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Beyond Telluride

[click to hear Elisabeth Gick on Tibet]

Nt 438 Elisabeth Gick first came to Telluride in September of 1979, like so many of us, an "accidental tourist.”

“The beauty of the valley sucked me right in and has not let go yet.”

Gick’s children, now adults, went through school here, and she started a very satisfying landscaping business, Outer Spaces, while also becoming deeply involved in a number of non-profits, including Mountainfilm and the Out Loud lecture series.

“I consider myself incredibly lucky to be living here.”

A few years ago, Elisabeth caught the travel bug, visiting interested Nepal in 1999, Vietnam and Cambodia in 2002, India for three months in 2005, India again for three months in 2006-2007.

12 January, 2009 /

Leslie and the girls #F3FB4 In October 2008, Telluride local Elisabeth Gick and daughter Leslie were spending one last afternoon in the town of Ganzi in upper Kham, eastern Tibet, enjoying the sunshine after many snowy, cold days, when they spotted a sign over a door that read “Tibetan Hospital.” A young man spotted the two women and asked in fluent English if he could help.

Then magic unfolded.

The young man, whose name is Lobsang, explained that the abbot of Ganzi nunnery was in charge of the hospital as well as an orphanage for girls. He took Elisabeth and Lesley to meet the man, who was 75 and dressed from head to toe in leather, not red robes.

11 January, 2009 /

Driving home from a day in Telluride, I happened to catch the magnificent winter solstice Sun setting on the wild, west-end horizon of San Miguel County. Open spaces, magic places and the official season of ice and snow begins. Merry Christmas and may the grace of...

25 December, 2008 /

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Birthday Cakes for Vivien and Clint

The Residencia Historica is located just a few kilometers from the toy town of Marchihue and 40 minutes from the much larger Santa Cruz in Chile’s Colchagua Valley. Colchagua is one of the centers of the country’s rapidly growing wine industry and the Chilean outpost of blue chip labels such as Domaines Barons de Rothschild-Lafite. We first visited the place in 2005, when it was still a work- in- progress.

When Vivien Jones and her partner Silvio Castelli discovered what has become the hotel six years ago, the sprawling 18th-century home had seen better days. The bones remained, but they were buried in a tangle of old eucalyptus trees. Dead fruit trees and the thorns of roses tortured the grounds like a hair suit. Undaunted, the couple pursued a vision that can only be described as a labor of love: the promising wreck received the makeover it deserved. The result is a fabulous boutique hotel, where old and new artfully co-exist. To celebrate, on November 8 Vivien threw a joint birthday bash, a traditional Chilean BBQ or asada, for herself and Clint.

01 December, 2008 /

Take a left turn out of Telluride and people wind up some place wonderful in the great wide world, where they do wonderful things in a state of wonderment. That’s part of what we mean by the “Out” in the name of our blog: we will be documenting Telluriders when they are out and about having fun, making a difference.  

Local landscape designer Elisabeth Gick and Judge Sharon Shuteran both recently traveled to the Far East, as tourists and ambassadors of goodwill.

30 November, 2008 /