George Sibley: A life woven into Crested Butte and Gunnison

 George Sibley has spent much of the past six decades writing about, participating in, and helping shape the communities of the Upper Gunnison Valley.

He is the author of several books and recently released Storm in My Head, a collection of poetry. Recently, he held a reading at Townie Books in Crested Butte. The reading also included a screening of a short documentary with the same title, featuring Sibley, directed by his friends Mike Horn and Galin Foley. Horn, who was present at the reading and showing, is described by Sibley as an interlocutor, someone who participates in a conversation or dialogue. 

For Sibley writing is thinking. And thinking is writing. In his new book, Sibley writes, "Sometimes I'm a recovering writer, but sometimes just a writer writing to sort out the storms in my head."

"I did my thinking on paper. I have always thought about a lot of things and written and complained about a lot of things in my mind, and rejoiced in a lot of things in my mind; it wasn't really thinking until I started to write it down." 

Sibley first came to Crested Butte in the mid-1960s to ski and eventually worked on the Crested Butte Ski Patrol. He later purchased and operated the Crested Butte Chronicle, serving as its editor, publisher and principal writer for several years. 

He has contributed to the Mountain Gazette, Colorado Central, Crested Butte Magazine, the Gunnison Country Times and others. , " Everything I think about, I can't help but think on the other hand, so it's always a storm; I write my way into a mess."

Sibley is the author of three boots Part of a Winter (back in 1978), Dragons in Paradise (2004), Water Wranglers (a big fat history [Sibley's words] of Colorado's development of its share of the Colorado River, 2012). 

For Sibley, journalism was never simply about recording what happened. He has described his newspaper work as a way to encourage things that “could or should happen” in the community. That approach helped lead to several enduring Crested Butte institutions and traditions. 

He was also involved in the beginnings of the Crested Butte Arts Festival. 

In 1971, local artists gathered for the first event, an informal affair that eventually grew into one of the valley's signature arts celebrations. Sibley later helped organize the festival and was involved in creating the town's iconic Totem Pole in the early 1970s. 

Sibley's connection to the valley also extended beyond journalism and the arts. He spent several winters living in Gothic while working as a caretaker for the Rocky Mountain Biological Laboratory. Later, after moving to Gunnison, he taught writing, journalism, and environmental studies at Western Colorado University. 

In the film Sibley said, "Hartman Rocks, how many times did I have to go out there before I really saw what a place without meaning it was, but that did not fall through the transformative beauty of the place for me. It was more transformative, in a way, when I realized it had probably just happened and wasn't part of some vast eternal plan. All of the stuff was just stuff that happened, and look what happened. It was really in the first places I harbored the thought that this doesn't have to be creative to be beautiful. It's everything that is there, and I marvel at the way it weaves itself together. Nothing seems out of place because it is working. There might be different natures at play at work. The atmosphere and the geology are at war with each other. Talk about storms."

Storm in My Head is a 15-minute documentary film featuring George Sibley, directed by Mike Horn and Galin Foley with cinematography by Galin Foley. It can be viewed here: https://vimeo.com/1027774078/6167e9bf60

Storm in My Head— Poetry by George Sibley is published by Crested Butte Publishing and Creative and is available at Townie Books and the Museum in Crested Butte, at Abracadabra in Gunnison, and from the author himself. A reading at the Gunnison Library is in planning for early December.