Publisher’s Ponderings

This is the time of year when the throngs of city people start thinking about their first foray into the Colorado backcountry. After all, it has been a relatively mild winter, so they won’t have to worry about snow blocking the trails and passes. In fact, they will...

All the people that we really enjoy in our lives will fit many descriptions such as: funniest, most entertaining, smartest, most honest, best looking, would give you the shirt off their back and will always have your back, to mention a few.  But, it’s a once in a...

About this time every year, Dougbook sends me this memory of being snowed in at my cabin in Beaverbrook Canyon. The storm snowed for 3 days straight, leaving up to 7 feet of heavy spring snow. It took the county road grader 5 days to reach my cabin. That turned out to...

One of the really cool things about my morning solo walks in the woods is that, given enough time, I will eventually observe forest life that no one else sees or even knows about. So, a few days ago, I bundled up and headed out when the temperature was hovering around...

I don’t know what I expected for January, but what I got was a flood of thoughts across the emotional spectrum of joy and sadness.  One cannot help but share an immense sorrow for the California families who, in a matter of hours, lost everything. I can’t stop...

This year, I want to give particular thanks to having my wonderful wife, Holly, in my life for the last 15 years. She is absolutely the most amazing woman I have ever known. She is always there for her daughter, Carina, and me no matter how badly the wheels are...

Long ago, I recognized a pattern in my design efforts. It takes me many creations of workable solutions before arriving at what I consider an elegantly simple design. Most often, looking back at my first design, I can be harshly critical, as in: How could you be so...

At the risk of being called “Captain Obvious,” I want to draw attention to the comeback being staged by the Mountain Pine Beetle in our “Evergreen” forests. I say comeback because there was a major infestation in the late 1990s. That’s when Summit County was hit so...

Wow. As I sit here writing, I just noticed that it’s raining again—one of those delicious, soaking showers. It must be almost a week now that the Global Warming Gods have taken pity on us! Now, let me share with you two of my favorite verses from John Denver’s “Rocky...

Life’s journey is littered with choices between taking the easy road or the one more difficult. We often find the choice is driven by pragmatism—i.e. “This is not that important to me. I need to find the easiest way to move on.” But, what if you find that nothing is...

On my walk this morning, I stopped to smell the flowers.

I recently read an article about the Civil War battle at Antietam. The battle occurred on September 17, 1862 and has become known as the single bloodiest day in U.S. history with 23,000 total casualties, even surpassing the total casualties on D-Day when Allied forces...

Courage is being scared to death and saddling up anyway. —John Wayne Well, you may not know this, but there’s things that gnaw at a man worse than dyin’. —Charlie Wait If it scares you, it might be a good thing to try. —Seth Godin If you can’t explain it simply, you...

As I have gotten older, I have taken to taking stock of long lost friends. Here is what I wrote about one in the January issue of 2018. Last week, Jim Harrell finally found a challenge he could not overcome. A rare lung infection took advantage of his lungs that had...