Park County - This is a place that embraces its solitude.
Before the shooting, Deb Garnett thought she had chosen the perfect place to raise her four children, in a home among the rough canyons and pine and aspen that coat the landscape.
On Thursday, in a week that stole the heart from so many people here, Garnett had to explain to her confused 5-year-old daughter, Serafina, that a funeral is not like a wedding. "She started crying and crying when I tried to tell her. She was sad because she had nothing black to wear."
Before the shooting, Lori Crawford, the general manager at the county's weekly newspaper, used to shrug off some of the crazy suicides that happened around town: the guy who blew up his house, the man who had a standoff with police in June.
Now, she can't help crying.
"They just come," she said of the tears, "and you can't stop it."
Before the shooting, Kelly Murphy, who owns a restaurant in Bailey, used to love seeing a particular teenage girl in town with her family. Emily Keyes always had something lovely to say.
Last week, Murphy's husband climbed a ladder in the restaurant's parking lot and replaced the specials with a message: "Pray for Emily. Pray for Bailey."
"We're left to move on," Murphy said. "It hurts, though."
Those interviewed say they will move on; they're just unsure how.
Tranquility disturbed
Park County, with a population of about 17,000, will now be known, at least in part, as home to Platte Canyon High School after a 53-year-old man held students hostage before killing one of his captives and taking his own life when police stormed into the classroom.
But before the shootings, it was a county where people went to get away. A place to fish and hunt and hike, and, most of all, to raise children. Here, far from the influences of the city and the streets, people thought life was better, cleaner, safer.
It was a place where a person could walk miles in wilderness without seeing another soul and, at that moment, realize their insignificance in the world.
Park County is 2,200 square miles of splendid isolation, a county twice the size of Rhode Island and larger than Delaware.
It takes an hour and a half to drive east to west through the county. Every turn on its dirt roads reveals another of nature's secrets - golden aspen shedding leaves in the late summer heat, an open trail leading to an azure lake bathed in morning sunlight.
"You go outside and see all this beauty around you, and you realize how blessed you are to be here," said Patti Kupfermann, a native New Yorker who owns a pizzeria in Fairplay, the county's seat. "And then something like this happens."
Strength in numbers
The county attracts an eclectic group of residents, from techies who commute to Denver to those who live on 100-year-old family farms to those looking to escape something or someone.
That Duane Morrison's motive for attacking the school is unknown is making life these days so frustrating, so painful.
In Park County, people here say, they raise pretty, athletic girls. They don't bury them.
But now, they are left to mourn a 16-year-old girl, her family and their community. They must deal with the scars that one day in September has wrought on their lives.
They see that their community is being beamed to televisions worldwide, a little place in the middle of nowhere that found its way everywhere.
Chalk it up to the randomness of life, some say, that everyone, no matter who they are or where they live, can become a victim. Blame it on the new people in town, others say, the ones who brought their Land Rovers and BMWs to this place of rutted roads and septic tanks and almost doubled the county's population in 15 years.
"The city folk want to come to a rural community, but then they want to drag the city in with them," said Jerry Teel, 56, a cashier and shelf-stocker at the Sinclair gas station in Fairplay. "Park County isn't what it used to be."
Still, say those in the towns near the shooting, there is a sense that the community has never been stronger. People have survived myriad wildfires and the deaths of students from car crashes in years past. The shooting is another emotional hurdle for them to clear.
In a way, they are like the aspen. In the mountains, they seem solitary, alone in the vast green of pine trees. But below ground, where no one can see, is a network of roots, bound and twisted together so that one cannot be separated from the other. It is one organism.
"We were violated, and maybe there was some innocence peeled back, but we'll be stronger because of that," said Jonathan Cleary, 50, a close friend and business partner of Emily's father.
"Something good will come out of this," he said. "It has to."
Unwanted notoriety
Up a hill leading into Bailey, a vinyl sign supporting the county sheriff, Fred Wegener, and his decision to storm the classroom is tied to a worn white fence. It was during the siege, when Emily tried to run, that Morrison shot and killed his teenage hostage.
Messages, from old men to young girls, are scrawled in red pen:
"You and your crew saved my kids and I will never forget that."
"Thank you so much for everything."
"Thanks for getting my class out safe! I love you!"
Doug Tamminga stared at the words. His son is a Platte Canyon sophomore.
"We've talked, but he seems to do better around his friends," Tamminga said of his son, who escaped safely. "Me? I'm sad and angry. I'm an emotional wreck."
If anything, the folks here say they have pushed themselves to the limit. Some wonder if any school is truly safe, whether another sick person could come through their own front doors next time. The community's Internet blog, pinecam.com, has been inundated with questions about how to address the shooting with small children.
"You try to explain this, but how?" asks Garnett. "There are some things you just can't explain."
Which is why the community is beginning to close in on itself from the prying eyes of outsiders. People in Bailey are starting to complain about the media that invaded their hamlet.
Signs on some stores ask reporters to stay away. "Respect our community," one reads.
At the fire department's administration building east of the town, an employee spotted a reporter.
"Go away," the man said. "There's no one here but grieving firefighters."
They worry that their town will become another roadside curiosity, much like Columbine High School in Jefferson County or JonBenét Ramsey's former home in Boulder.
Preserving a legacy of beauty
But they are determined that the shooting will not be their legacy.
Up U.S. 285 on Friday, Fermin Romero and his wife, Hazel, stopped at Kenosha Pass. The retired couple from Bailey wanted to capture a late summer view.
They passed the high school on the way out.
"You can't let (Morrison) do this to you," the 69-year-old husband said. "We live in a beautiful area, and I'm going to enjoy it."
