Sarah Haas, Central City.  After talking with Barbara Thielemann for an over an hour inside her Central City home, we take a seat on her front porch as soft breezes trickle down the hill. The pace of conversation slows, pausing occasionally to let the wind pass through, and in those moments of quiet we gaze across the little valley, at the aspen trees, and watch their fluttering leaves.

We’d just been talking about God and although I’m not religious, I can’t help but admit the godliness in those trees. Barbara, on the other hand, has never doubted her faith. She’s one of those rare specimens who embodies her religion.

Since moving to Central City she’s been involved with the 159-year-old St. James United Methodist Church. The building is impressive; arching stained glass windows, painted ceilings and a large pipe organ, all encased in stone, but it’s mission is simple. It’s a Methodism characterized by its emphasis on charity and the practice of the religion is to help the poor and the average person alike, with the only condition of generosity being that the recipient pay it forward whenever possible.

Philanthropy is the gestalt of all Barbara’s work, from her 36 years as a grade school teacher in Illinois, to her work here, in Central City, for the Gilpin County Arts Board, the Rotary Club, the Central City Main Street Board, the Ermel’s Emporium Board, and the Conservation Board at her church.

So, seeing how Barbara is at church every week, and has worked Methodist practice into her life, and says she begins and ends every day with her religion. I imagine in this moment, staring off into the aspens, it is her faith that fills her, although she is also occupied by a different sort of spirit.

“When he was alive, my husband Hank used to sit on our front porch for hours,” she’d told me. “Just watching the world go by. It’s a beautiful spot to sit and the majority of the time it’s peaceful.”

And then, suddenly, a rhythmic, “THUMP. THUMP.”

“I call that the “thump thump grate,” she says. “Locals go around the grate. Tourists go right over it.” It’s a part of the soundtrack of her mountain life.

Barbara and Hank were together for 42 and a half years before he died, but even before that they were in each other’s lives, and he lingers still. They met before Hank left to serve in the Korean War and, even though he was with another woman then, Barbara would send him war packages while he was away. It was only a matter of time before he would return, leave his girlfriend to court Barbara, and the two would marry.

Together, living most of their life in East Alton, Illinois, the two didn’t just have a good life, but a great one, filled with good work, family and laughter. Aside from that brief description though, Barbara doesn’t share many details. She doesn’t need to. The Central City house she and Hank bought in 1995 serves as a museum of the life they lived.

There’s a lot of stuff around, not in a messy way, but in a careful curation of their life full of trinkets, art, gifts, and pictures, most notably a few of Hank dressed as a clown, surrounded by his children and grandkids, in hilariously staged scenes.

“When I think about my life beyond today, I need only look at all the stuff around me,” she says. “Everything here has a story and in each thing is contained a memory of a person or an event. So many people will just throw their memories away, but they keep going and they keep me company, too.”

Barbara is 84 and lives alone, but she looks much younger and doesn’t have an air of loneliness about her. Her doctor agrees, recently telling her that whatever she’s doing to stay so vivacious, to keep it up.

“I’ve outlived both of my parents, my in-laws and I’m not far behind my one grandmother, but I know better than to take life for granted. I’ve had several friends who, one day they’re here and the next they’re gone.”

Which is to say Barbara thinks about her mortality, “or whatever you call it,” and when she does, she says she’ll feel the urge to clean out a drawer or a closet, so as to sort through all these things, these memories.

“I’ll make a mess…” she says, giggling a bit, before trailing off and getting lost in the memories unearthing in her mind.

Maybe it’s better that way — the stuff unexplained, the corners of our lives left untucked, the stories incompletely told — so that memories are only ever, truly, our own and tourists through them will “thump thump” as they pass over grates on unfamiliar roads.

Mountain Folk Tales is a weekly column about locals living along the Peak-to-Peak. To suggest someone for a profile please email Sarah at mountainfolktales@gmail.com. No story is too big or too small.