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Wasteland

The afterlife of the things we throw away

The gatekeeper waited in a shack on a hill at the Gunnison County Landfill, her eyes trained on the dirt road that winds through the sagebrush meadows beneath her. A pickup truck crested the horizon. Its bed was filled with scraps destined for the landfill; items that once served a purpose, but soon forgotten. The landfill, behind a mountain ridge […]

A recap of the unusually mild winter of 2023-2024


Now that winter is officially over, I think it’s time to review some numbers. I just ran the statistics for last winter — that is, the combined months of December, January, and February — and I was surprised at the results. It was more dramatic than I thought. For example, the average temperature for the combined months was 18.4 degrees […]

Romp reaches new peaks

Crested Butte ski company has new owner

Romp Skis, a cult-favorite brand in the Gunnison Valley, passed its keys to a new owner last month. The team believes the sale will take the local company to new heights. Every day, many drive past the unassuming Romp warehouse tucked onto the south-side of Belleview Avenue in Crested Butte. However, on a boisterous powder day, when skiers stand shoulder-to-shoulder […]

South 9th Street Studios hosts second quarterly show

‘At Night' by Karolina Szumilas opens March 8

Gunnison-based oil painter Karolina Szumilas uses color to bend her sense of place, creating almost otherworldly images in her new series “At Night.” In the piece “Midnight,” moonlight scatters on the rocks below in flecks of gold and soft rose. It is also caught in the leaves of the tree, which appear to glow like the horizon. To any local, […]

Ron Earl: ‘I am who I am’



A cowboy with gemstone eyeliner and lavender-painted fingernails sat beside a lady with a mink stole draped across her shoulders. Across the room, kids in jeans and T-shirts giggled as they gathered fistfulls of glow sticks. People from all walks of life came as they were to Ron Earl’s memorial at the Fred Field Center on March 2. They wore […]

Dancing into the year of the dragon


As a full moon rose over Gunnison last weekend, a herd of lions and a 20-foot-long dragon were on the prowl. Several costumed dancers hid beneath layers of sequined fabric, deftly maneuvering the animals through a dance routine to welcome the Lunar New Year at Western Colorado University’s Paul Wright Gymnasium.  The Lunar New Year, or Chinese New Year, is […]

Poetry and potluck with Colorado Poet Aaron Abeyta

Visit scheduled for March 7

The ancestors of Colorado poet Aaron Abeyta were in Colorado long before there was a Colorado. They had been in the Rio Grande Valley for several generations when it was known as El Norte, rather than the Southwest. Abeyta will bring his poetry to the Gunnison Library on Thursday, March 7 at 6:30 p.m., with a reading from his newest […]

Capturing Gunnison’s golden age

Videographer creates short films about life on Western Slope

Using the Gunnison community as his medium, Shaffer Nickel uses videography to document not why people come to the valley, but why they choose to stay. Staged in the Gunnison Valley, from its rugged expanse of wilderness to the heart of downtown, Nickel’s stories explore the profound connection between people and place. His short films plunge under the surface of […]

The art of broth

Monthly food workshops at Gunnison Vitamin

Three solitary chicken feet, crammed into a glass jar, peeked out over the small crowd of Gunnison Valley locals. Soon enough, these tacky poultry limbs would be simmered into a tasty bone broth, created by attendees at a workshop held on Feb. 3.  The group convened around a plastic table, gripping stout blue ceramic mugs. In them was a fragrant […]

God save the (LEGO) queen

O’Donnell shares the healing power of building miniatures

A miniature world made of plastic LEGO bricks rests on a little wooden table in Maureen O’Donnell’s living room. A waterfall cascades into a pool beside a beach where tiny horses and sheep roam. Nearby, a woodland encampment rises from the earth where inch-tall Lakota people are frozen in conversation around a crackling fire. Unbeknownst to them, two Arapahoe warriors […]


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