Steep Thoughts

When I was a kid, there was nothing like sitting in a wide open field under a vast black sky, suddenly watching it explode with glittering colors and feeling the boom against my ribs. It was a visceral experience, something moving even at a young age, engaging all the...

Well, I’ve been writing this column for a few years now and I’m sure everyone is wondering how I’ve been faring in my transition from city girl to mountain mama. I have been carefully charting my progress and am prepared to give a detailed report. For starters, here...

Well, it’s April. So every conversation you have from now until July will most likely begin with chatter about the weather—and this is the only predictable part of Colorado’s “spring.” I begin this month’s column with the understanding that claiming your region’s...

We went out for dinner during the sub-zero blizzard because that was the way to be sure we got a table. It was us, other locals and the few weirdos who have rented Airbnbs in town and only realized upon arrival that skiing is still a little ways away. You can spot...

Ah, February! Love is in the air. I can’t help the clichés, from sayings like “love is in the air” to writing my February column about love. I’m a hopeless romantic, a sucker for whatever rom-com you want to recommend and completely giddy about the sparkly heart...

Is a clean slate really what we want? In theory, it’s beautiful, it’s poetic—a blank page. Time to write a new story. But as a writer, I’m here to say, sometimes the blank page is anxiety-inducing. It’s just nothing but white space and a blinking cursor, counting the...

I was very confused by “The Twelve Days of Christmas” as a child because Christmas is one day, and also, you celebrate it for more than twelve days. And back in those days of yore, Christmas was generally an exclusively December occasion, so why wasn’t it, like, The...

In a perfect world, surviving Thanksgiving means making sure your turkey fryer doesn’t catch fire; and beyond that, it’s a special, cozy day meant for heartfelt interactions with loved ones. Of course, everyone knows that the post-dinner carnage of the Thanksgiving...

Somewhere along the road to adulthood, at some early curve shortly after leaving home in our mother’s womb, we come to understand two separate categories of life: the public part and the private. Publicly, we consider the life we live in front of other people, out in...

Look, there’s a special day every month—every day—I get it. But sometimes I write this column and it pisses people off, and it struck me that September contains within its 30 glorious days, a day which we can all get behind. It’s truly something worth celebrating, and...

Good morning, quite literally! I’ve awakened from hibernation. While the rest of the world winds down into autumn, I’m waking up to the start of a new year! Back-to-school season is ripe with fresh starts and fresh pencils, clean slates and clean shoes, new people and...

I got three mosquito bites sitting on my own deck the other evening, and I texted my friend WTF, because I thought mosquito-free summer was what we left the East for. I used to have an essential oils recipe for a bug spray potion, and I have to conjure up the witch...