5280 Magazine March 2023

SUBSCRIPTIONS A one-year subscription to 5280 costs $19.95 for 12 issues. A two-year subscription costs $34.95. Special corporate and group rates are available; call 303-832-5280 for details. To start a new subscription, to renew an existing subscription, or to change your address, visit 5280.com/subscribe; call 1-866-271-5280 from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. EST Monday through Friday; or send an email to circulation@5280.com. LETTERS TO THE EDITOR & DINING GUIDE Letters to the editor must include your name, address, and a daytime phone number (all of which can be withheld from publication upon request). Letters may be submitted via regular mail or email (letters@5280.com). To have a restaurant considered for our Dining Guide, contact us by phone or email (dining@5280.com) to receive a submission form. We also encourage you to contact us if your…

Simple joys in life come in many forms. Drinking a hot cup of black tea, playing with a dog in the park, watching a good college football game, and finding perfect corduroy on a bluebird day in the high country qualify as uncomplicated pleasures in which I continually delight. For years, though, I found utter glee in something most people probably wouldn’t place on their lists of little blisses: On certain spring and summer weekends, a cavalcade of food trucks would set up in a parking lot across the street from my Wash Park home, and on those days, I would giddily abandon my fridge for as many meals as possible. There were arepas and dumplings and barbecue and tacos. One year, I had chicken and waffles, German-style potato salad and…

Hunt’s feature “When Will The Water Run Out?” (page 86) explores what can be done about Colorado’s troubling water crisis, which could leave half a million homes without water by 2050. BALANCING ACT ”I grew up near a river in the South but also lived in the New Mexican desert for years, so Colorado is both insanely dry and insanely humid to me at the same time.” TIME CRUNCH ”The people in power need to act now, because we can’t kick the can down the road anymore.” HOW TO HELP “Make it clear to your elected officials that action is needed—even if those efforts are painful.”…

In 1869, a group led by John Wesley Powell explored the Green and Colorado rivers, eventually becoming the first white people to travel the entire Grand Canyon by boat. Today, much of the system that propelled the men on their 1,000-mile journey has been dammed and drained. To experience how things have changed first-hand, a team from the University of Wyoming, the U.S. Geological Survey, and several Native American tribes re-created Powell’s trip on its 150th anniversary in 2019. The differences were immediately apparent: Where the Green River carried Powell for the expedition’s first 60 miles, the modern-day rafters were blocked by what’s now Flaming Gorge Reservoir and had to be towed across its still surface. See the transformation for yourself at the Boulder International Film Festival (March 2 to…

In 2017, Olivia Meikle stumbled across a gravestone that simply read “Mother.” At the time, Meikle and her sister and fellow academic, Katie Nelson, had been thinking about collaborating on a podcast about history’s forgotten women, but Meikle, an adjunct instructor of gender and women’s studies at Naropa University in Boulder, was worried no one would tune in. The memorial convinced her to help give these women their names back. Launched in 2018, the duo’s biweekly show, “What’sHerName,” has been downloaded over 1.6 million times and boasts an international roster of subjects such as Ching Shih, a Chinese pirate who commanded more than 40,000 sailors in the early 1800s. To honor Women’s History Month, we asked Meikle for a guest lecture on unheralded women from the Centennial State. MARY MILLER 1843–1921 Known for:…

Alex Kaufman makes a series of smooth powder turns before plunging into a grove of conifers. It’s early in the new year, and the fortysomething is wearing a red Colorado Rapids jersey, long johns, and threadbare shorts. On his feet: ancient blue telemark boots and black Marquettes, a brand of discontinued ski-snowshoe hybrids. But Kaufman’s wardrobe and equipment are hardly the most peculiar details of this scene. Instead, it’s his terrain choice. The slope into which he’s sliced these lines isn’t in Summit County. It’s behind the Colorado Mills Mall in Lakewood. A woman walks her dog nearby. “I don’t sit in traffic, I don’t wait in lines, and I never ski in tracked-out snow,” says Kaufman, who estimates that he’s tallied more than 250 days on his Marquettes during the…