For the 52 years before he entered public life, people probably knew Skip Harvey as “that guy with the smile on his face.”
“Here comes that guy with the smile on his face again,” people would say, and we’d notice they walked with a little more bounce to their steps just for having him pass by.
Matthew Lehman got to know Skip on the night that guy with a smile on his face rode his motorcycle cross-country to a party. “What a cool guy,” Lehman says he remembered thinking.
Was there ever a better week than this one? What a stew of stuff! If you could clip-and-save a week, this might be the one.
We’re not really sure how to digest this multi-course meal. Set upon a mise en place of Mammoth’s municipal bankruptcy, airport subsidies and the closure of June Mountain Ski Area, we might have thought this could have been a poisonous week.
But it wasn’t. We had a fine time at our French, Eastside, multi-course feast.
We were outdoors Tuesday morning and found ourselves at the Hayden Cabin off Sherwin Creek Road.
It’s a lovely spot early in the morning, with the brook babbling, the songbirds singing and trees sighing in a light breeze.
It was the day after the Town of Mammoth Lakes declared its intent to enter into bankruptcy to take care of the $43 million in legal debt it incurred during the expansion of the airport.
We wandered up to the flat where E Clampus Vitus had built a memorial to the first thriving business in old Mammoth City—a bar-grocery-hardware store called “The Temple of Folly.”
From time to time, we use our idle moments around here for a little daydreaming. This week, it was all about business plans. Don’t even ask how it started.
It’s rough to make business plans in a town headed for bankruptcy, in a state that has no money, and a country with an economy as stable as an aspen log over a creek in May, but we soldiered on with a couple of nifty ideas:
There is no natural reason for people to live in Mammoth Lakes. None. But we live here anyway because we like to have seasons loaded with fun.
We ski. We hike. We climb. We ride bikes, drive off road, pull fish from the water and then do it all again.
We pay a price to live here, though, and the price tag varies depending on the bill Mother Nature whips up in her ledger book.
This summer the price tag has to do with fire—indiscriminant, deadly and entirely natural. Wendilyn Grasseschi’s story, beginning on Page 1., captures the situation.
A remarkable intersection of events in the Big Wide World happens this week in Mammoth, spanning backyard politics, athletic prowess and instellar space.
All of them are worth our attention. We live in such a unique place that it is easy to take it for granted. Here are just some of the reasons why we should not:
• The Drop-In. Jeremy McGhee is a superior athlete. At one time, he was a superior surfer, until an accident took away the use of his legs. He is to try an ascent of Bloody Couloir this weekend, via wheelchair, and a descent on skis.
Our View: Skip Harvey
July 20, 2012
For the 52 years before he entered public life, people probably knew Skip Harvey as “that guy with the smile on his face.”
“Here comes that guy with the smile on his face again,” people would say, and we’d notice they walked with a little more bounce to their steps just for having him pass by.
Matthew Lehman got to know Skip on the night that guy with a smile on his face rode his motorcycle cross-country to a party. “What a cool guy,” Lehman says he remembered thinking.