RIP Baked in Telluride

Telluride is my happy place.

So says a sticker I bought there last year. And it's true. There's something about Telluride that makes me supremely happy.

But what?

I thought about it for a while, and came up with this: Telluride doesn't change.

Much.

OK, let me restate that: many things about Telluride haven't changed over my lifetime. And there's a certain sense of peace that comes with returning to a place where my childhood memories were formed--and it's always just how I remembered it.

Baked in Telluride, the quintessential hippie bakery with delicious everything, was an important part of the Telluride time capsule. It had been there my entire life and then some.

When I was probably 6 years old, Baked in Telluride gave me my first taste of freedom. My parents would give me a buck to buy a few bagels in the morning--all alone. It was a huge responsibility. I got to run to the store by myself, pick the flavors, and pay.

I always slipped on the carpeted incline into the store--every year of my life--but never thought that the entrance should be changed. Sure, it took some technical skill to enter, but once I was in, I'd be greeted with cases of beautiful baked goods, like ginormous macaroons. And pizza. It always smelled like pizza. Delicious.

So imagine my grief when madre called to announce that Baked in Telluride burned to the ground on Feb. 10.

(Image from the Durango Herald.)

This is what's left:

(Photo from Telluride Daily Photo.)

Conspiracy theories already abound in the tiny box canyon town. According to madre and padre, self-proclaimed professional sleuths, one such theory is:

The owner of the grocery store next door owned the BIT building. He's wanted to expand his store to compete with the store in Lulu City for some time, and now he can collect the insurance money to help expand into the lot that was once Baked in Telluride.

Nice theory. But I'm rooting for BIT to come back. Big time.

The Telluride Daily Planet reports that the fire was sparked by BIT's giant oven. The last line of the article says owner Jerry Greene "hopes to build a new bakery in the space as soon as possible."

You can do it, Jerry!

In other news, apparently the rice crispies and other baked goods on the ski mountain are not nearly as homemadeishly delicious as they were before BIT burned. Which leads madre and padre to believe BIT supplied the mountain with the delicious baked goods that fueled my multiple Gold Hill escapades.

All of Telluride suffers.

Bring BIT back soon!