Founded in 1993, 5280 is the largest local magazine in Colorado. The magazine's stories often make national headlines, and since 2005 5280 has been nominated for four National Magazine Awards. Get 5280 Magazine digital subscription today.
It was the summer of 2017, and I was working on a story about how Colorado land managers were seeing a distressing rise in what they called the loving-it-to-death phenomenon. Too many people were in the same outdoor spaces at the same times, and they often weren’t respecting the sensitive environments they were visiting. To learn more about how the state might address the growing problem, I had coffee on the 16th Street Mall with Luis Benitez, who was then the director of the nascent Colorado Outdoor Recreation Industry Office. Benitez wasn’t exactly what I was expecting from the director of an agency housed within the Colorado Office of Economic Development and International Trade. He was gregarious, confident, funny, compelling, and adamant that the state needed to find a way…
Freelance Photographer Joshua W. Strong had been an avid cyclist and adventure photographer for years, but those passions hadn’t collided until summer 2020, when Strong brought a camera to a local bike race. Since then, Strong, who uses gender-neutral pronouns, has been involved in Colorado’s cycling scene, making them the perfect choice to capture images for “Holy Gravel!” (page 62), 5280’s guide to gravel biking. For Strong, though, one of the most important aspects of gravel biking is diversity. “There are many ways individuals have faced barriers in the sport, whether that be gender, race, financial background,” Strong says. “I think it is important that the community do work to welcome, engage, and enable people to enjoy this wonderful sport.” That desire for inclusivity extended to Strong’s photo shoot for…
• Next to that Colorful Colorado sign (selfie!)• After you hucked that backy off a cornice• Around the campfire• After anyone starts struggling emotionally• Before anyone starts struggling emotionally• In line for tickets at the big game (go local sports!)• Between the opening act and the headliner• The front seat of a pickup on your way to work• The tailgate of a pickup after youʼre done with work• The gun range (of course)• The gun store (of course)• The gun show (OK we get it)• In the checkout line at the organic grocer• After that meeting that couldʼve been an email• While youʼre mucking the stalls• The trailhead (Colorado has more than 1,400 of 'em!)• While youʼre setting up a ground blind• During potlucks at your house of worship• When…
Gregory Alan Isakov has always had a green thumb, but it wasn’t until 2009 that the now 43-year-old singer-songwriter fully grasped the role farming plays in his creative process. Growing up in Philadelphia, the South African–born musician performed in local bands, but he moved to Boulder in 2000 to study horticulture at Naropa University, because a career as a touring musician felt unobtainable. “It was like playing Metroid and trying to beat the boss at the end,” he says. Even so, Isakov saw a chance to make a living off his music alone after his songs caught the ears of some veteran acts, earning him invitations on three separate tours supporting Brandi Carlile, Ani DiFranco, and the Indigo Girls. Saying yes to all three meant turning his attention away from…
IN PLAINS’ SIGHT During the summer of 2021, Denver photographer Juan Fuentes documented the lives of modern-day Mexican cowboys in the Eastern Plains town of Bennett—from rows of water tanks and fence lines (“Untitled,” pictured) to cowboy hats being sold alongside El Torito Regio sauce at local markets—for his series 36 Miles East. NOTE TO SELF Grace Kennison’s “I Remember Being Alone”—in which a sword-wielding angel bears down on a cowgirl holding a knife to a snarling dog—“explores my desire to pull myself out from under the hard, isolate American soul.” The painting, in other words, is an acknowledgment of white women’s culpability in genocide and settler colonialism. It is also a rejection of the belief that violence was justified to tame the West. “I am expelling myself from the…
It wasn’t the moose blocking the path that stopped me. It was my husband—when I walked straight into his back. At least 10 minutes had passed since I’d last seen the flash of his blue shirt amid the pine and fir trees in Rocky Mountain National Park. That wasn’t unusual: Our hikes often turned into solo missions. His six-foot-two frame and singular focus on our destination (be it a lake, summit, or cascade) regularly outpaced my it’s-about-the-journey hiking style. I was so surprised to crash into him—and to see a moose 50 yards in front of me—that I didn’t even glower at him for leaving me behind. Our speed disparity had irked me for years. It was an incompatibility I couldn’t square with the rest of our relationship. What was…
