Rob Schultheis moved
to Colorado in 1973, when pop stars began singing about the Rocky
Mountains and asking whether you’d ever been “mellow.” His newest
book, Fool’s Gold, zooms in on his home turf of
Telluride, where “summer is briefer than a butterfly’s dream …
autumn an afterthought, and winter rules.”
When
Schultheis arrived, Telluride was on the bust end of the boom-bust
dervish that spins through Western watering holes. Soon, the town
would boom again, and development would – as one Coloradan says –
make the mining rush look like pocket change. But during the
intermission of the 1970s, Telluride was a quirky town of
ramshackle Victorian houses and bars, nicknamed To-Hell-You-Ride by
its more strait-laced neighbors.
“People came to
the mountains the same way they ran away to join the circus: to
jettison the past and reinvent their future,” writes Schultheis.
“The very thinness of the air stoned you with every breath … Down
in the flatlands, lives were strictly nonfiction, documentary. Up
here … magical realism was loosed upon the
world.”
Fool’s Gold is spun
from Schultheis’ tall tales – “just because it never really
happened doesn’t mean it’s not true” – and his gabby old-timers and
fellow urban ex-pats could inspire the movie-making Coen brothers,
whether they’re acting out on Shakespeare night, running the San
Juan rapids, or attending Navajo Elvis
concerts.
But Fool’s Gold has
a melancholy, Patsy Cline edge. Schultheis confronts the new
Western tragedy head-on: “The Colorado Rockies are full of
Callados, folks who just plain hate everything wild,” laments
Schultheis. “It’s a hatred that transcends
reason.”
Luckily, though, Schultheis’
Fool’s Gold is not an elegy. Telluride is still
somewhat wild, still isolated (no stoplights), and still home.
Fool’s Gold: Lives, Loves, and
Misadventures in the Four Corners Country, by Rob
Schultheis, 230 pages, cloth, $24.95. The Lyons Press, New
York.
Copyright ©
2001 HCN and Renee Guillory
This article appeared in the print edition of the magazine with the headline Fool’s Gold: Telluride’s ‘magical realism’.
Republish our articles for free, online or in print, under a Creative Commons license.
