In 1972 I bought my first ten-speed bike at a shop in Boulder. There are nothing but mountains around Boulder, but I had gotten into shape hiking with my boyfriend Rick for the previous weeks and thought I was ready to roll on two wheels. We didn’t wear helmets in those days, and I had a bandana tied around my long hair. Coming down a winding mountain road, I was cruising at maybe thirty when my bandana threatened to fly off. I took my hand off the handlebar to grab it, and the bike started to wobble. When I squeezed the brake handles, the bike surprised me by coming to a quick stop, shooting me headfirst over the handlebars. Somehow I thought to duck my head and landed on my back, ripping my tee shirt and rolling down the slope until a guardrail stopped me. I remember Rick standing over me, an expression of terror on his face. The impact knocked the wind out of me and I couldn’t move or speak. Someone must have called an ambulance. Luckily nothing was broken, but I was kept in the hospital overnight and released the next day with bruises and scrapes.

This time Harry and I traveled to Boulder via Bug. His son Will, a musician, artist, and outdoorsman, lives there with his girlfriend Mira and her two kids. We rented an apartment nearby so as not to crowd into their little house cluttered with pre-teen trappings and Will’s African drums and stringed instruments.

When they gave us a tour of downtown the first evening, Boulder was just as I remembered. The pedestrian mall is lined with craft shops, bookstores, and eateries, and street performers make a good living from visitors. There may be more lights and prices are higher, but not much else has changed. The crowds are still young and healthy looking, but now they dress in upscale sporty gear instead of the patched jeans and Mexican shirts of the early ’70s.

The next morning Will wanted to show us some of the small towns outside the city. Harry and I climbed into the Bug and followed him and his family in his aging Toyota up steep and narrow mountain roads. March is mud season in Colorado and when we ran out of pavement, the Bug’s faded denim blue turned an earthy brown. On the gravy-like roads, we slowed to first gear to get through muck and snow patches, even though it was close to seventy degrees in the March sun. Distant ridges seemed to explode into an impossibly blue sky. Some of the homes devastated by storm floods the year before had been rebuilt. Other homes were still sitting cockeyed in the river below the hill upon which they once perched, reminders of the overwhelming power of nature.

Temperatures dropped as we rose up the mountain, and by the time we got to the tiny village where Mira was raised, it was in the mid-forties. Ironically, the village is called Wall Street. I’m not sure how the name came about because the town—if one can call it that—is nothing more than a cluster of houses clinging to hillsides and one post office. Mira’s dad built their house with a fireplace made with local stones. Over the years he added rooms with stained glass windows of various shapes so that the house looks like a home for overgrown fairies, charming in a childlike way. A baby grand piano sits by the hearth next to an incongruous Victorian sofa. It must have been fun to grow up there.

Mira’s parents are divorced now, and her mother was in Boulder for play rehearsal. Prima had been an actress and model in New York City before she fell in love with the rugged craftsman who moved her to Colorado. He dug a pond for swimming and ice skating and put a stone sauna next to it, heated with a wood stove. When she was pregnant with her first child, Mira moved home to have the baby. They are so far up the mountain that when Mira went into labor, the midwife couldn’t arrive in time, so her mother and dad delivered her healthy son.

Four miles farther up the dirt road is a gold mining village called Sunset. Mira’s brother Michael, his wife and two young children were renting a rustic log cabin for a few weeks. The cabin was built in the 1890s for the local schoolteacher who did her best to educate the miners’ children. In the kitchen, a woodstove glowed with a warm fire. A small table and some shelves were the only other furniture. The chinks between the logs were mudded with a white substance. The building was shelter and not much more.

Michael is a compact fellow with Mira’s strawberry blond hair and powder blue eyes. Mira tends to be a quiet listener, but Michael is a storyteller. While we stood in the front yard, he regaled us with tales about gold and silver mining and the miles of shafts tunneling into the mountain. A train ran on an elevated track to carry out ore and titanium, and we could still see the tracks cut into the hill’s slope. Sunset was a thriving community then, and Michael joked that there was once talk of making it the capital of Colorado instead of Denver.

He paused to pick up a set of teeth from some animal, the backbone next to it picked clean.

“What wildlife have you seen up here?” I asked.

He laughed. “That’s a whole other set of stories. There are black bear and coyotes and a bobcat that visits regularly. But the lions are the biggest menace.” He said mountain lions prowl a sixty-mile radius picking off pets, easy prey. It takes a month for a lion to make a complete circle so if you see one in April, he’ll be back in May. One November late in the evening, Michael told us, he heard screams from the front of the house. His old mutt was outside, and Michael dashed into the kitchen in his underwear, grabbed a kitchen knife, and went to the front porch. A lion had the dog pinned down, tearing at its throat. He yelled and waved the knife, and the lion let go of the dog. When it ran off, the wounded pet gave chase. By morning when the dog hadn’t returned, Michael figured the lion had gotten the best of him. Then he heard commotion on the porch and opened the door to find the dog and the lion going at it again. He grabbed the dog, shoved it into the house and slammed the door shut before realizing his hatchet and shotgun were inside. He had no defense except to kick at the big cat and yell himself hoarse. The lion gave up finally, but it was hours before Michael’s adrenaline level returned to normal.

As we were about to leave, I asked Will if he and Mira have aspirations of living on the remote mountainside where she grew up. Will said maybe someday, but for now Mira prefers the amenities of Boulder. If she and Will do move back to Wall Street, Harry and I will be happy to visit—but only briefly. Kicking mountain lions and reading by oil lamp is not for us, and we were grateful to drive the muddy Bug back down to civilization.