This promises to be the most memorable Telluride Christmas ever--in every sense of the word, positive and negative.

We've finally made it. Big Time. The Platinum Enchilada. There's no turning back. For better or for worse, we're Chamonix, we're Malibu, we're the Hamptons, we're Two Bunch Palms, we're... well, we're either God-Blessed or Totally Screwed, depending on who you talk to and what kind of mood they're in.

Expect a Van Cleef and Arpels and a Blackglamma to open any month now, up at Mountain Village... along with an "Escort Service", and a private club so exclusive nobody can get in!

On the other hand-- thank the Mountain Spirits there is another hand-- oh what a lovely holiday season this is turning out to be.

The other night I went out about three a.m. with my cross-country skis and took a run up through the Marble Orchard, dear old Lone Pine Cemetery, to the mine.

It could have been fifty or a hundred years ago. The moon glistened on the fresh hard-frozen snow. A coyote loped away, up toward Royers Gulch. A Great Horned owl flapped by, checking me out...

Snowslides and mini-avalanches were drizzling like diamonds off the cliffs to the south. There wasn't a sound to be heard, but the scrape of my skis and the 1`chunk of my poles and my breathing, as I wandered through the night.

We may have made it, but we haven't Lost it...not yet anyway.