Thirteen is a tough age. Tougher still when you have to move away from everyone and everything you’ve ever known. From a class of 600 to one of 19, in which all the others have been in school together since kindergarten. From sea level to 8500 feet, in the middle of winter, with snow so thick and deep your family can’t move into their new house. But Barbara Hardt’s dad had been transferred to Boulder, and Nederland is where her parents chose to live.

To be fair, it snowed in Thousand Oaks, California, where Barbara spent her first 12 years. Once. Less than a quarter inch.

She rode English there, her horse was named Taffy. Taffy couldn’t come directly to Nederland with the rest of the family, so she moved to Boulder for a while. It turns out a horse needs to move gradually, so she can comfortably acclimate to such a severe change in climate and elevation. Much like a certain wife / nurse / photographer I know.

“It was culture shock. We moved here the day after Christmas, I had two weeks off of school for the move, and another two before school began here. Four weeks of total isolation, my whole world was a thousand miles away.”

Brace yourselves, it gets worse. While the move was happening, Barbara was grieving the loss of her twin sister, who had died the year before.

Things started coming together for Barbara once Taffy came to Nederland. Her parents got her involved with 4-H. She found friends who became life-long friends. “Like Doc Joe, he’s been a big influence on my life, like a second dad. He kept me from getting into trouble.”

She started working for Doc Joe soon after the move. “I started as a weekend volunteer and I ended up working for him for 13 years. I did everything – I was a vet assistant, a surgical assistant, I did his books and appointments and records. He was a very positive influence in my life.”

After high school Barbara worked for him full-time. When she began having her babies, he set up a playpen for them in the back of his hospital, next to the puppies and kittens.

Barbara worked at all the usual places in the region: the B&F for a week, the Stage Stop, Sundance Stables, Nederland Vet Hospital, Eldora, Whistler’s, Mountain Family Health Center, the Senior Resource Center, and the Pioneer Inn.

“I met Robert Plant at the PI, he was sitting at the bar and he invited us all to his show in Denver. He used to always come up to the Bucking Brown Trout, a cool little fishing store where the Rustic Moose is now.”

She later saw him perform at Red Rocks along with Alison Krauss, one of her favorite musicians. “When I was driving myself down the Canyon to give birth to my younger daughter, an Alison Krauss song came on the radio. I named my daughter after her.” Not too long after, Barbara was at a Red Rocks show with her new child. As Alison played, the baby began to cry. Alison stopped the show, then sang a lullaby for her namesake. “I’ve always wanted to meet her, and I’m determined to.”

Barbara started working for this newspaper in 2006, and in six months she was doing everything but graphic design and writing (“I write under duress, I just don’t like it as much as the other stuff.”) That was her only newspaper experience, but in 2007, when the owner decided to sell, Barbara and her family bought it. “The owner was ready to walk away from it, I didn’t want The Mountain-Ear to go away.”

What’s it like, publishing a small-town newspaper? “It’s all spokes in a wheel. If you don’t have everyone contributing, if you don’t have all the positions filled, you won’t have a paper. Right now there are 40 of us.”

The Mountain-Ear has had great years and hard years. 2019 was by far the hardest, that’s the year after Barbara Lawlor died. “She was the paper. She covered every event. She wrote 80% of it every week.”

2020 wasn’t much better. “Everything just stopped, almost all of our advertising stopped, but we couldn’t stop. We were fortunate to get a few grants. I haven’t had a paycheck since January 2020.”

It’s no secret that Barbara has been thinking of selling The Mountain-Ear. However, for the foreseeable future, the paper is off the market. Hardt says, “I’m not done yet. I have more to accomplish before handing it off. I’m focused on keeping it in the community. I want someone who will keep it here, in the mountains. I don’t want to see it absorbed into something else, somewhere else.” When that happens, what’s next?

“I want to see all of my kids every year. As long as my husband Doug and I have Brightwood Music, we’ll be doing that too. Then I’d like to live some of the year here, and the rest of the year near the beach. I’m not a winter person, but I love my mountain home and my community.”

Barbara knows this town and its people better than almost anyone. What would she like for Ned? “Overall, I just want the town to have people in it that work together. Everything is all over the place right now. I’m so exhausted by people who are so angry, who come in and try to change everything. We’re already a destination, we need to focus on responsible growth and work together toward a common goal.”

She’s right. Maybe we should change the way we treat each other, starting on Facebook and at Town meetings. Maybe we can get back to working together. We could all use a little less chaos, a bit more hope.

[BELLA LORENA: Non scambierei la mia ragazza Forni per niente e nessuno, tu sei mia per sempre.]