Sarah Haas, Peak to Peak.   Summer has a way of turning mountain life inside out. Having spent the past nine months hibernating by the fireplace, our solitude is now cooked to perfection and it’s time to share the feast. At last, the smoke has moved from the hearth to the barbeque and life is happening outdoors rather than in.

It’s a fitting time to introduce The Mountain Ear’s new weekly column, “Mountain Folk Tales,” that likewise aims to turn mountain living inside out. Every week of the year we will feature a different story about a different local. Not the big, flashy stories, but the hidden ones we might not otherwise know. Our mission is two-fold, first and simply to get to know you all, and, in sharing your stories to preserve the story of our community at large.

When I sat down for coffee with Barbara Hardt, publisher of The Mountain Ear, to discuss the column, she started by describing the newspaper in general and it became clear that, above all else, the paper took it’s communal and journalistic responsibilities seriously. For me, who I imagine is one of many who bemoan the declining state of media and the consolidation of the regional and national press, I felt washed in unexpected relief, and pride.

I say unexpected because buying a $1 paper is about as bucolic as it gets these days, where news comes just about every other way than in print. I say pride because the News (with a capital N) is supposed to serve a lot of important functions—to tell us what’s going on in the next town over, to build community, and to provide the information that allows us to be free and self-governing citizens.

It’s a lofty call of duty that many news organizations across the country are struggling to uphold as readership numbers fall and papers fight to stay afloat. But not small-town papers which, according to the National Newspaper Association 2015 survey, two-thirds of adult residents of small towns actually buy and read, with 78 percent of them saying they rely on them for vital information. Up here, not even social media can do what newspapers can—covering the local school board and city council meetings, providing information on wildfires and snow falls, or printing wedding announcements and obituaries. It’s not easy work but somebody’s got to do it.

I didn’t think Barbara and I would be sitting down to talk about cold-hard journalism. Rather, I expected we’d talk about the kind that makes you want to take out a pair of scissors, cut out an article, and stick it to your refrigerator door. It turns out the two are one in the same and “Mountain Folk Tales” is, proudly, both.

Before I ask you to help us find folks to feature, I think I ought to introduce myself, since you’ll be inviting me to take a peek inside your life and entrusting me to write your stories. I’ll spare you the details and leave it at letting you know I’m new to mountain life. A born Boulderite and life-long wanderer/writer, I’ve only spent one winter up here, just enough time to have made a few friends, burn a few bridges, and come to know the irony of praying for wind on a hot summer day. I’m still new enough to act like a tourist as I want to stop on the side of the road and get on my knees to smell a patch of wildflowers.

I imagine that living here might eventually desensitize you to the glory of life along the Peak-to-Peak, that is, were it not for the tourists that flock here to remind us of just how lucky we are. Seeing them bask in the beauty I’ve come to call my backyard, I imagine that’s how I’d act if I were visiting, say, the California Redwoods or the Norwegian Fjords. I’d roll down my window as I drove past roadside houses and wonder what life was like there, what my life would be like there, in those houses of drive-by dreams.

As we embark on this column, together, I am humbly asking you to invite me inside. We are looking for you, people you know, and people you’ve always wanted to know, to feature. Email me at mountainfolktales@gmail.com to nominate yourself or someone else, including contact information if you can.

Thank you for your help in this important work. We believe that in telling one tale, we can build connections between us all and create a record of life along the Peak-to-Peak today so it doesn’t disappear into tomorrow.

(Originally published in the July 5, 2018, print edition of The Mountain-Ear.)