"The first settlers came to Parachute Creek Valley in the 1860’s, and my great-grandparents showed up in the 1880’s. They homesteaded on a piece of land right by Parachute Creek. It wasn’t the easiest place to make a living back then, but they somehow managed to do it by ranching cattle. It didn’t dawn on me until I was much older that even though my family were cattle ranchers, we only ever ate elk and deer because we couldn’t afford to eat our own beef."
"My grandpa was born on the homestead and lived his whole life here. He went to school in the one room schoolhouse up the creek until the 7th grade. It was too far to go to town for high school, so he went to the 7th grade twice and then dropped out to help out on the ranch. That has always been his life. Working hard to make a living. My grandmother, on the other hand, was much more privileged. She had gone to school at CU Boulder, but had this fantasy of teaching in a one room schoolhouse in the Wild West, and that somehow ended her up here. Since she had always been pretty well off, she didn’t know how to fix a fire to keep a house warm and some of those other things you need to do to keep a house going in this kind of country."
"Well, one day, she was at the schoolhouse and was trying to figure out how to take care of the wood stove in there. So she set a hot bucket of ashes on the porch of the school house and somehow managed to catch it on fire. It just so happened that in that very moment, my grandpa was riding by on horseback, saw the flames, rode up and helped put the fire out. I think that was the blossom of their romance; he had ridden to her rescue. He was her frontier hero riding in on horseback and putting out the flames on her porch and igniting the flames in her heart. So they got married some time shortly after that and raised 7 kids on the creek."
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