Under the elegant rusticity of the hand hewn logs and mortise and tenon beamery of the 1879 Thompson Barn, the tiny but mighty Crystal Valley Environmental Protection Association (CVEPA) held its 54th annual meeting and gathering. The beams had been crafted by Myron Thompson and family years before the founding of Carbondale (or even Satank!). […]
Crystal Valley Environmental Protection Association
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Some thoughts on James Bogan, Richard Louv and childhood freedom
Pitkin County’s progress in piecing together the Redstone to McClure Pass trail has got me thinking about the fundamental importance of muscle-powered travel options to the human psyche. One-hundred-thirty-six years ago, James Bogan was paid the princely sum of $1,750 to construct a wagonroad from Penny Hot Springs to the Gunnison County line. The surviving […]
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CVEPA Views: Flow the Acequia Madre
I am just back from the Land of Enchantment and I am still under the spell. On my sojourn through northern New Mexico I wandered through the cacophony of tan hills and deep arroyos (gulches) filled with small villages and intimate neighborhoods. I ate my way from pueblo to pueblo, savoring food that is typical […]
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CVEPA Views: All things near and far
My scholastic aptitudes always tended toward the humanities. My high school offered “Humanistic Physics” for such dummies. In the textbook for this class was a quote by English poet Francis Thompson that I have never forgotten. “All things by immortal power, Near or far, Hiddenly To each other linked are, That thou canst not stir […]
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CVEPA Views: Earth, water, fire and air!
Woe is us. Yes, the millions of people in the Great American West who depend on the snowpack for 80% of our water. This year has shaken us to the bone. Apparently, there was a warmer and drier year, winter 1980, that we are competing with. Oddly, more prominent in people’s memory was the terrible […]
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CVEPA Views: McClure lore and the road to power
At a town hall-style meeting in late 1971, the White River National Forest (USFS) presented its vision to designate the Chair Mountain-McClure Pass area as “primitive.” The area was basically untouched save for a horse and foot trail starting at the top of the 8,755-foot pass and an annual sheep grazing permit. There was, however, […]
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The not-so-great Crystal River dry-up
By Bill JochemsCVEPA Views The United States Drought Monitor classifies the Crystal Valley in a state of exceptional drought. Even though River Valley Ranch is within this exceptional drought zone, diners on the deck of the Homestead Restaurant can enjoy the magnificent, luscious green view to the south. They will not see the slightest hint […]
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CVEPA Views: You can’t get there from here
How long does it take to get to Marble? Gus Darien told me that when he was a young man he could hop on the train to Carbondale. The train stopped at his Marble ranch to take on water or maybe coal from Camp Genter Mine and cabbages and raspberries from Clotan Moore’s place above […]
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CVEPA Views: Herald Filoha
What cause to rejoice! The long overdue end to the illegal closure of a Pitkin County right of way and road has come to a settlement. The Rock Creek Wagon Road between Redstone and Filoha Meadows Nature Preserve, colloquially known as Dorais Way, will reopen in time for the Preserve’s summer season. This dirt road […]
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CVEPA Views: An eye to the past, an eye to the future
There was a moment when I discovered something truly magnificent — when a great light struck me, when something new, different and special opened up for me. I may have been still in grammar school when my friend Julius took me on a hike above his neighborhood. We passed a small pond on the edge […]