Around the corner I run into a guy laquering a wooden sculpture at least seven feet high of an eagle feeding her young. It's fabulously detailed and powerful in its expression.

How long did it take, I ask, to make?

About a month," he says.

What do you expect to get for it?

"Ten grand," he answers.

As it turns out, he's quite serious. The building behind him houses a studio filled with many other sculptures equally as impressive.

One of the really great things about this festival is that after we've had a year of stories about gang wars and uprisings and strife everywhere in the world, it brings back a sense that there remains something beautiful and good in people. It restores your faith. It was o.k. in Telluride not to be rich. It was o.k. to be different. The presence of a limousine would have been quite out of place. It wasn't about power or wealth. I didn't see anyone trying to be king. In a certain way it was like going to church. A higher spirit was called for, a certain graciousness. We need that now and then, I think.

A woman passed me on the street talking to a friend: "I'm so impressed with this place. I feel like I just want to cry."

In a town that boasts such celebrity residents as Tom Cruise, Oprah Winfrey and Oliver Stone, this Alps-like mountain village of little more than 1500 is pretty laid back. The houses look like the kind you see in children's art: simple, straight-forward wood-frame, with high peaks; symmetrical with a door in the middle and small square windows on each side.

The lots are small, few more than twenty-five feet wide by fifty feet in depth. One two-story I saw was a mere fifteen feet by fifteen feet. Perhaps it best reflects a kind of intimacy that I felt while in Telluride, an intimacy unlike any you'll find anywhere else.

Beneath one of the most beautiful and one of the highest waterfalls in the United States is a community that for twenty-five years straight
has been hosting a bluegrass festival that is world class. It's hip, hippy, countrified, sophisticated and laid-back big-city all in one. Festivarians, as they are called here, leave their sports utility vehicles and beat-up Volkswagen buses parked in the fields two and three miles away and walk or bike into town. Or they can ride a free bus that comes by every ten minutes or so. The driver accepts tips.

The town has become a huge mall. I was allowed to drive in on a temporary pass that was good for only two hours. The only vehicles allowed to stay within the town limits are those belonging to residents or employees and a few with privileged passes. There is one campground in town but every space in it had been taken within days of the date last fall when tickets went on sale.

Everywhere everyone smiles. You feel like you've suddenly bumped into 15,000 close friends. Conspicuously absent are the Burger Kings, McDonalds, Radio Shacks and other large chain stores. Wal-Mart hasn't made it either. Everything is locally owned and operated. It's enormously refreshing. You see businesses with names like Get Fleeced, The Bad Ass, Fat Alley, and Fly Me to the Moon Saloon.

The town hall badly needs a fresh coat of paint. But you can ride a gondola free year-around up one of the steep canyon slopes 2000 feet to a view that has been judged by some to be one of the top three in the the world.

The festival has been sold out for two months. I ask a local police woman what sort of ticket scalping has been going on. She shrugs. "We haven't paid much attention." The reason is obvious. There are potential buyers but no sellers.

The festival was conceived in 1973 by local musicians John Herndon, Bruce Lites, J.B. Mateotti, Kooster McAllister and Fred Shellman, known collectively as Fall Creek. After the group attended the 3rd Annual Walnut Valley Festival and national picking championship in Winfield, Kansas, they decided try out something similar in their own home town.

The first Telluride bluegrass Festival was combined with local Fourth of July festivities, stretching over a four-day period, with attendance of about 1,000. New Grass Revival was to become an integral part of the project, headlining the festival for several years. Kooster McAllister's relationship with Stone County, Inc., a promotion company for New Grass, was pivotal.

In 1975 the 2nd Telluride Bluegrass Festival shifted up to the last week in June, and in 1976 Kooster and Herndon left the promotions company to form a band. Fred Shellman purchased their shares for $400 each. The new partnership of Shellman and Mateotti was joined then by Helen Subach. In 1976, attendance had risen to 3,000, and by 1978 7,500 people came.

In 1977 two albums were produced by Flying Fish Records: Too Late To turn Back Now and The Festival Tapes. Two more albums were produced in 1979 by this same company: Jackrabbit, by the Doug Dillard Band, and Tellulive, a collection featuring a guitar jam with Doc Watson, Norman Blake, Dan Crary and Sam Bush on fiddle.

The Festival has suffered financial strain over the years, and never broke even until 1982. Had it not been for a loan of $25,000 from bluegrass fan Durfee Day in 1980, the festival would have expired. In-town production costs had risen from $3,500 to more than $45,000. In the beginning musical acts were paid a mere $600. By now they had reached $65,000 in order to secure such entertainers as Ricky Skaggs, Rosanne Cash, Leon Russell, and Jesse Winchester in 1981, and Willie Nelson in 1982, and others since such as David Grisman and Peter Rowan in 1986, Bela Fleck, Sam Bush, Jerry Douglas, Mark O'Connor and Edgar Meyer in 1987, New Grass, the Telluride All-Stars and David Bromberg, together with Little Feat in 1988, Bruce Hornsby, the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band and MIchael Martin Murphy in 1989, Shawn Colvin, James Taylor, Mary Chapin Carpenter in 1990, the Indigo Girls in 1991, Bill Monroe in 1993, Emmylou Harris in 1995, Allison Kraus and Union Station and a reunion of the band formerly known as Old and In the Way. In 1997 Johnny Cash made an appearance, together with John Prine and David Crosby, Jeff Pevar and James Raymond.

By 1984, attendance had reached 10,000, and by 1991 there were 16,000.

Although by agreement with the community tickets are no longer sold beyond the 10,000 mark, many more people come to town during the four-day festival period just to participate in the warm atmosphere, play music in the streets, sell beads--or lemonade as I witnessed two children doing, at $1.00 per cup. Each year many of the entertainers who had been showcased in earlier years returned. This year saw on Thursday, June 18th, Blue HIghway, Tony Furtado, the Nashville Bluegrass Band, and String Cheese Incident during the afternoon. Then Catie Curtis, a special bluegrass reunion with David Grisman, Peter Rowan, Vassar Clements, and Herb Pederson, then at 10 p.m. until 11:30 p.m. close it was Big Head Todd and the Monsters.

The lineup on Friday began with Washboard Chaz and Pastor Mustard, continuing with Ryan Shupe and the RubberBand, John Cowan, Out of the Woodwork, Peter Himmelman, the David Grisman Quintet, Emmylou HArris and Bela Fleck and the Flecktones with Bruce Hornsby.

On Saturday festivarians were treated to Tony Rice and David Grisman, John Hartford and Friends, Jerry Douglas, Tim O'Brien and Maura O'Connell, Leftover Salmon, Hot Rize, Nanci Griffith and the Blue Moon Orchestra, and the Sam Bush Band with John Cowan.