The Painter's House

The Painter's house is small, three miles south of a small town in western Colorado called Paonia. The house, or cottage, lies on forty acres of wheatgrass and sage, has a ditch with cottonwoods and willows and a small pond with a dock. The back fence of the property is up against the West Elk Mountains, near the wilderness. The house was sold to Jim Stegner by a poet named Pete Doerr, who has left him his library of poetry books. It is off the grid with solar electric and no land line telephone. Paonia itself has a hardware store, two cafés, a pizza shop, a Mexican restaurant, an ice cream parlor and a barber. It's half a mile off the county highway.

Jim has bought the house in an effort to find peace after the death of his daughter Alce.

Sulphur Creek

Sulphur Creek...