A few weeks ago longtime local resident and dreamer Edwin Foster expressed an opinion in these pages that many people likely brushed off as laughably impossible. He thinks the valley needs a tram running up Crested Butte Mountain.
In the Gunnison Valley the affordable housing controversy over the Brush Creek project rages on, with tempers rising, insults flying, up-valley/down valley divisions reappearing, and the absence of any semblance of common sense.
In November of 2014 the citizens of Gunnison County gave our local public education system a shot in the arm. We agreed to pump up to an additional $2.5 million of property tax dollars annually into local K-12 schools, through a funding mechanism called a Mill Levy Override (MLOR).
There is a place, far up a mountain trail in the West Elk Wilderness that most people pass by without a thought. To reach it takes hours on foot or horseback. Most days start before dawn — hours of catching, saddling and loading horses, just to get us to the trailhead.
You may have heard this saying before, and if not you’re likely to hear it — probably with increasing frequency — in the near future: “Rural is the new urban.”
I came to the United States as a young child when my dad got a temporary faculty position at the University of Michigan. The original plan was to live there for a couple of years and then move back to Australia, where my parents grew up.
Let’s face it, child care and preschool in the Gunnison Valley are expensive, and for some families, that cost isn’t feasible.
Time to roll out again, with variation, an idea I trot out every decade or so, to general chuckles and indulgent sighs.
I’m not a religious man, but I’ve long considered the woods my church. It’s where I go to worship nature, contemplate troubles, remember those lost and work on becoming a better person.
Everything was in place for the ending you are supposed to dream of. Except dreams don’t always come true.