“I’m getting goosebumps thinking about that day,” says Billy Donovan, remembering the first time he saw our town. “It was May 1995, I was visiting in Boulder, and someone said I should see Ned.”

He took the bus up and walked to First Street. “I was amazed that public transportation would even bring me way up here. I saw people playing music – the Dead, mostly – and it was magic. The view of the Divide, the overall vibe of the people. I knew immediately that this would be home.”

Ned was nothing like Connecticut, where Billy grew up, 45 minutes from Manhattan. “We were in a small, tight-knit community called Fairfield. We played football, lacrosse, and pond hockey. We fished, hiked, and camped. Every once in a while we’d take the train into Manhattan, to check out the record shops and hang out in Central Park.”

At 15 he got his first job, at Stew Leonard’s Garden Shop. “The work came naturally to me, and the people there encouraged me to go to school for horticulture. I did, at the University of Maine, in Orono.” In 1997 he was awarded his Associate Degree – the year after he was gifted with a baby daughter, Sierra.

Billy came to Colorado five years later, where he was hired as Landscape Manager for Naropa University. He found parts of it a challenge: “I had to prepare the grounds for graduation, and the university wanted everything nice and pretty. But it would snow in May, which made that pretty hard to do.”

After three years the mountains called; Billy left Naropa and moved to Ned. He started his own landscaping business – Eclectic Elevations. It’s still going strong today, by the way, mostly gardening, flagstone, and wall work.

“I wanted to be immersed in mountain life,” Billy says, “and I wanted to master mountain landscaping.” Horticulture, like many things, is different up here. “It was an interesting transition to learn about the more drought-tolerant, high-altitude plants. Although you’d be surprised how many plants grow both up here and down below - coneflower, viburnums, spirea, and a lot of the evergreens, for example. The lack of color foliage here was hard to adjust to, as was the amount of water plants need here to thrive.”

Then came COVID. There wasn’t much demand for landscaping while the virus raged. “I needed to find some additional work, something stable, preferably with benefits.” He found it, and on May 31, 2022, he became Lead Transfer Station Clerk of the Nederland Transfer Station.

He’s been there for more than two years, and counting. It’s a great job, although Billy worries people perceive him as too stern. “Sometimes I have to be, here at work, but I want people to know that I’m genuine and kind.”

There can be other downsides. “Somebody came in and dropped off a chest freezer. I wanted to move it so I gave it a push. When it wouldn’t budge, I opened it up. Four hooves popped out - there was an entire elk in there! This was in August, so it was absolutely disgusting - one of the most horrific things I’ve ever smelled in my life!” Lesson learned, though - if you try to drop off a freezer now, he’ll make you open it for him first.

When he’s not working, Billy snowboards, hikes, camps, and hangs out on Hessie Trail. He’s got two dogs, whom you’ve probably seen at the Transfer Station - Big Chief Garcia (“if you look at him long enough, he looks like Jerry’s beard”) and Princess Leia.

Billy doesn’t have a wife, or a girlfriend presently. In fact, he’s never been married. I mention that because Billy told me to. “I’d like to eventually settle down and have a family, I’m a good catch.” If you don’t have a sense of that yet, consider this: “I’m an amazing cook. I make a lot of different things, a lot of Italian dishes. I like the challenge of cooking things I’ve never cooked before. It’s a nice skill to mention when you’re looking for a date.”

That overall vibe that struck Billy so long ago? He’s watched that change. “I remember in 2009, when the Town put its first sidewalks in. They ran from Ace Hardware to the Blue Owl, and across the street. People went nuts! They were up in arms, complaining that sidewalks would take away from the rustic nature of the town, that Ned would lose its charm, that we didn’t need them anyway. I was on the other side of that, sometimes things have to change.”

We do tend to get ourselves worked up, often over the smallest of changes. It’s Billy’s hope that the town can handle those changes and grow responsibly. “While maintaining at least some of that old Ned vibe, of course. After all, Billy reminds us, “I do love this community, and I love living here in my new home town.”