Mountain Film

"Mountain Film" has begun and it is by far my favorite festival of the summer. It marks the official end of Off Season which began the day after the mountain closed in early April until Mountain Film in late May. During Off Season the town literally closes up and most people leave. Now, everyone is back in town and full of energy talking about their adventures in the past two months. The main questions asked is: what did you do for Off Season? And adventures are told of going to Baja or Hawaii or well - anywhere with lots of hot sun - rare in Telluride during off season. One year I went to Palm Springs of all places (it's a long story). After 3 days of being poolside in 110 degrees, I turned to my friend and said - "I'm finally warm." But enough about off season.

Mountain Film - It is a film festival for documentaries mainly about mountain life. People come from all over the world for this festival. It is three days of celebrating mountain life and mountain people and the feeling of it is layed back and just alot of fun. You also become very educated about people and lifestyles all over the world where mountains exist.

This year is Mountain Film's 25th anniversary so they decided to do a little pre-festival for the locals. So every day at 5pm, they are giving away free beer, wine and food and then opening up one of the theatres presenting free music, lectures and and movies. It has been great fun and everyone has enjoyed it quite a bit.

I'm sitting here at my desk watching a neighbor put up a trampoline for his son. It's spring. That doesn't mean no snow - it just means less snow. My neighbor was a member of the US Ski Team in his youth. So he's not putting up just a regular trampoline for his son - no this one has a bar high above the trampoline so that he can hook himself to it and do sumersalts and twists and all sort of fun things safely. I guess his son is training for freestyle or snowboard competition. I just was looking at it and thinking that is a sign of where I live - a mountain town. But I'll tell you more about that later. I've got to take a hike - there's a storm coming in.