Death comes for us all. It is as natural as birth, as certain as seasons turning. And yet most of us spend our lives looking away from it – changing the subject and moving on to something more comfortable.
The Blair family never looked away from anything.
Rob Blair, the Fort Lewis College geologist who taught students to read mountains the way others read books, died Nordic skiing in February 2015 at 71 – moving through the landscape he loved to the end. More than a professor, Rob was a force of nature – arms gesturing wildly, his enthusiasm for the San Juans infectious and unbounded. He helped initiate the founding of the Mountain Studies Institute, setting a vision for science-grounded stewardship of this landscape that outlived him and continues today.
His wife Pat co-founded the Durango Natural Foods Co-op in the mid-1970s, pioneering healthy food choices in Durango for half a century, and was honored in September 2024 at the co-op’s 50th anniversary. She died this week.
Their son Kurt earned his International Federation of Mountain Guides certification – held by fewer than 200 people in America – and died Dec. 1, 2024 at age 56, ascending Mount Cook in New Zealand, doing what he loved in one of his favorite places.
Their daughter Katrina founded Turtle Lake Refuge in 1998, launched Durango's annual Dandelion Festival, authored Local Wild Life and The Wild Wisdom of Weeds, hiked to Telluride every August subsisting entirely on foraged food, and quietly changed how thousands of people understood the land beneath their feet. She died June 5 after living with cancer. She, too, was 56.
In the space of less than two years, Durango has lost an entire family. The Mountain Studies Institute said what many are feeling: “MSI, like the greater Durango community, is struggling with the loss of a family that has been a cornerstone of our community for longer than many of us can remember.”
Rob opened the wild. Pat opened the doors to health. Katrina fed the community from the wild lands we all love, and Kurt guided others to the summits. The Blairs built something rare: a family whose lives reinforced one another, each extending the others’ reach into the world. And they all shared something unmistakable – a light, a twinkle, an enthusiasm for living that made you want to follow wherever they led.
In her final days, a friend reports, Katrina described a dream in which she saw her brother and father – arms outstretched. Whatever one believes about what follows this life, the image is beautiful: a family reunited in the mountains they never stopped climbing.
Death, as Katrina understood it, is not an ending but a transformation. She arranged for a green burial on the land she loved, her body returned to the earth to become fertile soil for new life. Thirteen seeds were planted with her. Friends sang. Tears mixed with laughter. It was exactly what she wanted – a celebration, not a departure.
Most of us are not so wise about death. But there is a quiet movement to change that. The Durango Death Cafe meets the fourth Monday of every month, 4 to 5:30 p.m., at the Durango Public Library – a gathering where people come to talk openly about the one experience we will all share. It is simply honest conversation about what it means to live a finite life well. Herald columnist Martha McClellan explores these questions regularly in her Authentic Aging column, a thoughtful and wide-ranging companion for navigating the terrain of growing old and letting go. For those who are grieving, the Grief Center of Southwest Colorado provides bereavement services for adults, teens, children and families in the Durango area.
The Blairs lived finite lives extraordinarily well. That abundance – of knowledge, passion and community – is now ours to steward: read Katrina’s books, dine at Turtle Lake Refuge, support Mountain Studies Institute, honor Kurt through the Pursuit of Passions Award, shop the co-op Pat built, and go outside and dig your toes into the dandelions at your feet.
They are dancing in the mountains now, together, arms wide open. It is what they would have wanted. Let us make something extraordinary of the time we have left.
