I first moved up to Gilpin to escape the exponential growth of the Front Range. I couldn’t handle people walking past my picture window although we were separated by a white picket fence.

I grew up on an 85-acre apple orchard in New Hampshire, spending all my days in the meadows and forests, only going to town for school. I started writing on an old typewriter when I was six or seven to narrate the pen and ink drawings I was making (mostly with Winnie the Pooh and Christopher Robin in them). I always knew I wanted to write and being a child who spent time out of school due to illness, I had a lot of time. As a high school honors student, I went to a summer honors program and was an editor and writer on the paper.

Unfortunately, as I grew older, I got busier and didn’t write. I majored in journalism at the University of Wyoming but when I moved to Grand Junction, Mesa didn’t offer a program. On my return to Laramie, my American studies professor encouraged me to write more. I turned to nature writing as my direction had changed to environmental interpretation with a passion to introduce more people to the richness of cultural and natural resources and the importance of sustaining and protecting them.

When I moved back to the Peak to Peak region (I live in Coal Creek), I had to make a lot of new connections. I am so happy that one of those was with Barbara Hardt. She supported me as an example of what a caring person can do for kids, how she juggled four or more jobs and kept the paper going.

Eventually I started helping her as the administrative assistant. Changes in my schedule with my full-time job (what sustains me) didn’t allow me to be available the time she needed me. So, I started writing for the Keep It Local stories. I have had so many appreciative people say thank you and that I wrote well. Thank you all! I love digging out your stories that sometimes people didn’t even know about.

We have a great mountain community and I want to support each and every one of you!

I’ve also had a lot of fun delivering the north route, making friends in Gold Hill, Jamestown, Ward and Allenspark. Your friendliness has given me so many gifts. One story of this is when Gretchen, with the Rocky Mountain Conservancy store in the Old Gallery, told me the story of how she loves swearing in the Jr Rangers at Rocky Mountain National Park. The look of pride she sees in their eyes is priceless. This is a program I suggested as a way to manage the wildlife feeding in the Park, as part of a research study I did while in graduate school. She told me this wonderful story while I was feeling kind of low in self esteem. I was feeling that I had never finished anything or been successful.

Thank you to Gretchen, I now know that my message and a love for nature and keeping it wild has been spread to thousands of people! It has also become a habit of mine to go to Jamestown for the great food and music on Thursday night because, of course, I must deliver the papers to the Merc!

I do what I can to help Hardt with the paper and the many sides of keeping it going and hope I can continue. If anyone wants a story told I am here!