Introducing The Best Made Company Colorado Outpost
In addition to our thriving Minnesota Outpost headed by Nick Zdon, today we’re thrilled to announce the long overdue founding of our first outpost in the rockies. Matt Beaudin has been an invaluable contributor to the Best Made world, and now as an official Best Made Outpost we can only expect more: more beautiful stories, more riveting images, and more thoughtful lessons and accounts of life in a truly wonderful part of the world.
Growing up in Steamboat Springs and Manitou Springs Matt was afforded all the luxuries a kid from there expects: camping for months on end with family, pulling over on the tops of dirt passes to take naps, floating the Grand, beers in the sun with friends at the Telluride Bluegrass Festival, movie premiers under the night sky at the film festival, trips to nearby Moab to scrub down with slickrock sandpaper, massive backcountry hiking tours and steaks at Telluride’s New Sheridan Chop House. (Look that one up, please).
Matt was the Telluride Daily Planet’s youngest editor at the age of 24, and stayed in that job for five years. He left the newspaper industry to evaluate his career and contemplate what he wanted to accomplish next. Since then he’s worked for an adaptive sports program where he’s had the good fortune to meet some wonderfully inspiring people.
One of Matt’s most satisfying projects was the renovation of the historic Telluride shed where he now lives. “Who knew 500 square feet needed a king’s infantry?” With the help of his lovely girlfriend and all four parents, the shed has become a home.
Coffee, books and his dog, Anabelle are all held in special reverence. And bikes (“any kind, all the time, riding anywhere wherever I can”) have become a substantial part of Matt’s life over the years.
Most recently Matt has accepted a job with Velo magazine and velonews.com where he’ll be writing about pro cycling and spending the month of July in France covering the beautiful race that is the Tour de France. He has lived in Telluride for nearly seven years, making his way through its peaks and slithering through its valleys.
“It’s been a wonderful ride for me. It’s become my home. But this… it’s a chance to get back to making something. To churning out copy and drinking too much coffee. Cycling, I think, is the world’s most beautiful sport and I’m looking forward to standing in the throbbing masses of spectators in the Alps, consumed with the madness. It’s a chance to be there. I hope you’ll follow along with my thoughts on this state I call home and my movement through it.”
Spring Field Recording: Dawn Chorus, NYC
Early in the morning both the birds and the city come alive with the sounds of spring. Open windows let in the cool morning breeze, the first rays of sunlight, and the dawn chorus.
Stare. It is the way to educate your eye, and more. Stare, pry, listen, and eavesdrop. Die knowing something. You are not here long.
preparing to sail in central park. (Taken with instagram)
Good Tweezers Lend a Hand
By Rick Olson
In terms of size-to-pain ratio, there are few things more debilitating than slivers and splinters. In the woodshed, wood attempts to protect itself from the throes of sawblades and chisels by thwarting the carpenters hands.
Since humans began joining lumber, countless miters, rabbets and other joints have been botched by the shock inflicted by a minuscule spear of wood, and the trend will continue. But the sting of the sliver is mitigated by one fine tool; tweezers. Many, however, have made the mistake of relying on cosmetic tweezers acquired at the local grocery. As a strong warrior does not die at the tip of a dull blade, neither too does a cedar sliver wiggle loose with a weak pinch.
Years ago, my father and woodworking mentor passed on to me a pair of Uncle Bill’s Sliver Grippers. Since then, not only have the Sliver Grippers removed hundreds of deep splinters, but I’ll go so far as to say I relish the opportunity to dig out a good sliver.
There’s something about the way Uncle Bill’s are fabricated from one piece that achieves a gripping prowess unmatched by any pair of tack-welded tweezers. That combined with hand-sharpened points allows the grippers to not only embed themselves deep into a slivers nest, but hang on to the catch as well.
Sliver Grippers have found an active home in my woodshed, but their service extends well beyond four walls. You can be damn sure I’ll have a pair with me in the woods, in desert, or on the coast. From ticks to slivers, Uncle Bill’s delivers the satisfaction only attained by the instant relief of removing a burning sliver.
Our most recent acquisition for the studio. (Taken with instagram)
The Road Home
By Matthew Beaudin
In the winter, the roadside fences look like fresh sutures holding the land together.
The road leaves Montrose, CO gently before the sagebrush seas near Gunnison. It gives way to frozen farmland and the jutting towers of Monarch pass. Atop the pass, the store marking the Continental Divide is buried, its roof only peeking out from underneath the enormous drifts.
The road drops down into Salida before it’s a silver thread stitching the Arkansas River valley to the Collegiate peaks. If the earth were to come apart, it might split right there.
It’s an arrow to Manitou Springs from there, where my father and step-mom live, or a windy, depressed road to Denver with a lone gas station every 30 minutes, ablaze in the dark and shattering cold, jewels against the blackness.
They look forgotten, those stores.
I know the road’s turns, where the pavement changes colors, and where to stop along the way if I’m tired, hungry or lonely. I know it as well as I know myself. I’ve slept in my car in parking lots along the way, the dog and I in a sleeping bag in the -13º below night. Sometimes I pull over and walk the dirt roads that shoot off the highway, veins across the public lands. There’s a dirt road near Sargents, CO, that our family dog would run down chasing the over-loaded car for miles, because he was too stubborn to get in unless he was foaming-at-the-mouth tired. Bluu was his name. An unstoppable 100 pound lab and setter mix.
For years it’s meant different things to me, this road. When I was little, it was the road to my dad’s home in Colorado Springs from our summer house — a pitched tent and the public pool — in Gunnison.
He was back in school then, working for his teacher licensure. We’d backpack on the weekends and eat pack-smashed PB and J tortillas for five meals out of six.
In high school, it was the way to stadiums burning holes into the Friday night black. It’s strange to think of that now.
Years later, after I moved to Telluride, it was the way to Denver, the fabric of a first love unraveling over empty miles. Wearing with the tires.
It has been the way to things I’d rather not go to ever again. A suffocating tunnel of pavement and oppressive sky on the way to a funeral. I was run over by the tugboat clouds.
It was the way here, or what became the way home.
It collides with my past and present, but the future is nothing here but snow whispering over pavement, there and gone.
Now, it’s a road to someplace that used to be home I struggle to define and embrace. The place between things. Home is the other way.
I glance out the window now in the middle of the drive to the Front Range from Telluride on 285 and wonder what it will mean next. Things are always changing on this road. On this day, I’m driving to a job interview away from Telluride that may mean the begging of another home. Another chapter of my life, being written right now on this lonely Colorado road. I love it profoundly because I’ve grown up with each mile marker in each season. It’s my diary.
Some days on 285, the world is saturated in color. I’ve seen the winter colors beaming, the grasses bleached white and the reds of the bushes bleeding out.
Some days, even the sky plays backup: The clouds, enormous silver puffs, sailing on the plains, leaving town-size stamps of shade on yellowed valley below.
But not this day.
I look at the smokestack clouds that tower above Blue Mesa reservoir and the backs of the mountains rise and fall, great whales on a make-believe ocean.
From the Best Made Archives:
Dividers and Compasses Offered by Keuffel & Esser Co., circa 1900–1901
Black is Beautiful
By Laura Silverman
A couple of big, old trees with deeply furrowed grey bark grace a friend’s property near where I live in Sullivan County (upstate New York), and in the fall they rain down what look like small green tennis balls. These are Eastern black walnuts, julans nigra, a native species prized for its beautiful wood and flavorful nuts. The thick, hard husks—easiest removed when green and pliable—make the extraction of the kernel from the fruit of the black walnut legendarily difficult. Industrial-strength gloves are essential to contend with the deeply staining pigments and tannins of the black walnut’s protective coverings, which exude a brownish-black dye used by early American settlers as a hair dye hair, wood stain and dark ink.
The nutshell is tightly bound to the husk by very deep ridges, so a vise comes in handy for the removal process. The nuts must then dry for several weeks before the vise is employed again to remove the extremely hard shell. (This is a messy and potentially dangerous process. Goggles may be necessary!) Black walnut shells are not only considerably harder than English/Persian walnuts, they are also much more furled and complicated inside. Slender picks and fine tweezers are essential for plucking out every precious morsel, which you will want to do as these nuts have a complex, winey sweetness packed with lip-smacking umami.
While black walnuts are delicious simply eaten out of hand, toasting them enhances their richness and they pair beautifully with other foods, including cheese, vanilla, pork and bitter greens. After foraging and processing a couple of bucketsful this fall, I used them to make a sumptuous ice cream, folded them into salty shortbread, and mashed them with capers and herbs into a kind of pesto for fish, all to great accolades. Inspired by Best Made’s maple syrup—a velvety amber elixir that enhances everything from bourbon cocktails to salad dressing—I devised a recipe for maple syrup and honey caramels studded with toasted nuggets of black walnuts. Undeniably a winter classic, it’s doubly infused with that elusive taste of the wild. Make some quick, before spring turns your head.
Best Made Maple Syrup & Black Walnut Caramels
makes about 150
2 1/2 cups organic heavy cream
2 cups Best Made maple syrup
1 cup raw wildflower honey
1 packed cup light muscovado sugar
1/4 teaspoon sea salt
4 ounces unsalted butter, cut into pieces
flaky sea salt, like Maldon, for sprinkling
1 cup chopped, toasted black walnuts
Lightly grease a 6”x 9” baking pan; neutral-oil spray is ideal here. Set aside in a spot where it will not be moved.
Pour cream into a medium saucepan and set aside.
In a large, heavy pot combine maple syrup, honey, sugar, salt and 1/2 cup water. Clip on candy thermometer. Over high heat, cook until well combined, stirring with a wooden spoon for about 10 minutes. Brush down sides of pan with a pastry brush dipped in water as needed.
Stop stirring, reduce heat to medium, and bring to a boil. Cook, without stirring, until temperature reaches 250º (hard-ball stage), 45-60 minutes. Meanwhile, gently heat cream until just warm. Do not boil. When sugar reaches 250º, slowly stir in butter and warmed cream mixture, keeping mixture boiling at all times. Stirring constantly, cook over medium heat until thermometer reaches 244º (firm-ball stage), round 1 hour. Remove from heat and stir in vanilla. Immediately pour into prepared pan without scraping pot. After it cools slightly, sprinkle with a thin layer of flaky salt, then walnuts. Press lightly to embed. Let stand uncovered at room temperature for 24 hours without moving.
To cut, unmold caramel from pan onto a large cutting board. Using a heavy, sharp knife, cut into desired size and wrap in parchment or waxed paper.
