Happy Colorado Sunday, friends. I hope the view from where you are is gorgeous — or at least not visually disturbing.

It hardly seems possible that a decade has elapsed from that day in August when a bunch of us who work at The Sun now were staring at huge banks of TVs in a different newsroom watching images of the Animas River turned mustard-yellow flowing through Durango.

Clearly, something terrible had happened.

We spent immense amounts of reporting trying to understand what caused the Gold King mine blowout near Silverton that fouled 100 miles of the Animas, the work being done to slow the flow of water tainted by heavy metals and the tiny signals showing progress in the cleanup in the massive Bonita Peak Mining District.

This week, Shannon Mullane picks up the narrative thread in her cover story, talking with people who have been on the ground for 10 years and more than $140 million in spending to learn whether it is even possible to repair the legacy of hard rock mining revealed by the Gold King spill.

In this Aug. 6, 2015, photo, people kayak in the Animas River near Durango in water colored yellow from a mine-waste spill. (Jerry McBride, The Durango Herald via AP file)

The murky burnt orange liquid starts out as a trickle flowing out of packed dirt on the side of the mountain. The flow gets stronger, and the watery mixture spreads. Then a torrent of water gushes out of the mountain, flowing down a cliff to a creek below.

“What do we do now?” a man says.

I must have watched videos of the Gold King mine spill a dozen times over the years. Deep in the San Juan Mountains of southwestern Colorado, about 3 million gallons of acidic, heavy-metal-laden water flowed downstream Aug. 5, 2015. News of the bright yellow Animas River swept across the nation and around the world. The spill was even featured in a question on the game show Jeopardy!

But Gold King wasn’t an isolated incident. It’s part of a legacy of mining that took off in the 1800s when European-Americans headed West to seek their fortune in gold. It was a dangerous endeavor. Fires burned up boardinghouses and mine shafts around the growing town of Silverton. At one point, miners burrowed too far, and an entire lake collapsed inward, sending millions of gallons of water through the (luckily empty) mine shafts.

Water is as much a part of southwestern Colorado’s mining legacy as gold is. Each year, water from rainstorms and melting snow runs over mine tailings on its way to mountain streams. It percolates into the mountain as groundwater. When it mixes with pyrite and oxygen in mine shafts, it becomes acidic, dissolving more metals as it follows gravity to freedom.

So what does a community do when it is faced with pollution created by past generations? Who is responsible once the old mining companies have left or gone bankrupt?

The Gold King spill forced community members and the federal government to reckon with the region’s mining legacy. The question: Are they doing enough, fast enough, to make sure a spill like Gold King doesn’t happen again?

READ THIS WEEK’S COLORADO SUNDAY FEATURE

Do we have friends in high places? Maybe. But we definitely have friends and photojournalists willing to go to high elevations in Colorado on our behalf. Here are a few of our favorite images from this week’s work.

Angler Sarah Berg reels in her lure while fishing Monday in Henry Lake in Gunnison County. Evening fishing proved to be a good time to catch trout in the alpine lake at 11,500 feet in elevation. (Don Emmert, Special to The Colorado Sun)
The South Rim fire still was smoldering along the rim of the Black Canyon of the Gunnison on Tuesday. The fire was difficult to fight as the terrain is steep and rugged and mainly inaccessible by crews working on foot. (Dean Krakel, Special to The Colorado Sun)
A reporter stands near charred fencing at a scenic overlook near the South Rim visitor center of Black Canyon of the Gunnison National Park, elevation 8,400 feet, on Tuesday during a tour of damage caused by fire. (Dean Krakel, Special to The Colorado Sun)
A man hikes down Pikes Peak at dawn Wednesday to search for Rocky Mountain bighorn sheep. The herd on the 14,115-foot tall mountain is heavily studied, and Colorado Parks and Wildlife has conducted an annual census of the state animal there since 1988. (Rebecca Slezak, Special to The Colorado Sun)
Clouds create a moody view from Pikes Peak on Wednesday. Access to the fourteener in Colorado Springs is possible on foot, by bike or motorized vehicle and the Pikes Peak Cog Railway. (Rebecca Slezak, Special to The Colorado Sun)
A visitor to Kangaroo Ranch in Wheat Ridge had Luka and Kyrie eating out of her hand. (Kevin Simpson, The Colorado Sun)

If this summer finds you constantly on the lookout for day trips, short excursions to nearby attractions that provide respite from the everyday humdrum, here’s an option that may have flown under your radar. Imagine a place where humans can interact — and even snuggle up — with baby kangaroos.

At the Wheat Ridge studio of the Kangaroo Ranch, visitors can reserve a one-hour session with a couple of joeys — and their knowledgeable handlers — that includes no more than 10 participants. On a recent weekday afternoon, my wife and I were lucky to have just four in our group, and even had the two ’roos to ourselves for part of the session. Far from the cute chaos of a traditional petting zoo, our visit with Luka and Kyrie (yes, the names are nods to a couple of NBA stars) was a gentle and controlled experience in a cool, quiet space that included light snacks (for them) and lots of fun facts (for us).

And for the last several minutes, one of the ’roos hopped quite eagerly into an external pouch for snuggling, which Luka seemed to enjoy nearly as much as my wife. Our meet-and-greet cost $65, but there’s also a 30-minute kangaroo yoga option ($85 — goat yoga is so last week) and other activities in the works. The company emphasizes that it’s passionate about animal welfare and education, fully licensed and deals only with reputable breeders. Our joeys hailed from Texas, live on a property in Brighton and make “field trips” to the Wheat Ridge facility. It’s not a rescue or sanctuary.

But if cozying up to an adorable young kangaroo makes the world go away for a while, this could be all the sanctuary a human needs.

EXCERPT: The Disease Transfer Machine in author Ian Patterson’s Serling-esque sci-fi novel powers a health care system that works wonders — for those with the means to pay others to be surrogates for their suffering. In this excerpt, we’re introduced to the lower-class protagonist who has just barely survived taking on a rich person’s metastasized cancer to make ends meet.

READ THE SUNLIT EXCERPT

THE SUNLIT INTERVIEW: As a newly minted writer, and new parent, Patterson found inspiration for his work but also difficulty shoehorning his new craft into a busy schedule. Here’s a portion of his conversation with SunLit:

SunLit: What did the process of writing this book add to your knowledge and understanding of your craft and/or the subject matter?

Patterson: In short, it got me started on everything. When I started on my first draft, I’d been writing regularly for three months. There had been fits and starts at other times in my life, but this one seemed to be sticking. Something about my mom dying, and the birth of my daughter, had enforced this feeling of mortality. It felt like I had a real deadline to work toward.

READ THE INTERVIEW WITH IAN PATTERSON.

LISTEN TO A DAILY SUN-UP PODCAST WITH THE AUTHOR.

A curated list of what you may have missed from The Colorado Sun this week.

Happy 149th, Colorado. Sorry your birthday check is an overdraft notice. (Jim Morrissey, Special to The Colorado Sun)

🌞 It’s funny when a cartoonist draws it, but the already drum-tight state budget will get another look by lawmakers trying to figure out how to deal with changes to federal tax law in the president’s spending bill that are projected to siphon about $1.2 billion from Colorado’s income. Jesse Paul sat in on grim hearings last week to get details about the pain points that will inform the likely special legislative session later this month (date still TBD).

🌞 EV sales are in a slump in Colorado. Michael Booth reports that is attributable, at least in part, to hatred for Tesla boss Elon Musk’s work on behalf of the Department of Government Efficiency earlier this year.

🌞 A Salida outfit using huge 3D printers to build houses wants us to know it’s a tech company, not a construction company. VeroTouch CEO Grant Hamel told Sue McMillin his goal is to reinvent the construction industry to focus on sustainability, reduce costs and train a workforce ready for the world of automation, robotics and standardization.

🌞 The wildfire that closed access to the Black Canyon of the Gunnison National Park in July wasn’t even fully contained before work to rehabilitate the burned land started. Olivia Prentzel tagged along with the U.S. Forest Service Burned Area Emergency Response team assessing the damage.

🌞 The State Land Board, responsible for managing millions of acres of land and millions more acres of leases on behalf of public schools in Colorado, has a new boss with an interesting history. Nicole Rosmarino sat down with Tracy Ross to talk about how she’s evolved over the 26 years since she publicly cheered an act of ecoterrorism at Vail.

🌞 Officially, there are about 500,000 square feet of vacant office space in downtown Boulder. But the large number of ghost tenants has economic developers worried the “doom loop” in the crucial retail core has begun. Andrea Steffes-Tuttle talked to them about why office occupancy is important to shops and restaurants and the general economic vitality of the city.

🌞 The ethos of Melanzana has long been “good things come to those who wait.” And people do wait, often for months, to get an appointment to purchase brightly colored fleece garments sewn in a shop on Harrison Avenue in Leadville. Jason Blevins has been waiting for years (really) and finally got an appointment to talk with company founder Fritz Howard about how his own ideas about supply and demand have kept Melanzana growing.

Thanks, everyone, for hanging out with us again this weekend. We’ll see you here next Colorado Sunday. And if you’ve got someone you think should get in on the fun, feel free to share this link with them: coloradosun.com/join. There’s always room at the table for more friends.

— Dana & the whole staff of The Sun

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