"You gotta have the hicks. There's gotta be a hicks' quotient to balance things out."

My buddy and I were riding our mountain bikes on a singletrack rim trail, jawing when we weren't climbing trail made tricky from what my buddy tells me is "glacial outwash" - deposits of smooth rocks. His background is geology and hydrology, and wherever we go, he runs commentary on the subjects. Last year, we ran Cataract Canyon, just the two of us - imagine my education.

This day, however, I'm sticking to rocky and he keeps on and on with stuff like glacial outwash . . . and on. But when I say amber or porter, he says beer. Just beer. In addition to being educated, he's a good ol' boy, a trait he shares with a skookum brotherhood of hicks of, from and for Colorado. I suppose my Montana upbringing appropriates me to the family, which may explain our friendship, although my homies may delegate me a redneck. Whatever class of hicks I belong to, I've been swayed by a decade of Northwest living to a side with beer and coffee snobs. My "bro'" takes his beverages irresponsibly free of texture or color (or flavor), while mine come in a variety of chewy colors and jazzed magnificence.

On the trail, we weren't talking specifically about hicks, we were decrying Four Corners hamlets being cheapened culturally by wealth. Thing is, we, all stripes and flavors, live in the Four Corners, a place that is getting found out. The jig is up, as Rob Schultheis writes of Telluride in this issue, pg. 54. On pg. 21, Mary Sojourner confronts a symptom of the growth of her beloved Flagstaff, and references it as a virus.

Harsh stuff, painful realities - some of what we chew on in this issue. But no more glacial outwash, I promise.

Enjoy!