Every once in a while, an unfamiliar car slowly drives by our driveway outside the cattle town of Granby, Colorado. Sometimes it stops. From time to time, the driver reverses, parks and gets out. They are usually older and have the melancholic look of a seeker.
“This used to be?” they always begin.
I nod. “Camp Ouray boss. Yeah.”
What happens next is predictable. They look around, observing the place as it is now, remembering what it was like then, when it was “then.” In the pause that follows, they seem as if they are piecing together something precious from scraps of memory, rebuilding a part of themselves they thought they had lost long ago.
“Do you want to look around?” I always ask.
Some do. Most don't. My affirmation of his memory is usually sufficient.
“Thank you,” they will say, and then they will get back in their car and drive away.
I have been vaguely aware of the history of our rural four acres since my older sister built a house here in the 1990s. By then, what since 1907 had been part of the 500-acre summer camp operated by the YMCA of the Metropolitan Area Denver had been purchased by developers, subdivided, and populated mostly by second-home owners retreating from urban congestion. The YMCA relocated Camp Chief Ouray about 23 miles up the same road in 1979, leaving behind hiking trails, an administration building, a baseball field, counselor cabins, a pond, a stable, a shooting range and a chapel outdoor.
The “ranch,” as we surrogate settlers call it, remains a rural idyll along the headwaters of the Colorado River, still surrounded by hay and cattle fields and the foothills of the western slope of Rocky Mountain National Park: a landscape indelibly etched in the memory of generations. of Denver children.
But that curious story existed in the abstract, an interesting backstory to tell people who ask why we transplanted from Southern California in 2016 to claim our little piece of mountain paradise. Then one day in 2018, a caravan pulled up to the old camp corral across the street.
To celebrate the 110th anniversary of Camp Chief Ouray, the YMCA had organized a tour of the former property. Those interested, ranging in age from 2 to almost 80 years old, filled three shuttle buses. Some had been counselors, others simply campers. I recognized the looks on their faces as they walked down the stairs of the bus.
The group leader welcomed me when I asked him to come with me. He also asked me if I would go behind them in case any of them stayed in one place too long. He seemed to know that this could be a problem, and sure enough, it was.
I found Barry Novy, a 76-year-old real estate agent now living in Melbourne, looking at a room that used to be the camp director's office in what is now a rustic two-story fishing lodge. He pointed to a desk.
“Right there,” he said, “is where I made the most important phone call of my life.”
In August 1953, he was an overweight 11-year-old Jewish boy whose parents put him on a train in Chicago bound for a camp run by a Christian organization. Upon arrival, he felt instantly accepted, free, self-assured and fulfilled. When Novy was reluctant to leave after his four-week stay, the principal pointed to the office phone and asked if he would like to call his parents to ask permission to stay for another session. His parents agreed and his love affair with the place blossomed.
Novy ended up spending 16 summers at Camp Chief Ouray between 1953 and 1970, eventually becoming its deputy chief. He only missed two summers: when his father became ill in 1959 and when she got married in 1969. “I can't imagine the impact on my life if my parents had said no during that call.”
The group passed by the only remaining counselors' cabin; beyond the site of the former dining hall where eight condominiums now stand; passing by a site where a shower and bath facility once stood charmingly known as “The Brown Palace”; to a totem pole where the closing ceremonies were held; along a trail to Camp Pond, where one veteran recalled that actor Tim Allen, a Denver native, once swam in the cold water fed by the river.
Near the pond, the old shooting range was eerily intact, with safety instructions still painted on the back wall of the wooden shelter. Some visitors went straight to a windowless storage room, using the light from their phones to locate their names and the names of old friends among the dozens written on the wall.
Another trail led them to a wooded chapel overlooking the Colorado River, thirty meters below. Cottonwood saplings grew between the two-by-four benches, but they are still used whenever a neighbor's son or grandson decides to host a country wedding. In the stables, now an outbuilding of an owner's property, visitors reminisced about the camp horses that gave them their first taste of the Wild West. They ran their fingers over the names (Colonel, Taffy, G Boy) that were still written on their positions.
The group milled around the parked ferries as the tour ended, taking photos of each other in front of the barn and telling stories of summer loves and influential advisors and moments spent in that magical twilight between adolescence and adulthood. They were in no hurry to abandon what seemed to them sacred ground.
Since then, I try to remember that the laughter, friendships, and wonder of their first experiences in nature somehow seeped into the soil, grew on the trees, and perfumed the fragrant sage and ripe hay of late summer. Looking into their faces, I was reminded that we are all passing through these special places, squatters in paradise, and that this land I am privileged to call home does not actually belong to me.
Martin J. SmithFormer senior editor of the Los Angeles Times Magazine, he is the author of five novels and five nonfiction books, including “go to trinidad: A doctor, a Colorado town, and stories of an unlikely gender crossroads.”
