09/04/2026
BEARANGO'S DAILY GRIZZ
Edition #291 — Friday, September 4, 2026
Good morning, Durango. It is Friday, September 4th, the first Friday of the month, which around here means the galleries stay open late and Main Avenue turns into one long conversation. It is also National Wildlife Day, National Spice Blend Day, National Macadamia Nut Day and National Newspaper Carrier Day, and because it is the first Friday of September it is also College Colors Day, National Food Bank Day and National Chianti Day. Busy little date.
🐻 A NOTE FROM BIG BEAR
National Wildlife Day usually gets celebrated with photographs of things that live somewhere else. Snow leopards. Whale sharks. Something magnificent and safely far away.
Durango's version of wildlife awareness happened Wednesday, and it was a bear sitting up in a tree outside the Gaslight Twin Cinema on Fifth Street, well hidden in the branches, while local law enforcement figured out what to do about it. The Herald ran the photo. Not a nature documentary. A Wednesday.
That is the honest shape of this in our town. We do not observe wildlife here so much as negotiate with it. And the negotiation is going badly for the bears right now, because it is early September, which is hyperphagia season, when a bear needs something in the neighborhood of twenty thousand calories a day and does not much care whether they come from oak brush or from your recycling bin. Forest-wide bear activity has been very high since early August. Colorado's new law allowing harsher penalties for feeding bears took effect this summer, and while nobody in Durango is out there deliberately handing out sandwiches, an unsecured trash can on Wednesday night is a decision, whether or not you meant it as one.
So here is today's ask, and it is small. Tonight is warm and dry, and Saturday and Sunday are shaping up sunny and hot, which means the grills come out and the coolers come out and the trash gets full. Bring the can in tonight. Not this fall. Not when you get around to it. Tonight, before you sit down to dinner.
A bear that finds food at your house does not become your bear. It becomes a bear with a file. And that file has an ending nobody enjoys.
While we are on the subject of species worth keeping around, Spring Creek Horse Rescue outside Durango turns fifty this year. Fifty years of giving equines a lifelong home when nobody else would. That is a long time to keep showing up for animals that cannot thank you. Seems like the right week to say so out loud.
Grizzzzly grateful for a town that mostly gets this right.
🌤️ DURANGO WEATHER
No watches, warnings or advisories in effect this morning. The National Weather Service in Grand Junction updated the Durango forecast at 6:31 AM.
Today: partly sunny, high near 83, with a 20 percent chance of showers and thunderstorms after noon. Light and variable wind becoming south southwest 5 to 10 mph in the afternoon, gusting as high as 20. Tonight: partly cloudy, low around 53, with a 20 percent chance of showers and storms before midnight.
HERE IS THE PATTERN NOTE, AND IT IS THE MOST USEFUL SENTENCE IN TODAY'S EDITION. Earlier in the week the outlook had the monsoon coming back Friday afternoon and staying parked through the holiday. It has softened, and it has shifted. Saturday is now SUNNY with a high near 83. Sunday is MOSTLY SUNNY and hot, high near 86. The moisture does not really arrive until Sunday night, and then LABOR DAY MONDAY carries a 50 percent chance of showers and thunderstorms with a high near 80.
Translate that into a plan: the two good days of this three-day weekend are Saturday and Sunday, and the wet one is the holiday itself. If you have one big outside thing you want to do, do it tomorrow or Sunday morning, and save Monday for the thing that works in the rain.
Beyond that, Tuesday mostly sunny near 83 with a slight storm chance after noon, Wednesday mostly sunny near 85 with storms around, Thursday partly sunny near 84 with storms around. Overnight lows all week in the low to mid 50s. Fall is standing just off stage clearing its throat.
📰 DURANGO UPDATE
SPRING CREEK HORSE RESCUE CELEBRATES FIFTY YEARS. The rescue outside Durango marked a half century of operation this week. Per the Herald, the organization provides a lifelong home for equines that need one, which is a meaningfully different promise than finding them a placement and moving on. Fifty years of hay bills is its own kind of monument.
A BEAR WAS TREED OUTSIDE THE GASLIGHT TWIN CINEMA. On Wednesday a bear was spotted well hidden in the branches of a tree outside the Gaslight Twin Cinema on Fifth Street, prompting a response from local law enforcement. The Herald ran the photograph. If you needed a reminder of what season it is, that is the reminder.
THE FOUR CORNERS MOTORCYCLE RALLY WILL HONOR THE LATE SENATOR NIGHTHORSE. Colorado's longest-running motorcycle rally kicked off Thursday afternoon and runs four days, and per the Herald this year's edition will honor the late Senator Nighthorse. Expect a lot of bikes downtown, a lot of visitors, and a lot of noise on Main between now and Sunday. Rally activity is centered at Durango Harley-Davidson, running from 9 AM today.
DURANGO WILL END ITS FLOCK SAFETY CONTRACT IN 2027. The city is ending its agreement with Flock Safety, though as the Herald put it, the automated license plate readers are not going away, they are changing brands. Worth reading the whole piece before you form an opinion in either direction, because the headline and the substance point in slightly different directions.
SATURDAY NIGHT LIGHTS ARE COMING TO RAY DENNISON MEMORIAL FIELD. Fort Lewis College is moving toward evening football games at Ray Dennison Memorial Field, with the hope that they become a lasting tradition. On College Colors Day that feels like the right item to close on. Also worth noting, and it is a small thing that is not a small thing: the Durango Herald claimed 27 press awards this week, including recognition for general excellence in news writing, photography and design. On National Newspaper Carrier Day, in a country that has lost a staggering number of local papers, having a real one that wins real awards is not something to take for granted.
🚵 OUTDOOR RECREATION
THE ANIMAS. The USGS gage at Durango read 195 cubic feet per second at 6:30 AM this morning, with a water temperature of 16.5 Celsius, which is 61.7 Fahrenheit. That is a DAWN reading, directly comparable to the dawn numbers we have been logging. Yesterday's dawn read was 208 cfs and 59.4 degrees, so flow came off a little and the water warmed better than two degrees under yesterday's sunshine. Still a small fraction of average flow for the date. The river is not in trouble this morning, but it is not comfortable either.
Colorado Parks and Wildlife's voluntary fishing closure from noon to midnight on the Animas through town, from 32nd Street to the Rivera Bridge, plus the Dolores and the San Juan, has been in place since July 13. WE HAVE NOT BEEN ABLE TO INDEPENDENTLY RE-CONFIRM ITS CURRENT STATUS THIS WEEK, SO TREAT THAT AS ITS LAST KNOWN STATE AND CHECK WITH CPW BEFORE YOU PLAN AROUND IT. Either way, the honest advice on a warm sunny weekend is the same: fish early, fish the cold water, and put the rod down when the sun gets high. The San Juan tailwater below Navajo Dam is the cold-water answer if you want to fish all day without wondering whether you should be.
FIRE. San Juan National Forest Zone 1 remains under STAGE I fire restrictions and Zone 2 remains under NO restrictions, unchanged since July 30 under Forest Order 02-13-00-26-11. Zone 2 is the congressionally designated wilderness, Lizard Head, Hermosa, Weminuche and South San Juan, plus the high country outside them. Stage I means fires are allowed ONLY in the permanent metal or concrete pits and grates installed by the Forest Service at developed campgrounds and picnic areas. They patrol it and they write tickets. Ranger districts: Dolores 970-882-7296, Columbine 970-884-2512, Pagosa 970-264-2268. Wildfire information line 970-403-5212.
CLOSURES. The Mainstem Hermosa Creek culvert project closure on NFSR 578, Forest Order 02-13-08-26-06, takes effect TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 8. That is four days out. If Hermosa was on your Labor Day list, this weekend is your window. Rio Blanco Fire road closures remain in effect on the Pagosa Ranger District under Order 02-13-06-26-12.
MUSHROOMS. The Purgatory Mushroom Festival runs tonight through Sunday afternoon, and the guided Mushroom Foray goes Saturday from 9 AM to 1 PM with expert guides leading groups through the forests above Purgatory. Festival pass is 169 dollars. A wet August followed by a warm dry weekend is close to ideal timing for this, and doing it with somebody who knows what they are looking at is the entire point.
🥾 HIKING TRAIL OF THE DAY: GRANDVIEW RIDGE TRAIL SYSTEM, WITH CARBON JUNCTION
Today's trail comes from durangotrails.org, which is our only source for this section.
THE STATS, straight from Durango Trails: Region 1, In Town. Five miles from Durango to the trailhead. Difficulty spans Beginner through Intermediate to Advanced, which is unusual and is the whole appeal. Time Needed listed as Quick. Map coordinates 37.223951, -107.856570. Eleven named trails in the system: Old Car Loop, Yellow Brick Road, Skull Rock, Grandview Ridge Road, Crites Connect, Sidewinder, Cowboy, Sale Barn, Big Canyon, South Rim and Carbon Junction.
ON CONDITIONS: the site's condition field for this system currently reads Seasonal, with an empty notes field. That is a category note about the system rather than a report on today, and it is neither a warning nor an all clear. It also does not account for the heat, which is today's actual variable.
TODAY'S HIGHLIGHTED SEGMENT IS CARBON JUNCTION, a moderate 2.1 miles open to all non-motorized use. Grandview Trails are reached from the Big Canyon Trailhead or the Sale Barn lot. For Big Canyon, take Highway 550/160 to Dominguez Drive at the Walmart intersection and turn toward Durango Motor Company, then park about a hundred yards up at the designated Big Canyon area. For Sale Barn, take Main south to Dominguez, turn toward Durango Motor Company, right at the stop sign onto the frontage road heading south, then left onto the dirt road just before the frontage road meets 550/160. You can also come over Telegraph from Horse Gulch, which is the long, satisfying way in.
WHY THIS SYSTEM ON WILDLIFE DAY, and this is Big Bear's read rather than anything printed on the site: Grandview is the edge. It is the seam where the mesa runs into the subdivisions, the Walmart parking lot, the frontage road and the back fences. It is not wilderness and it does not pretend to be. And that is exactly why it belongs in today's edition, because the place where people and wildlife actually meet in Durango is not the Weminuche. It is right here, five miles from downtown, where a game trail crosses a singletrack crosses a driveway. If you want to understand this week's bear in a tree downtown, go walk the seam.
THE HAZARD TODAY IS NOT LIGHTNING AND IT IS NOT EXPOSURE. This is low, dry, in-town mesa country with no treeline to worry about and only a 20 percent storm chance after noon. The hazard is heat, sun and the total absence of shade or water. Take more water than you think, go early or go after five, and remember that warm rock in early September is still snake weather. Give anything you hear a wide berth and keep the dog on a leash, which on Wildlife Day is not a rule so much as a courtesy to everybody living out there.
Family option any day of the week: Water Tank Road, Rail Road and Gas Well Road are the family-friendly routes in this neighborhood, and the paved Animas River Trail is always the all-ages, all-abilities answer.
Trail information and conditions courtesy of durangotrails.org.
🚴 DURANGO AT THE VUELTA
STAGE 12, VERA TO CALAR ALTO, Thursday, a summit finish and the hardest day since Aitana.
JAKOB OMRZEL of Bahrain-Victorious won it alone in 4 hours 29 minutes 53 seconds, and won it big. Urko Berrade of Equipo Kern Pharma came in second at 1 minute 56 seconds. Santiago Buitrago made it a Bahrain one-three at 2:13. Alexey Lutsenko fourth at 2:49, Mauri Vansevenant fifth at 2:53. Then the red jersey group: Enric Mas sixth at 2:56, Felix Gall seventh at 3:23, Primoz Roglic eighth on the same time, Gregor Muhlberger ninth, Richard Carapaz tenth at 3:50, Oscar Onley twelfth.
SEPP KUSS FINISHED 20TH, six minutes and forty-five seconds down. On the general classification he slipped one place, from seventh to EIGHTH, and now sits 7 minutes 58 seconds behind Mas.
GC AFTER STAGE 12, verified this morning on procyclingstats: 1. Enric Mas, Movistar, 40:31:51. 2. Primoz Roglic at 1:45. 3. Felix Gall at 2:06. 4. Richard Carapaz at 3:53. 5. Oscar Onley at 4:29. 6. Mattias Skjelmose at 4:59. 7. Jakob Omrzel at 7:42. 8. SEPP KUSS at 7:58.
A SOURCING NOTE, because we would rather tell you than bluff: procyclingstats prints a general classification table whose team column sometimes shifts out of alignment with the rider names, so we verified every rider in that list against their own profile link rather than reading the team cell. For that reason we are naming teams only where we are certain of them.
NOW THE STORY, WHICH IS THE PART THAT MATTERS. Carry the numbers forward and you can see the whole arc. Kuss was outside the published top 25 after the Monaco time trial. Fifth by stage 7. Fourth when Pogacar abandoned. Seventh after Aitana. Eighth after Calar Alto. That is a rider who climbed a long way up and has been sliding gently back down for a week, and there is no point pretending otherwise on a stage where he gave up nearly four minutes.
But look at the actual gap. He is nineteen seconds behind seventh place, and seventh place is a man who just won from a breakaway rather than a man who out-climbed him. Three minutes five seconds separates Kuss from the podium. There is a second individual time trial still to come in the final week and there are summit finishes on the road to Granada, and the Durango kid has never been the guy who wins the first mountain. He is the guy who is still there in week three when other people are not.
STAGE 13 IS TODAY: Almunecar to Loja, 192.8 kilometers, 3,277 vertical meters, three categorized climbs including the Puerto de Granada, and a final kilometer averaging 3.3 percent. Start time 12:41 local. Average temperature forecast for the stage is 33 Celsius, which is 91 Fahrenheit. Read it as a lumpy, hot breakaway day with an uphill kick at the end rather than a day the classification changes hands.
QUINN SIMMONS: re-checked again this morning and still not appearing on the Lidl-Trek Vuelta roster. We report him as unconfirmed and we are not going to guess.
Results verified at procyclingstats.com. Local cycling coverage at durangoherald.com.
♨️ HOT SPRING OF THE DAY: DESERT REEF HOT SPRING, FLORENCE, COLORADO
Powered by soakerseeker.com — a fresh soak featured every single morning.
Almost every hot spring on earth sells you the same thing: heat. Desert Reef, sitting on 77 and a half acres in the scrubby foothills outside Florence, Colorado, does something almost nobody else does. In the summer it deliberately cools its pools BELOW body temperature.
Their artesian well comes up from well over a thousand feet down at 125 to 135 degrees. They cool it by air convection and geothermal cooling, and they tune the target by season: over 100 degrees in winter, and in summer a range of roughly 96 to 108 across the property with the big pool kept below body temp. The result is a mineral soak you can actually stay in on a 95-degree afternoon instead of one you have to keep climbing out of. The blue cast in the water is travertine. Almost all the pools are flow-through, and by their own accounting roughly 98 percent of the water finds its way back to the Arkansas River.
The main pool is 36 by 50 feet and holds 40,400 gallons, with four more pools besides. Every single Tuesday all of them are drained and scrubbed, and water samples go to the public health department monthly, which is more transparency than most places offer.
The place has a real history. It started in the 1980s as a wood-walled pool built by a group of friends. A man called LJ, living out in the southern Colorado desert, built it into something, and when he met his wife Ro they kept it a private sanctuary. It ran as a members-only club through the 2000s, closed in 2021 for a full renovation, and reopened in spring 2022 with more pools, a new bathhouse, Airstream and tiny home stays, and paved pathways for accessibility. There are site-specific art installations scattered around the property, and no shade over the pools, so bring a hat.
ACCESS, AND PLEASE READ THIS ONE BEFORE YOU DRIVE, BECAUSE THERE ARE MORE RULES HERE THAN USUAL AND THEY ARE NOT DECORATIVE. Desert Reef is 18 AND OVER for regular hours. It is CLOSED TUESDAYS except to overnight guests, and Wednesday from 10 to 4 is members and Splash Pass holders only. It is SUITS OPTIONAL during all open hours EXCEPT FRIDAYS, when suits are required from opening until 6:30 PM, so if you were picturing today specifically, that is your answer. Reservations are strongly recommended and walk-ins are taken only if there is room. Groups are capped at six people and they do not host bachelor or bachelorette parties. They also have an unusual policy that will absolutely ruin a trip if you do not know it in advance: single men, or groups of men, must be accompanied by a partner or a woman in order to visit, at all times. No pets. No fires or grilling of any kind, because they sit in high desert drought country. No cell phones in the pool area, and no lockers, so leave valuables in the car. No lifeguard.
RATES, straight from the operator's own site this morning: weekday passes are 25 dollars and cover Tuesday through Thursday plus the Friday 10 AM and 1 PM soak times. Weekend passes are 35 dollars and cover Friday 4 PM and 7 PM, Saturday and Sunday. Active and retired military get 20 percent off day soaking. A Splash Pass is 135 dollars, good for six soaks for one person or three soaks for two. Overnight guests get soaking included from check-in to check-out. Cancellations need two hours notice for a refund. Hours are 10 AM to 9:30 PM most days. 1194 County Road 110, Florence, CO 81226. 719-784-6134.
BIG BEAR'S TAKE: this one is roughly five hours from Durango, which puts it outside the day-trip conversation and squarely into the "we are going somewhere" conversation. But here is the version that works. Florence sits in Royal Gorge country, 45 minutes from Colorado Springs. Drive over on a Saturday in October when the Arkansas Valley cottonwoods go gold, do the gorge, and then come here in the evening when the desert cools off and the stars come out over a pool that is 100 degrees again because winter is coming. Book a tiny home. Leave the phone in the car, which they will make you do anyway, and which is the actual product they are selling.
Find this soak and hundreds more across the country at soakerseeker.com.
🎶 MUSIC AND EVENTS
TONIGHT IS THE BIG ONE. Durango's FIRST FRIDAY and the DURANGO GALLERIES' ANNUAL FALL GALLERY WALK land on the same evening, which does not happen every month. Doors open across downtown and at the Smiley Building from 4:00 and 4:30 PM. First Friday is hosted by the Durango Creative District, with music, original performances and featured artists throughout downtown.
Highlights we could confirm for tonight:
TOH-ATIN GALLERY, 4:30 PM. Fall Gallery Walk combined with their First Friday open house, featuring the silver and turquoise jewelry of Navajo silversmith JEANETTE DALE, plus Navajo weavings by Ian Victorino and master weavers Bernyce Largo and Alice Begay. Live music from local favorites Jason Thies and Jeff Haspel. More on Jeanette below, because she is today's Artist Spotlight and her story is remarkable.
THE ARTROOM'S 5TH BIRTHDAY BASH, 4:00 PM at the Smiley Building. The ArtRoom Collective, a group of roughly two dozen artists working out of the renovated auditorium in the old Emory Smiley Junior High, turns five today. There is a 100 dollar gift card to win. First Friday ArtRoom follows at 5:30 with an open studio, snacks and local work for sale.
MATTHEW SIEVERS: ILLUMINATED EXPRESSION, 5:00 PM, opening reception at Blue Rain Gallery during the Gallery Walk, with the artist present.
SEED STUDIO STUDENT ART SHOWCASE, 6:00 PM opening reception at The Light Box at Stillwater Music. Student artwork and young musicians. Go be the adult who shows up for a fourteen-year-old's first hung piece.
ALSO TONIGHT:
Purgatory Mushroom Festival kicks off, 6:00 PM at Purgatory Resort, running through Sunday at 4 PM, 169 dollars. The Mushroom and Wine Dinner follows at 6:30 at Purgy's, 24 Sheol Street, five courses. Heads up that ticket sales for the dinner closed at midnight on Wednesday, September 2, so that one is spoken for.
Nathan Schmidt, 6:00 PM at the Diamond Belle Saloon, vintage country and southwestern. Matt Rupnow and his Rocky Mountain soul music, 6:00 PM at Union Social House. Ross Douglas on the patio at Lola's Place, 6:00 PM, free. Dustin Burley at The Office Spiritorium, 6:00 PM. Live music at Barons Creek Vineyards from 5:30, and Friday Nights at Fox Fire Farms Winery from 5:00, free admission.
Ghost Train walking tour, 6:30 PM from the Durango and Silverton depot, all ages, true history and local legend. New and Used: An Exploration of Life in Youth and Aging Through Spoken Word, 6:30 PM at Merely Underground, with members of the original Wordy Old Men cast. Bar D Chuckwagon Suppers at 4:30, cowboy music and dinner, going since 1969.
Earlier today: Veterans Friday Morning Coffee, 8 AM at American Legion Post 28, free, families and caregivers welcome. Four Corners Motorcycle Rally from 9 AM at Durango Harley-Davidson. The Silverton steam train departs at 9. Leadership Circle networking, 9 AM at the Fort Lewis College Center for Innovation. Wash for Recovery donation bike and car wash from noon at Fun Center Cycles, with Metier Motorcycle Lawyers, benefiting injured local riders.
TOMORROW AND BEYOND: Durango Farmers Market Saturday 8 AM at the TBK lot, Bayfield Farmers Market Saturday 8 AM, Community Breakfast Saturday 8 AM at the Marvel Grange, Stories in the Park Saturday 10 AM at Santa Rita. Purgatory's guided Mushroom Foray Saturday 9 AM to 1 PM. The 2nd Annual Mesa Verde Literary Festival, Saturday 9 AM in downtown Mancos. Durango Flea Market Sunday 7 AM at the fairgrounds. Wild Pride, the Four Corners Alliance for Diversity fall festival, September 9 through 12. The 2026 Economic Alliance Summit, September 10 at Sky Ute Casino. The Durango Open Studio Tour is October 17 and 18.
STILL RUNNING: Nature's Tapestry in Plein Air, the juried exhibit by the Plein Air Painters of the Four Corners, at the Durango Arts Center, 802 East 2nd Avenue, open today from noon and listed through October 10. Gallery hours Tuesday through Saturday, noon to 6 PM, free. One honest caveat we have flagged before and will keep flagging: the DAC's own website has shown a stale run of dates for this exhibit. Call 970-259-2606 to confirm before you make a special trip.
🎨 ARTIST SPOTLIGHT: JEANETTE DALE
Discipline: traditional Navajo silversmithing, heavy stamped silver set with natural turquoise and other stones.
In 1973, Jeanette Dale was working at the Fairchild Electronics plant in Shiprock, cutting computer chips out of wafers with a diamond saw. By Toh-Atin Gallery's account she was the fastest cutter in the plant and turned out the best quality work in it. Then the plant shut down and she lost the job.
So she decided to become a silversmith.
"It just came naturally to me," she says. "Soldering was just like I was born to it. I showed my first ring to a dealer and he hired me to make jewelry for him."
Sit with that for a second. The same hands that were trusted with a diamond saw and a silicon wafer picked up a torch and did not need to be taught twice. She learned the craft from her mother and then built a style that is entirely her own inside the tradition, working in what the gallery calls the traditional Navajo manner: heavy silver, deep stamping, high polish, and stones chosen to carry the piece rather than decorate it. Toh-Atin, which has been selling Native art in this town for a very long time and does not hand out compliments casually, says that if you had to name the top three traditional Navajo silversmiths working today, she would be one of them.
There is one more detail worth knowing. Her first employer gave her a piece of advice she still follows more than fifty years later: always leave a mark showing the jewelry was handmade. In an era when a machine can polish an imperfection out of anything, she deliberately leaves the evidence of the hand in. On a day when the whole internet is arguing about what is real and what is generated, that is not a quaint old habit. That is a position.
WHERE TO FIND HER WORK: Jeanette Dale is the featured artist TONIGHT at Toh-Atin Gallery, 145 W. Ninth Street, from 4:30 PM as part of the Fall Gallery Walk and their First Friday open house, alongside Navajo weavings by Ian Victorino and master weavers Bernyce Largo and Alice Begay, with live music from Jason Thies and Jeff Haspel. Her artist page and available pieces are at toh-atin.com/artists/jeanette-dale. WE COULD NOT FIND AN INSTAGRAM HANDLE FOR HER, and we would rather say so than link you to the wrong account. If you know it, put it in the comments and we will run it tomorrow.
Big Bear's closing thought: we spend a lot of words in this newsletter on mountains and rivers and things you can see from a long way off. Tonight there is a woman showing work three blocks off Main whose career began the day a factory closed on her, and who has spent fifty years making sure you can tell a person made the thing. Go stand in front of it. It is free, it takes twenty minutes, and it is the best thing happening in Durango tonight.
📈 U.S. ECONOMY OUTLOOK
All figures are Thursday's close, since we go out before the bell.
The market had its best day in about a month on Thursday. The Dow rose 295.07 points, up 0.6 percent, to 53,061.95. The S&P 500 added 0.5 percent to 7,666.60. The Nasdaq climbed 118.05 points, also 0.5 percent, to 26,217.83, carried by AI names. The engine was the bond market rather than earnings: Treasury yields halted their recent surge, and rate-hike fears eased after Fed Governor Waller signaled that a hike would not be warranted if underlying inflation keeps cooling.
Commodities told a different story. Gold slipped 0.49 percent to about 4,517.60 an ounce. Bitcoin jumped 4.7 percent to roughly 80,952. And crude oil is the number to actually watch: the October WTI contract sat near 91.84 dollars, up again on the day and up sharply on the week, following renewed U.S. strikes against Iran that also knocked more than 400 points off the Dow on Monday. Oil was near 83 dollars a week ago Friday. That is close to a 10 percent move in a week, and it is geopolitical rather than economic.
THE DURANGO TRANSLATION: our economy runs on people choosing to drive here. Oil up ten percent in a week means pump prices heading into a holiday weekend, and it means every delivery, every contractor's truck and every ranch input gets more expensive at the same time. If you run a business here that quotes jobs a few weeks out, this is the week to check whether your fuel and freight assumptions still hold, rather than the week you find out they did not.
🤖 AI NEWS AND TIP OF THE DAY
THE HEADLINES. It has been a loud week. Meta is moving toward an open-weights release of its Muse Spark model, per a post from Mark Zuckerberg, and separately has a computer-use model called Ava in closed testing inside the Meta AI desktop app. Google introduced Gemini 3.8 Flash Cyber, pitched as its most capable cybersecurity model, aimed at finding software vulnerabilities and patching them at scale. And in a release almost nobody covered, Tether AI put out an 800-million-parameter translation model supporting 18 African languages that runs FULLY OFFLINE.
THE NON-AI LESSON IN THAT LAST ONE, and it is the one that matters out here: the interesting engineering problem in 2026 is no longer only how smart a model can be. It is how small it can get and still be useful with no connection. Anybody who has lost signal past Hesperus, or tried to work from a cabin up the Florida, or watched a kid do homework on a hotspot in Ignacio, understands immediately why an offline model is a bigger deal in rural country than another leaderboard record. Watch that thread. It will reach us before the frontier models do.
AI TIP OF THE DAY: THE WILDLIFE DAY YARD AUDIT.
Today's technique is one we keep coming back to because it keeps working: TELL THE MODEL WHAT IT MAY NOT DO. A model with no constraints gives you a generic listicle. A model with a forbidden list has to actually think about your situation.
Try this, and put your own details in:
"I live in Durango, Colorado, on a quarter acre near the edge of town. It is early September and bear activity is very high. Walk my property with me and tell me the five specific attractants I most likely have and have not thought of, ranked by how likely a bear is to find them tonight. You may NOT tell me to buy a bear-proof container, install anything, build anything, or spend more than 20 dollars. You may NOT give me general bear safety advice or tell me what to do if I see one. Every item must be something I can fix in the next 45 minutes with what is already in my garage. Then add a section headed NEEDS A DECISION for anything you could not settle without knowing more about my property, and ask me about it."
Two things are doing the work there. The forbidden list blocks every easy generic answer, which forces the model down to the specific: the bird feeder you forgot, the freezer in the carport, the fruit tree nobody picks, the dog food on the porch, the grill you did not burn off. And the NEEDS A DECISION heading turns the model's uncertainty into a second useful output instead of a confident guess.
Swap the specifics and this same shape works for winterizing a house, prepping for a road trip, or cleaning out a garage on a Saturday. The technique is the deliverable, not the answer.
🍽️ CHEF'S RECIPE OF THE DAY: TOM COLICCHIO'S HERB-ROASTED RACK OF LAMB
It is National Spice Blend Day AND National Chianti Day, which is an unusually cooperative pair of observances, and today's rotation handed us Tom Colicchio. That is a good day.
Colicchio built Craft on an idea that sounds simple and almost nobody actually does: buy one very good thing and then get out of its way. No sauce hiding the protein, no fourteen components on the plate. A rack of lamb, a handful of herbs, salt, heat, rest. The herb crust here IS the spice blend, and we are giving it to you as a ratio rather than a fixed measurement so you can make it your own.
INGREDIENTS
Serves 4.
2 racks of lamb, 8 ribs each, frenched, about 1.5 pounds each
Kosher salt and freshly cracked black pepper, generously
2 tablespoons neutral oil for searing
3 tablespoons unsalted butter
4 cloves garlic, lightly smashed, skins on
4 sprigs fresh thyme
2 sprigs fresh rosemary
For the herb blend, the ratio is 4 parts flat-leaf parsley to 2 parts rosemary to 2 parts thyme to 1 part garlic:
1/2 cup flat-leaf parsley leaves, finely chopped
1/4 cup rosemary leaves, finely chopped
1/4 cup thyme leaves, finely chopped
2 tablespoons garlic, minced to a paste with a pinch of salt
2 tablespoons Dijon mustard, as the glue
2 tablespoons olive oil
METHOD
1. Pull the lamb out of the refrigerator a full hour before you cook it. This is not optional at altitude or anywhere else. Cold meat in a hot pan cooks unevenly and you cannot fix it later.
2. Pat the racks bone dry with paper towels, then season aggressively on all sides with salt and cracked pepper. More than feels right. It is a thick piece of meat and most of that seasoning ends up on the crust.
3. Heat the oven to 400 degrees. Get a heavy oven-safe skillet or a cast iron pan very hot over medium-high with the neutral oil until it just shimmers.
4. Sear the racks fat side down first, 3 to 4 minutes, until deeply browned. Do not move them around. Turn and sear the other broad side 2 to 3 minutes, then briefly stand them on the ends. In the last minute add the butter, smashed garlic, thyme and rosemary sprigs, tip the pan, and baste the meat with the foaming butter for 45 seconds. Move the racks to a plate.
5. Make the blend: combine the chopped parsley, rosemary, thyme, garlic paste and olive oil in a small bowl. Brush the seared racks all over with the Dijon, then press the herb mixture onto the fat cap and sides in a thick, even coat.
6. Stand the racks in the skillet, bones interlocked if you have two, and roast 12 to 18 minutes. START CHECKING AT 12. Pull at 122 to 125 degrees in the thickest part for medium-rare, avoiding bone.
7. REST 10 TO 12 MINUTES on a board, loosely tented. It will carry to about 130. Carve between the ribs.
CHEF'S TIP: cook to temperature, never to time. This is the single most valuable habit in home cooking and it is the one people resist longest. A 40-dollar instant-read thermometer will save you more money in unruined meat in one year than it costs. And on the herb blend, chop the herbs by hand and chop them just before you use them. A food processor bruises them and turns the crust into green paste. Rosemary in particular gets aggressive fast, which is why it is only 2 parts against 4 of parsley.
DURANGO ALTITUDE NOTE: at roughly 6,500 feet, roasting is much friendlier than baking, but two things change. First, the air is dry and evaporation is fast, so meat loses surface moisture quicker than at sea level. That is good for browning and bad for juiciness, which means your window between perfect and overdone is narrower than a sea-level recipe assumes. Check early and trust the thermometer over the clock. Second, if you deglaze that skillet into a pan sauce, water boils near 199 degrees here rather than 212, so your reduction will behave differently and can go from glossy to sticky in under a minute. Stand there and watch it.
SERVING SUGGESTION: Colicchio would tell you not to crowd it. Roasted potatoes with plenty of salt, or a pile of white beans with olive oil and lemon, and something green and bitter with a sharp vinaigrette to cut the fat. And since it is National Chianti Day, a Chianti Classico is very nearly the textbook match for lamb with rosemary. On a Friday night in September with the windows open, that is a whole evening.
🥜 ONE MORE FOR THE OTHER FOOD DAYS
It is National Macadamia Nut Day, and if you want a fifteen-second version: toast macadamias in a dry pan until they just start to smell like butter, salt them while they are hot, and let them cool. They go from bland to extraordinary in about four minutes, and nobody does it because they cost too much to experiment with. Do it once.
It is also NATIONAL FOOD BANK DAY, which we are not going to be cute about. Three-day weekends are hard on households that rely on school meals. If you have room in the budget this week, our local food assistance organizations know exactly what they are short on right now, and it is almost never what you would guess. Call and ask before you buy. Money and a phone call are usually worth more than a can.
🐾 THE GRIZZ SIGNS OFF
Bring the trash can in tonight. Go look at Jeanette Dale's silver. Do the big outside thing on Saturday or Sunday and let Labor Day be rainy.
The Grizz lives.
The Bearango Team
bearango.com | bearangoAI.com | www.soakerseeker.com | [email protected]
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