Barbara Lawlor, Gilpin County. Almost everyone is born with a gift. Finding one's gift is the hard part.

Some people spend their whole life trying to figure out what they are good at: seeking the talent or skill they know they have, to excel at something not yet discovered. Sometimes, the gift just appears and a life is changed. Sometimes it sneaks up, slowly becoming apparent.

Justin Swisher of Gilpin County found his gift over a year ago in the branches of a pine tree, and then in the tangle of roots of a tree that had been blown over and pushed out of the earth. He looked at the gnarled pieces of pine and saw fences, one of a kind, around local businesses; he saw eagle's nests at entrances, the uprooted trees turned upside down, their roots meeting each other in an arch.

Suddenly, Swisher is getting phone calls from all over the country, from people who see his work on the Peak to Peak highway, grab a business card, and call from the East Coast, wondering if he could build a entrance arch for them.

Swisher says his work is like snowflakes: no two of them are the same, no lookalikes, just the shapes that nature created.

He has worked hard to find his calling.

Growing up in the lower Golden Gate State Park, he attended high school in Golden but knew most of the Gilpin County kids. He liked to work on small engines like dirt bikes. He worked for Ramstetter Excavating and drilling.

"I began having visions of roots becoming fences and wondered why nobody was doing anything with the stumps. I didn't really think it was an artistic idea, just using what was there."

In November of 2013, Swisher built his first fence. And then he considered the upside-down roots left over from a high wind year and thought it would be a great idea to anchor the tree trunk with the roots in the air as a pedestal for bald eagles' nests. Years ago, nests had been built on platforms next to the telephone poles they had been removed from. But those began deteriorating.

"Then I thought it would be cool to intertwine them."

When his friend Newt Highland passed away, out of his deep respect for the man, Swisher wanted to build him a memorial. He put a design together in his head and says he had no idea that people would like it, that they, too, would want an eagles' nest entryway.

People tell him he is an artist and he says he is no artist, that he just thinks about something and then he does it. "Nobody taught me. It just comes easy to me."

Swisher's fences are twisty and turny, naturally colored and shiny smooth. Two years ago he went to Doc Joe of the Nederland Animal Hospital and said he noticed the fence was falling down and would he like a new one in return for all the veterinary services he had received over the years. That fence was very visible, at the intersection of Hwy 72 and the road to Eldora Mountain Resort and the high school.

"The fence actually caused a few accidents at that corner," says Swisher. "People would slow down to look at me while I was working. I have learned to do much of my work at night, when it won't cause so much attention."

When he first began working on the eagles' nest entry, he knew he had to get it up in early spring before the eagles began their search for a nesting site. He says the same pair comes back every year. He has researched bald eagles for the past couple of years and will continue to monitor their coming and going from the nests near Rollinsville.

Swisher says he thinks there is a market for his skills in Jackson Hole or Aspen. "I 've got all these ideas in my head. I can look at any tree and tell what I can do with it, including making firewood."

After three years of working on a demolition team, Swisher broke his ankle and had to start over again. "This will be my career now," he says. "I am putting my life back together again."

Roy's Last Shot on the Peak to Peak Highway is considering having Swisher build a fence around the motorcycle parking lot and many other people have approached him about having a fence or an entryway that is unlike anybody else's.

Swisher says he is up for it, even though he still isn't sure how he knows what he does, how he envisions the finished product. "I don't know how I know it all, but I do."