Growing Up Alien
A High Country Memoir
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Arriving in Nederland my nose bled. I'd never been so high up before. After a whole life (nine years) at sea level, I took my first thin breaths of mountain air through the open window of a rented truck, watching dutifully for falling rocks as we crept up the highway to 9,000 feet. Living in the mountains I would learn to look out for things that might come from above.

Once Nederland had been a tungsten mining boomtown. By the time my family got there, in the late seventies, the area's population had leveled off at about 400 people. Some residents were descended from the original miners; others came in search of the usual Western virtues--cheap land, clean air, rugged mountain living. A substantial number of the newer arrivals were retirees from the nuclear plants down on the plains, who could be heard around town uttering mysterious words like alpha and gamma.

In the old pine forest surrounding the town were about a dozen abandoned mines. One of these giant pits, filled with runoff and rainwater, had become known as Mud Lake. The others were now used as unofficial garbage dumps and target practice zones. Old refrigerators would appear in the forest overnight, and quickly their heavy carcasses would be consumed by bullet holes and rust, until only an intricate, collapsing skeleton remained.