Silverthorne (with a final 'e') is the name of a small town in the mountains of central Colorado, below Dillon Dam on the Blue River. It's the nearest town and the post office address for a mountain cabin that my family build in 1960. Even though I haven't lived in Colorado since leaving graduate school many years past, I've managed to get back for a visit almost every year. The cabin never seems to change much. It feels almost as if it exists in one of those fairy tale lands, where time waits on hold for the wandering hero or heroine to return. There are improvements to the place that my brother and I have been wanting to get around to for forty years now.
For almost half that long, I've nourished a fantasy of some day moving to the cabin full time, to pursue a career as a writer. Alas, realities of family and career have precluded that. I lack the talent (and/or the discipline) needed to make a living as a writer. Nor are my wife and son thrilled with the notion of living at the end of a long and rocky dirt road, five miles from the highway where the school bus stops, and fifteen miles from town. Not to mention that, at an elevation of 9,500 feet, it gets a tad bit cold for at least five months of the year. Cold and very snowy. And while I find snowy winter landscapes beautiful, somehow snow loses its romantic appeal when I have to deal with it on a daily basis.
Oh, well, I said it was a fantasy.
What's all that have to do with the name and purpose of this web site? Perhaps not much, directly. But I needed a name for this site. Silverthorne has a nice ring to it, and reminds me of a beautiful place that I care about. This site is intended for exploring subjects and issues that I care about, and a lot of those center around preservation of wilderness and wildlife habitat. So naming the site after the P.O. address of my family's cabin seemed appropriate.
Why "Silverthorn Institute" when the town is "Silverthorne"? Well, as a name, one spelling's as accepted as the other. Since "Silverthorn" and "Silverthorne" were already registered under both ".com" and ".org" domains, I had to go with the longer "Silverthorn(e) Institute". It seemed slightly easier to type if I chose the shorter spelling of "Silverthorn".
So that's the story behind the name. You can find more on the philosophy and purpose in a couple of articles that should be appearing soon. In the meantime, there are plenty of interesting links back on the home page. Enjoy!