage in pretending. She helped him pack. She The Dust that Remembers him, that he had not fallen into terrible kept his necklace around her neck. She hands, that he had suffered no irrep- buzzed Derek’s locks off with an electric arable trauma, that she was not a per- razor. She dyed Adam’s blond hair black. The glass vase on the table son who would ever harm him, though Vera spent Derek and Adam’s last night of course she understood now that she in New York at the loft with them. She remembers when it was sand— had. She held William in her arms until made margaritas. She curled up in Der- remembers its molecules he fell asleep, then picked him up and ek’s arms and imagined trying to explain tucked him into Eileen’s bed. She texted to him how much bigger her guilt was of silicon dioxide, remembers to confirm Eileen was on her way home. than theirs. She got up before dawn and what it was like to be singular grains She left the note for William’s father and transported by wind. It remembers made them breakfast and kissed Derek the heat it took to melt, the note she’d written for Eileen, with goodbye. He offered to leave her with an to lose its crystalline structure. William’s father’s name and address, sit- address of a person he said would be able How intense it is to transform. ting on the coffee table, next to Eileen’s to tell her where to find them, and she It is no small thing to know clarity. apartment key. She walked three blocks said maybe it was better if he didn’t. and hailed a cab. The next day, she and William got It is no small thing to lose On the way to the bus station, the on a bus to Chicago. She bundled him in city went by in a blur of brick and beige layers of winter clothing—a turtleneck, what we thought we knew of the self, and gray. Vera was startled and shaking. a sweater, a hooded jacket, and the hat to submit to a process that changes us Adam and Derek were waiting until they Derek had bought him. He was unchar- could be found again, but Vera under- acteristically fussy, insisting that he was forever. This woman sitting beside stood now that she would need to be lost hot and itchy. One by one the outer layers the glass vase on the table forever, would need to let the whole of cannot remember when she was dust, were removed. From their stopover in but she remembers those nights the murky country swallow her up. The Cleveland, Vera called Eileen, a friend in of falling with no one to catch her. cabdriver thought she was drunk and school in Chicago. She hadn’t seen Eileen kept offering to pull over if she needed in years, but they’d gone to high school She remembers those days to throw up. The third time he offered, when she begged the world to open her. together, and when she said she needed a she said yes, but when she opened the place to stay for the night, Eileen offered She remembers losing what she thought door and leaned out, nothing came up. to come get her at the bus station. There was just the shock of the cold, and “My God, you have a kid!” she said she knew and how it was replaced the dry empty heave of her belly. \\ with the most beautiful nothing— From THE OFFICE OF HISTORICAL COR- when she saw them. “He’s so big.” even now she is changing in ways RECTIONS by Danielle Evans, published “He’s almost three,” said Vera. she could never predict. Even now by Riverhead, an imprint of Penguin “How was New York?” asked Eileen. Publishing Group, a division of Penguin “Beautiful,” said Vera. “Exhausting.” she feels herself melting. Random House, LLC. Copyright© 2020 Eileen brought them back to her by Danielle Evans. —Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer one-bedroom apartment in Hyde Park. SUMMER/FALL 2021 TellurideMagazine.com 97
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100 • TELLURIDE TURNS Headlines & Highlights from the Local News WARY OF WOLVES Ranchers balk at reintroduction By Lorraine Weissman In late January, Colorado Parks in over-grazed grassland areas. This, negatively impacted by wolves. munities of Rangely and Meeker, Rio and Wildlife (CPW) collared in turn, will re-establish habitat Proposition 114 passed by fewer Blancans voted against the reintro- a gray wolf in the north-cen- for beavers and native songbirds, duction measure by more than seven tral part of the state—a healthy, revitalizing damaged ecosystems than 60,000 votes, with large support to one last November. In response 110-pound, four-year-old male. He throughout the region. in urban areas near Denver where to the new law, on March 16, 2021, was spotted traveling with M1084, wolf reintroduction is mostly an the Board of County Commissioners another male wolf that had migrated The new law, however, is not ideological concern. For residents in Rio Blanco issued a resolution in to Colorado from the Snake River without critics. Farmers and ranch- of Rio Blanco County, however, the opposition and declared itself a “Wolf Pack in Wyoming in 2019. The GPS ers across the state, particularly in practical considerations of wolves Reintroduction Sanctuary County.” collar allows CPW to monitor and western Colorado, fear that livestock near livestock is a very real problem. The resolution cites the extirpation track the wolf as he migrates across populations, as well as hunting and Home to nearly 7,000 residents in of wolves from the state nearly eighty northern Colorado. This marks the outdoor recreation activities, will be the predominantly ranching com- years ago due to “predation on cattle first time state officials have collared and sheep,” and recognizes that the a wolf since voters narrowly passed region’s economic health relies heav- Proposition 114 last November to ily on sheep and cattle ranching. The reintroduce wolves into western Col- resolution also asserts that in other orado by the end of 2023. areas where wolves have been rein- troduced, elk and deer herds have This particular wolf is not a part suffered “significant reductions,” of Colorado’s reintroduction, but it although studies in other northern does indicate the success of similar Rocky Mountain states suggest that efforts in Wyoming. Proponents of is not true. Still, Rio Blanco sits in Colorado’s program contend wolves the migratory path of some of the will restore the predator-prey bal- largest elk and mule deer herds in ance in our ecosystems across the the state, so the county fears that state. Wolves, they believe, will herd reduction would have negative reduce over-populated elk herds, effects on hunting and outfitting. Rio particularly along river banks and TellurideMagazine.com SUMMER/FALL 2021
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