Generally, mountain pine beetles are unwelcome creatures in Colorado’s high country, but in Frisco, the little pest inspired a celebration for next Saturday.
BeetleFest, now in its second year, is part anger management — one event offers a chance to swing a sledgehammer at a Volks- wagen Beetle painted to look like the insect destroying lodgepole pine forests — and part educational.
“Even though the beetles are killing the trees, there is a positive side to it,” said Tim Bock, a marketing professional who initially shepherded the BeetleFest concept.
“We have an 80- to 100-year-old forest because we’ve taken care of it and not let it burn. But the beetle kill is making for a healthier forest floor, because water’s getting there, and we’re getting lush vegetation. In a way, it’s Mother Nature taking her own step forward.”
That might seem like Bock has a bad case of Pollyanna syndrome, though perhaps even the plucky heroine of Eleanor Porter’s 1913 novel would find it hard to find beauty in relentless acres of dead and dying trees.
But mountain towns tend to celebrate the weird.
A few miles away from Frisco, Heeney once held the Heeney Tick Festival, inspired by a resident who successfully overcame Rocky Mountain Spotted Fever. Fruita annually eulogizes a headless chicken, and Nederland lionizes its famous, cryogenically preserved grandfather with Frozen Dead Guy Days.
To that end, BeetleFest offers another Volkswagen Bug to bash this year, along with a 4K costumed fun run (the “beetle stomp”), a lumberjack show, a bug-petting zoo and Pine Beetle Lager from Dillon’s Backcountry Brewery. Artisan vendors will sell furniture, boxes and other things carved from beetlekill pine.
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