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Posts published in “2011 August”

Living in a Small Place in a Big Bad World

By Martha Quillen

I used to love the feeling of isolation you could get in the Colorado Rockies. Forty-one years ago, Ed and I went camping in the Gunnison Country with friends. We pitched our tents right next to the road near Pitkin, and for several days we didn’t see a single car and couldn’t tune in a radio station. One night our friend observed that the U.S. could have been nuked, and we wouldn’t know it.

In 1971, Ed and I went to Silverton to look at the newspaper. The town was small, remote, and occasionally got snowed in. It didn’t have television, and VCRs and home computers hadn’t been invented yet. Red Mountain Pass was icy and terrifying; several of the downtown buildings looked like they wouldn’t make it through the winter, and eggs at the local store cost $1 each.

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