Barbara Lawlor, Nederland.

Living doesn’t happen in a straight line. It takes the shape of a circle, often ending up where one began. Or it could zig-zag, arriving at a destination in a back and forth way.

Sarah Haas, the operations manager for the Carousel of Happiness, says her path thus far, including wayward jaunts, has led her to the one of a kind carousel in Nederland. She says all of her life’s pieces are fitting together and here she is, right back where she began; at least within 20 miles.

Sarah was born and raised in Boulder and attended Fairview High School for one year before she left to attend a boarding school in Fountain Valley in her sophomore year. She was raised by a single mom who was working toward a nursing degree. At that time, Sarah earned a full scholarship for swimming to the school.

“Here I found the brothers and sisters I never had growing up. It was a liberal arts school complete with horses, a sled dog team and other amenities most kids don’t grow up with.”

Although she and her mom were not wealthy, they were happy. Sarah graduated from Whitman College in Wallawalla, Washington, majoring in fine art and philosophy. Both of her parents were artists. Once again, she received a scholarship after testing well.

“I could do what I wanted there,” Sarah says. “I read philosophy and learned ceramic and installation art while working at the library.”

After college, Sarah continued the zig zag pattern of her life, signing on with a farm in Nevada City, California, a vineyard and vegetable farm in its first year. It was chaotic and involved much hard work.

“I remember once I was in the bed of a pickup truck that was full of cantaloupes and when I tasted the juice, I thought I had never had a melon as good as this one. I remember the rattlesnakes in the strawberry beds. This was also the first time I fell in love and had my heart broken.”

Sarah left sunny California to work on a PhD. Program at NYU, living with an actress friend in Brooklyn, which she says was a mystical experience. She became a cupcake maker, particularly adept at creating kumquat cupcakes, a crowd pleaser in New York. She loved the city and still dreams about it now and then.

“I loved the people. I was surprised at how fast your neighborhood blocks become like a small town. New York helped me stop being shy and become very observant.”

At this time, Sarah met a woman who owned a giant creative cooperative. Sarah jumped in to help open the outlet and learned to love the business part of it, loved working with a lot of people. After two years, missing her mom and the mountains, she returned home to Boulder and found a job with the homeless shelter. She says she was unprepared for the reality of needing to work.

“But it was wonderful. I started a cupcake business and I still am in touch with the homeless people I worked with.”

That zig was followed by another zag and Sarah went on to earn her MBA at CU. One Thanksgiving, she invited the people from the shelter to her house for dinner, realizing that those people were her friends and they knew how to have good old-fashioned fun. She also realized that working for a non-profit can be challenging.

“I wondered how it was possible to live in a world where we have to have a non-profit to feed the hungry; and how did we forget how to be happy, the gift of friendship.”

After earning her MBA, Sarah became a waitress and took some road trips. She moved to the country to take a job caring for horses and broke up with her second boyfriend, making a clean break and going into solitude for the next three years. She listened to the birds sing and tried to figure out what to do next.

She had always loved writing and was soon on the Boulder Weekly staff, writing columns and news articles. She worked hard, pursued writing her own picture books, including “The Moon is Afraid of the Dark.” She fell in love for the second time. “Johnny has great eyes that I could trust. We met at the Gold Hill Inn and talked, the kind of conversation you don’t ordinarily have.”

Ten days later, last December 1, Sarah was hired at the Carousel of Happiness.”

Johnny lived in Nederland and Sarah decided to reach out to Barb Hardt, owner of The Mountain-Ear, who put her in touch with the Carousel of Happiness. It was the perfect job to support herself while she worked on her book. It was also the kind of business management she learned while working at the homeless shelter.

Sarah is in a new place which she says has everything she has previously wanted and hoped for. She even has a new dog and is working on building a greenhouse.

“This is the first time that my life feels as if it all came together. When I came to the carousel I realized that everyone and everything here has a story, even the door handle.”

Sarah and the carousel board of directors are discussing how they can ensure that the carousel is here for a long, long time. That it remains a living piece of folk art, using this opportunity to build programs. The retail store has downsized to accommodate a booth for telling stories, to create oral archives, to become more experience orientated and think long term.

Sarah says the carousel is at the beginning of the next step, exploring how to grow, and she welcomes anyone who wants to become involved with the evolvement. There is always room to grow.