Innocent until proven guilty

Editor:
Next time you decide to do a cover story that relates to a contest for best mountain dog photo, how about using one of the photos that won your contest? (Mountain Dog Photo Contest, MG #153.) The image from your cover is plainly Photoshop’d. (Poorly done and you can actually see thru the dog’s body and his drool is coming down at a magically mysterious angle.)

Please step your game up, mountain people!

Thanks,
Chad Hogan

Editor’s response: The cover shot in question (the drooling English sheepdog, Barkley) was Photoshop’d by neither Jill Parker, the lady who kindly submitted it to us, nor our art director, Andy Outis. If you’re gonna give us shit, at least give us shit about the 374 or so things we do to deserve shit-getting.

Wag more, bark less

Hello!
I could give a “dog” about the dog photo contest. Have you ever done a “Children in the Environment” photo contest? And if you have, how many children pictures versus dog pictures did you receive? Have you ever thought and written about the negative impact of dogs on the environment? (Oops, I don’t mean to upset any dog lovers.) I prefer the laughter of a child in the wilderness to the barking of a dog any time! As the environment goes to the “dogs,” the nation neglects to introduce the next generation of environmentalists to the outdoors — CHILDREN. Dogs won’t save the environment, children will!

Thanks,
Gisela Gunderson
Salt Lake City, UT

No shit

Printing the inflammatory letter from T.B. Fox (MG #154) seems to me a lame attempt to show MG hasn’t gone soft under new editors. No matter his status as Former Mayor, I find your decision to print “the shit-skin bastard” as his label for Barak Obama disgusting and disheartening.

Max Gibson
Leadville, CO

Mountain Lovin’

Editor:
A belated “thank you” for the gift of Peter Kray’s “Ode to the Mountain Girl” intro in the February 2009 issue. I had placed a stack of back issues of the MG on my kitchen table last week with the intent of giving my weekend houseguest some relevant reading material. I had skimmed through a few of these Gazettes in the past weeks, but I hadn’t yet completed my usual cover-to-cover. Hadn’t touched February at all.

Now, my houseguest was no ordinary “come up for the weekend and get your snow on” friend; his visit held slightly more significance — he and I were each others’ “firsts” in high school and had not spent face time together in over 18 years. Long story short, when we parted ways before college, we both lived outside Philadelphia. My subsequent long string of dysfunctional relationships and a failed marriage led me to nest in Winter Park, Colo. His comparative adventures landed him in L.A. When we started talking again, I learned that he had become a snowboarding fiend at the same time that I had developed an addiction to skiing. I insisted upon a ski-and-ride reunion. Just friends, of course. It took two years to implement, but now here he was.

Over breakfast on Saturday, while fueling up for a day at Vail, he started to leaf through the Mountain Love issue, lingering on page 6 while I made us some tea. He finished the intro with a quiet “hmmph” and a flicker of a smile, and I asked, “Whatcha readin’?” He gave me a brief synopsis of your love affair with the Mountain Girl, paused, and then read aloud the last three sentences:

Since then I have always thought that asking a woman to go skiing or hiking or camping is the same as saying, “I think I love you.”

And I still do.

(To Catherine – I would very much like to go camping with you.)

And then he blushed. And so did I. Thank you, Peter, for that moment. I realized then that I had been waiting 18 years for it.

Catherine Garchinsky
Winter Park, CO

Mountain Gazette welcomes letters. Please email to: mjfayhee@mountaingazette.com