“When I was growing up in Parachute- well, back then it was called Grand Valley- it was exactly what you would picture the typical tiny town in the west to look like. There were less than 300 people and all the roads were dirt. All the kids in town kindergarten through 12th went to school in the same building; in fact, my mom graduated from that same building, and years later I went to school there too. It was the kind of old school that had those steam radiators in it; you could hear them thumping from a mile away when they turned on. When winter hit the valley, we’d all go out to play in the snow and when we came back in for class, we’d all lay our wet mittens and wool coats over those steam radiators to dry. One of the most vivid memories from my childhood is the smell of wool coats drying over the radiators as I walked down the hallways of that old school. When we were kids, we could really just roam wherever. My mom used to fix me a lunch of a sandwich and a thermos full of soup and send me up to play on the mountain all by myself all day long when I was just 8 years old, and the only rule was I had to be home by the time it got dark. So when we started to see the streetlights come on in town, my friends and I knew it was time to hustle home so we didn’t get in trouble. That’s just how it was back then. We went on these adventures as kids, and our parents just trusted us to be safe."
"It was such a nice place to grow up. Everyone knew everyone… But things started changing in the 80’s when the oil boom hit. Suddenly we went from this teeny tiny town where everyone knew everything about everyone to a town of nearly fifteen hundred, and suddenly it didn’t feel so small. People who always left their doors open finally bought locks, and we started hearing about things we didn’t even know existed, like drugs. Soon after that, they built three new schools and paved the roads. In some ways it felt like we were growing up, but in other ways, it felt a lot like we were growing disconnected. But my history is deep here, and that helped me keep the strong connection to this place, even as it grew."
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