As a kid I would imagine wild ideas of being a pilot and astronaut. Dreams were limitless and the sky was not even the limit. Then I went through life and got beat up by the reality that not all dreams can be made into reality. While I hated the idea of limiting my dreams I did need to be practical and make a living.
All that said, In the last few years Kate and I have been getting back to living the dream. We have done this by being gradual in our approach but always taking a moment to ask the big questions: why are we doing something? and are we thinking big? For our home I covered these questions a few days ago. One thing that is on my mind now is our work with our local trails group.
Currently our trails group does a great job of maintaining existing trails and recently has been building a decent amount of new trails. One thing I have noticed in my 2 years of volunteering with the group is that the focus is very narrow. This is due to it being an all volunteer group and also being a small town with limited resources.
Currently there is a lot of groundswell for mountain bike trails in the US. Towns like Bentonville, AR, Fruita, CO, Moab, UT, Asheville, NC, and many others are investing in their trail systems to attract tourism. I think that Mancos has similar potential and that our trails group could play a big part in it.
Recently a local company, Osprey backpacks, was sold for about $414 million. I think this is a great opportunity for us to put a larger plan together for the group. If we could get just a tiny fraction of that money we could hire someone to run the group full time, have a paid trail crew, and expand our trails system well beyond what we have today.
I have no idea how to make it all happen other than to start trying. It’s a big dream, but what else are we doing here other than to have big dreams and try to make them real? Stay tuned!
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