My Own Private Telluride
WWe’re in Telluride, CO, a strange little town off Hwy 145 that has the air about it of a Swiss ski lodge made of chocolate. I imagine at night the residents (all two thousand of them) issuing forth from their cottage beds deep into the mountains, to stir up more chocolate. We will not be staying long. It is an expensive place to be. Unfortunately, we’ll miss the Blues and Brews music festival this weekend, but somehow we will manage. I never did much cotton to the blues–I like Leadbelly et al. but the songs don’t touch me like they seem to others. Give me a sappy Korean pop song from the 80’s–now that’s mourning to a tune.
We came to Telluride by the invitation of a man we met on the Alaskan ferry. Of course that ferry ride was one big drunken party–I remember playing an old piano in the bar and people giving me money. If it was silly of us to hold him to plans made there, then silly is as silly does. But, you know, a gentleman means what he says and says what he means, right? We arrived and this tree-hugging, lily-livered liberal was alternately “too tired” to come out and “too busy” to accommodate us. “I kinda have to feng-shui out my apartment,” he said. “I gotta get a steam cleaner,” he said. He had promised us a tour of Telluride and fresh-baked pastries. What we got was a $150 room at the Victorian Inn.
The townsfolk here are friendly and very well dressed. Handsome college kids play instruments on the sidewalk, ruddy-cheeked; Telluride women (in their thirties through fifties) are especially beautiful–they have a shine in their eyes that softens the face, and they are always smiling. I wonder why: twice since our arrival, we’ve been told about the unreliable nature of Telluride men–by the men themselves. The streets are teeming with people this week before the festival. Everyone asks us where we are coming from. We tell them about Yellowstone, the Lewis and Clark Caverns, Redmond, and days spent driving against dusk.
But they hardly seem to care.
They want to know about Alaska
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