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Backyard paradise

From halfpipes to terraced gardens, some take it to the next level

There’s the barbecue belt, where downtown neighborhoods bask in a parade of aromas off the grill. There are the college students, who bring their aprés hours outside to the hammock, the patio furniture, maybe the couch. There are the halfpipes for skateboarding and horseshoe pits that come and go.

But some Durangoans have taken the appreciation of their private open space to another level. They have made the yard their own private masterpiece. And to them, there’s truly no place like home.

The tall terraces

“It started with a staircase to get to the park,” Kurtis Murphy said about his inconceivably terraced backyard overlooking Folsom Park. “Then it turned into all these terraces, and then I just wanted to make a huge garden.”

The terraces, handmade from nearly 1,000 tons of rock, cascade down a steep hillside about 50 feet in height.

Murphy and friend Kyle Christ did it all by hand – an undertaking that took four years.

“We pickaxed the whole thing,” Murphy said. “We didn’t use any machine to dig, or really for anything.”

The two hauled in loads of rocks below his yard and used a come-along to bring them up the slope before rock-barring them into place.

“When you think about all of the blood, sweat and tears that went into it, it’s kind of ridiculous,” Murphy said.

There are more than 20 separate gardens on the hillside. A chef at Ken & Sue’s, Murphy often collects the fruits of his labor for his dishes at the downtown dining establishment.

“In the summer, there are tomato bushes falling over the sides, there is corn. It looks really cool when everything is growing,” he said. “You can see the real dimensions with all of the vines hanging off.”

Murphy and his wife, Krista, and son, Charlie, enjoy hanging out in a fire hearth at the bottom that he said took a year to complete.

From the Rim Trail along campus, he likened his unmistakable backyard to a historical landmark.

“We call it “Murphu picchu.”

Living archway

Seven miles from Murphu picchu in Durango West, Sher Masor has a created a landscape that for her evokes a feeling of relaxation and calmness. Her xeriscaped grounds are just as much art gallery as front yard, with pieces from local artists spaced with items she has collected throughout her life for decor.

An archway of a fallen pine tree that is never uprooted is hard to overlook but easy to walk under.

“The uniqueness started a number of years ago during a heavy snowstorm when this pine tree fell over,” Masor said. “I loved what it looked like. It didn’t die, and I didn’t cut it down, so it became an archway. It gets noticed.”

Masor said she grew tired of wasting water on a sparse lawn, and she decided she wanted something different from the norm.

“I love decorating, not just inside the house, but outside in the yard. I love funky artwork,” she said.

Masor has several pieces around, mostly metal and many made from recycled materials.

“I collect goofy things like old pots and wire things and metal things. I want to use them in creative ways,” she said.

She said she gets a lot of comments – mostly good ones – from neighbors.

“I find it very relaxing to come out here and sit on a rock. Just sit and do nothing and look at it. To me, everything here is beautiful and cool and funky, and that’s why I like it,” she said.

Might as well jump

While both Murphy’s and Masor’s lawns elicit an appreciation of open space and fluid energy, Chris Eagan’s backyard near Lemon Reservoir east of Durango is all about another kind of energy.

With the basics – “a shovel, pickaxe and a wheelbarrow” – Eagan has sculpted a series of dirt jumps and berms that are immense in scale and even more astounding when you consider that he and cohorts sail off them on BMX (bicycle moto-cross) bikes, blending sculpting larger-than-life clay with athletic talent. Their mixture of aerial acrobatics on bicycles with 20-inch wheels is not for the faint of heart.

“We have beautiful clay up here, which is perfect for building jumps,” Eagan wrote in an email. “It’s basically the same concept as pottery. You soak it down, stack it up and let it bake in the sun.”

Eagan said he never kept track of how much dirt he’s used but estimates that “thousands of wheelbarrows full” in the four years he’s been working on it “would be an understatement.”

“I build big jumps,” he said. “It takes a lot of dirt.”

He called it a labor of love.

“It takes a certain kind of mentality to sit and work on one spot when you could just as easily head down to the local skate park or the local trail network,” he said. “I guess I’m just a hold-on from a different era. We didn’t have that stuff when I came up.”

On the right track

Closer to town, almost downtown, in fact, Fort Lewis College cycling team member Joe Crosby and his four roommates, who also are on the team or have been at some point, keep shovels in hand – well, sometimes they use a Bobcat. Almost every square inch of their East Eighth Avenue backyard is devoted to a pump track: a looping dirt course loaded with jumps, berms and features that challenge their bicycle-handling skills.

“If we get on the bikes and smash out a bunch of laps, then it’s pretty tiring,” Crosby said. “It’s a good way for us to train for our race season.”

His landlord knows all about it. They even have box seating: a couch they hauled up to the roof of the garage overlooking the 45-by-30-foot track.

“In the summer, it’s a sweet spot to hang out and watch people ride,” Crosby said.

No wonder FLC is legendary in collegiate cycling.

Murphy and Masor, Eagan and Crosby: They all wanted something of their own that wasn’t there before. They took the spaces they had and made them unique.

Perhaps Eagan put it best about creating something different.

“If you wanted it, it fell on you to make it,” he said.

Spring is here. What are you going to do with your backyard?

bmathis@durangoherald.com

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