The YAK is a beloved Leadville and Lake County tradition, revived through the One Community Project to celebrate the stories, voices, and creative spirit that shape our community. The storytelling contest and community event, hosted April 25th, 2025, invited community members to share personal stories, poems, photography, art, and reflections that paint a rich and authentic portrait of who we are. Together, these stories help ground the future vision for Leadville and Lake County in the real hopes, challenges, and connections that define our community today.
When I decided to move to Leadville from the Chicago area almost two years ago, I felt like I was deciding to move home. I didn’t grow up in Leadville, but in Parker on the front range. and ended up living the last 25 years or so in the Chicago suburbs. But over the last 10 to 15 years a longing to get back to Colorado began to build.
Though my body and soul were homesick for Colorado, my connection to my group of friends held me in Illinois, particularly my book group. We had been together in various iterations for over 20 years. We had traveled through marriages and divorces and children and miscarriages, and job changes together. As a single person whose family was in Tennessee, these friends were my family. They were who I traveled with and spent holidays with. I put their names and phone numbers on forms for my emergency contact. This group of friends had heard my longing for a different kind of life, and a different kind of church, and were the ones who helped me gather my courage to make the leap from a large suburban church in the Chicago suburbs to the micro church of St. George in Leadville.
But moving to Leadville wasn’t like coming home to a familiar place. It was landing on another planet. I was a fish out of water. How do you live here? There should be a manual. So many things were different. If I needed something I couldn’t just run to the Target 5 minutes away. When I asked people for a “get to know you” coffee they countered with a “get to know you hike.” On the fourth of July I wore long underwear and my warmest coat to watch fireworks. But I peeled layers when I cross-country skied in February. And I ran out of places to put the snow.
When I asked people where I could find ski equipment and I didn’t understand their questions – did I want alpine or Nordic skis? Classic or skate. Backcountry? Did I want skin up? I had no idea what they were saying to me. Thankfully, Smokey was incredibly helpful in getting me ready to ski.
I was grateful to land in a group of friends in Leadville who were incredibly welcoming, but their friendships with each other were 20 years in the making with gatherings and activities and trips and a connection I wasn’t a part of. It made me miss my friends in my book group even more.
I wondered if I would ever find community. Would I ever fit in? Would I ever belong? Or would I be a perpetual outsider looking in?
I did find connection when I went skiing at Ski Cooper. I grew up skiing with my dad. Mostly Winter Park and Mary Jane. He’s the one who taught me. He died at 69 years old in 1998, and he would have loved this move to Leadville. When I skied at Cooper I felt my dad with me. I could see him skiing ahead of me, carving a long, graceful line on his impossibly long skies. And I could hear him shouting up at me, “Belly button downhill!” I could feel him nudge me on the ski lift before he did his trademark moose call – ooo- aark. He taught me important life lessons – carry your own skis – don’t ask others to do what you can do for yourself. And don’t worry about falling – it’s how you know you’re learning.
I decided I wanted to honor him and share him with others. So, I invited some folks to meet me for a run in his honor. On March 17, 2024, what would have been his 95th birthday, a group of new friends gathered around me at the top of Black Powder and I gave them instructions. We would ski from the top to the bottom in one go. As we started off, we would say, “and we’re off like a dirty shirt” – one of his favorite phrases. And I taught them my dad’s moose call.
As I skied down with my new friends around me, I realized that my dad had taught me one more important lesson. Community isn’t an accident. It happens on purpose. One invitation, one friendship at a time.