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Beyond Telluride

Editor's note: For eight years, Telluride local Ben Clark and a few friends/business colleagues have made Spring treks to the majestic mountains of the Himalayas. Follow his adventures on Telluride Inside... and Out, including links to his regular podcasts.

Benbioshotlr-254x300 "Dispatch 2: Thuli Kharka/13,900'.

""The hiss of stoves, songs of porters and cries of ravens fill the damp air here at 13,900'. Our team has traversed a 15,000' pass to reach a granite filled bowl and crossroad of expeditions exploring the Hunku valley. This is day three of our eight-day approach, and we are in a crude site known as Thuli Kharka.

"The trekking here has been magnificent. In addition to being immediately surrounded by jagged thrusts of granite and icy 20'000' plus summits, we are charmed by the presence of French, Dutch and Nepali accents as we ascend and descend into our approach valley, the Hunku. This year is far different from last...There are people here and we are happy to greet old friends and porters I've expeditioned with in years past.

22 April, 2010 /
IMGP1140 The presence of Lama Tsultrim Allione alone is worth the price of entry to the 3rd annual Telluride Yoga Festival, July 8 – July 11, whose presenters are among the Who's Who of the world of transformative practices, including Yoga. Lama Tsultrim is the first American woman to be ordained in the Tibetan Buddhist tradition and is a world renowned teacher, sought out and respected for her lucid, plainspoken explanations of Buddhist teachings.

Telluride Inside... and Out took a break from our Spring break in Denver, our home away from home, to visit Lama Tsultrim at her awe-inspring 700+ acre Tara Mandala retreat just outside Pagosa Springs. We were to there to interview the world renowned teacher on the subject of the talks she plans to give over the long Telluride Yoga Festival weekend: Prajnaparamita (prajna, transcendent wisdom, and paramita, "perfection" or "that which goes beyond") and the paradigm shifting practice she explains in her national best-seller "Feeding Your Demons."
20 April, 2010 /

Just a little reminder to those of you who love hot rods, street rods, muscle cars, classic trucks and vintage automobiles. "April Action" - the Moab Classic Car Show - takes place this weekend, Apr. 23-25, in the town's downtown City Park. On Friday,...

19 April, 2010 /

Tia 1 "Tia Fuller’s sophomore release on Mack Avenue, "Decisive Steps," is a beautiful, musical journey. It has been a wonderful experience, watching Tia blossom from an eager music student in high school, to being known as one of the “up and coming” saxophonists and composers in the jazz world. Just like the Montgomery and Marsalis families, Denver’s Fuller Family is filled with talent and their musical roots run deep."
Susan Gatschet Reese
Assistant Program Director/On Air Host
jazz89 KUVO/KVJZ Vail

Telluride Inside... and Out has spent a whirlwind week in Denver. Friday evening we caught Tia Fuller's set at Denver jazz hotspot, Dazzle. Fuller was in town celebrating the recent release of her CD, "Decisive Steps" for the Mack Avenue label.

19 April, 2010 /
IMG_1808 Telluride Inside... and Out scratched the surface of Denver's robust art scene, visiting two major public spaces and our favorite gallery.

IMG_1815 On a beautiful albeit very windy Spring afternoon, we made a pilgrimage to see Henry Moore (1898 – 1986) in the Denver Botanic Gardens and were blown away (very nearly literally). The show, the very first major outdoor exhibition of the artist's works in the American West, features 20 monumental sculptures, primarily bronze, some fiberglass, by the celebrated Brit, from a reclining " Naked Maya" stretching nearly 30 feet long and dominating a grassy knoll to an tender depiction of  a mother cradling a child, standing under three feet tall, hidden in a clearing.
19 April, 2010 /
Mariela-in-the-Desert-main419.sflb Mariela's bummed, and Jose is in a major slump, but Telluride Inside... and Out is riding a wave that just won't quit on our whirlwind tour of Denver's rich cultural landscape.

Encouraged by Telluride Inside... and Out contributor and member of the Denver Center Company, Tracy Shaffer, on Wednesday night we attended a performance of Karen Zacarias' Award-winning play "Mariela in the Desert" at the Denver Center's Ricketson Theatre,  a tour de force of magical realism –  ghosts live and paint brushes are weapons –  that left us dumbstruck and moved to tears.
18 April, 2010 /

Telluride folks travel to a wide variety of destinations, and much of that travel takes place in Telluride's slower seasons, early Spring and late Fall. TIO is no exception. But this Spring we decided to see some parts of Colorado we haven't spent enough...

18 April, 2010 /

 The beautiful celestial pairing of brilliant Venus and the delicate crescent Moon takes place in the western sky at dusk on the evenings of April 15th and 16th. Also look for Mercury - now faint and very close to the horizon - and watch the...

16 April, 2010 /
IMGP1122 It's a long way from Telluride to TAG. Start by jumping into a rabbit hole.

If you are lucky enough to get in – the place is one of the hippest, read jammed, in Denver's oh so hip Larimer Square district –  expect the unexpected in this Wonderland of food, where, for example, onion soup winds up inside a dumpling. (Try it, you'll love it.)

Ignorance is bliss – or we have a guardian angel. We showed up without reservations with friends, former Telluride locals Jade and Ernie Graham, also TAG virgins, and managed to waltz right in. (With a little help from the charming young man at the front desk.) But it was a Monday night and TAG was merely full: pulsing, but not hyperventilating.

15 April, 2010 /
IMGP1119 "Opus." The word is Latin for work, but it was no work at all. The experience was, top to bottom, a pleasure.

Yesterday, Telluride Inside... and Out headed to the Curious Theatre Company for a Sunday matinee of Michael Hollinger's "Opus," a play about drugs (medicinal), sex (past and future and only insinuated), and chamber music, along with our friend and regular Denver writer, Tracy Shaffer. (Tracy, also a member of the Denver Center company and regular in the Denver theatre scene, just completed a run as Mrs. Robinson in "The Graduate.")
14 April, 2010 /