Letter: Living the high life
Hurray for the T-Lazy-7 Ranch and its support of the Shining Stars kids this week during their annual visit to Aspen. On Tuesday afternoon, the ranch hosted 70 Shining Stars kids and their volunteers and supporters for snowmobiling and a ranch cookout around a roaring campfire with singing, burgers, hot dogs and toasted marshmallows. T-Lazy-7 is a class act, providing the same stylish ranch cookout for the kids that it does for its fancy clients, right down to the hand-whittled willow-twig marshmallow-toasting sticks. Talk about quality!
“How long has the ranch hosted the Shining Stars?” I asked Dagwood, a longtime employee and major domo of snowmobile touring up Maroon Creek, as he managed guides and kids on sleds.
“Heck, as long as I’ve worked here, 20 years at least,” he replied. It’s probably much longer. I glimpsed Ric Deane, ranch owner, roar up the road with a kid on his sled, 11-year-old Ian Crabtree of Castle Rock. Ian is recovering from leukemia, one of the 70 kids with cancer to spend a week in Aspen skiing, snowboarding, snow biking, disco dancing at the Elks Club, enjoying lavish locally donated feasts and generally living the high life in the mountains for a week. The nonprofit Shining Stars Foundation makes it all happen, thanks partly to the incredible local support of folks like those at the T-Lazy-7 Ranch and many more. Thank you!
Jane McGarry
Paonia
