My name is John Kling.

Long ago, sophomore year of college, I took a psychology elective and the professor said

something to us that was so interesting to me.

I wrote it down.

He said, about once in your life, through no real fault of your own, you'll find you've

descended into a situation, a moment, he called it, that's completely insane.

So insane, it breaks your reality.

Sometimes the moment is potentially lethal.

He said the ones who make it through that moment are the ones who are quickest to stop

disbelieving it and start reacting.

And I think this is a story of when that happened to me.

It was about 24 years ago today when I was 33 that I first set eyes on Little Oberon.

I was doing my morning postal route in the Northeast Quadrant of Grand County, Colorado,

went on Canaanade Road in Beltridge.

I got caught behind not one, but two of those wide-load trailers hauling entire modular

homes on their backs, newly minted and shiny.

The trailers were struggling down the road at 20 miles an hour.

Both of them made a difficult lumbering turn onto a semi-dirt road called Educator's

Lane and made their way into the forested distance, leaving me with the aggravation of having

fallen ten minutes behind on a routine that was only ever delayed by heavy snow or ice

in the winter.

I assumed someone was finally building on the vast lot known atones since the county

...