There is also the beer business, where the outlaw expresses his bona fide form. And the image behind Flying Dog Ales was trained to embody the amalgamated personas of George, Hunter S. Thompson, and Ralph Steadman, Thompson’s trademark illustrator and the artist behind the Flying Dog Ales labels. Flying Dog is the underbelly of George, the one who curses often and revels in mischief. The one who often finds himself laughing at his own coded references.

I can’t say I understand this personality as well as, let’s say, the intellectual or artistic personalities, of the myriad personalities George projects. But it is the personality that most attracts me, perhaps, as it does his other fans. It is the personality that we wish we could embody ourselves, in finding our own freedom. It is the adolescent who parties all night but still brings home straight A’s.

My first taste of Buckeye beer was at the tennis court. I knew then and there that anything this remarkable, this delicious, would have to be an intimate part of my life ever after. And beer, ale, and some other spirituous liquids have been my companions. It took 60 years after that that beer became part of my business life, when Richard [McIntyre] and I founded the Flying Dog Brewery. Now beer is not just my companion but also everything that a small business is to an owner: sales up, whoopee, costs up, egads. It’s like another child, you hope it goes to Harvard, becomes a lawyer, marries well and has nice kids. You fear that it’ll drop out, join the gang, and end in prison. And, of course neither happens. The Dog, at ten, is a pretty good kid, has good friends, has ducked at the right time, stood tall to some principled issues, and is probably ready for limited adulthood. I’m a surprised and proud dad; good going kid!

At the time of my beer epiphany I did not yet know the vicissitudes of life, the dilemmas, uncertainties, the predicaments and paradoxes. Nor did I know much of alcohol, spirits, and the human spirit. I love alcohol, its taste and the reveries in the mind we nickname “buzz.” In reverie we awake the imagination, things that could be.  I’ve come, even as a materialistic physicist atheist, to acknowledge spirits in man and nature, an intention, a thrust and energy, not just to survive, but to survive with dignity. I’ve come to understand that there are unintended consequences and Spirit is a complex word, by dictionary offers 25 definitions, I like, for the purpose of our anniversary celebration, “The vital principal in man” and “the breath of life.”  This breath and vital principle in man is represented in the spirits of alcohol as an essence of dilemma, paradox and predicament. What gives me spirit and comfort is also dangerous and can give me destruction and misery. And alcohol is not the only item on this list of spiritual possibilities.

Alcohol also helps George to quiet his unquiet mind and fall asleep at nights. He says it gives him clarity. I have been thinking lately that I am helping George in telling his stories with the hope of not only inspiring others, but also in giving my own, hodge-podge life some clarity.

I learned of George when I moved to Aspen for the third time. My first attempt to settle in Aspen occurred in 1994. It lasted four months when I was 24. I worked at the notorious bookstore in the converted Victorian house, lost my virginity to a South African plumber on the top of Cemetery Lane’s shoulder mountain, and returned to New York City where I resumed my apprenticeship with the reproductive endocrinologist, who had lured me back to his practice in Brooklyn. I built an Infertility and In Vitro Fertilization Center for the doctor, then headed to Yale’s business school, and followed the scent of fortune to San Francisco. Two years of healthcare consulting and internet start-up frenzy spurred living out of my Subaru Impreza for five months before landing back in Aspen. This time I worked at the front desk of the Aspen Meadows, a hotel and resort at the Aspen Institute, met my future husband, a shaved-headed, Catholic/Southern Baptist- raised, Rebel without a Cause Dallas boy almost six years my junior, and fled to New York City with him on September 12, 2001. A month later, we scurried to Seattle and held onto each other for dear life (he, employed as a patrol officer, me, the manager of a retail bank) until we decided to make peace with our Colorado departure and moved back to Aspen (Basalt, actually, 20 miles northeast of Aspen) in November 2003. I soon stumbled upon an ad in the Aspen Times, a paper George once had an ownership stake in, that called for a consulting gig at a digital arts studio, where I met, and was hired by, a photographer named Charlie and his patron Michael Stranahan, George’s little brother. What I discovered at this digital arts studio is an entire book in and of itself, best left for a Dostoevskian novel, but it is where I first encountered George.

Meeting George at this studio, and hearing bits and pieces about his life within those walls, intrigued me, especially in the light of controversy. Unlike his brother, George had been able to operate within society’s basic expectations – fiscal management, marriage, domestic order – and flourish. But as Michael’s brother, who had once taught at the Community School, and being raised in the same mysterious household, George, I figured, had a good chance of possessing a similar gentleness and brilliant spirit.

The Woody Creek Gallery and Flying Dog Arts, both George’s creations, had been early investors in the Academy Award winning documentary “Born into Brothels” and the digital arts studio where I worked produced the prints for the film’s associated nonprofit Kids with Cameras.  I managed the Kids with Cameras account and a year later joined its staff. A year after that, I began working at Aspen Community Foundation, where soon thereafter George rejoined the Board, after having served two terms and as Board President years before. This is how my friendship with George began, as he often stopped by to chat. I tried to monopolize his time as much as I could, and a couple of times urged him to write his memoirs or have them written for him. I even suggested that I could be the one to assist, never really imagining such a role as a possibility. At my second or third offer, after an hour or two of chatting about other miscellaneous topics, including his desire to bed Linus Pauling’s daughter while a graduate student, he left to drop his grandson off at the airport and returned to the Foundation’s office twenty minutes later, stating, “I’ve thought about it, and since I like to make these kind of gut decisions, I’ve decided that you are the one to help me.”

Days later he dropped off a trunk-full of his documents and within a month I had left my oppressive job to face the challenge, to understand and somehow portray the man and the Flying Dog within, whose story begins as follows (and as recounted at www.flyingdogales.com):

The villains of the peace in this story are two non-conformist, ‘not likely to take it lying down’ ranchers named George Stranahan and Richard McIntyre. Rumor has it they were camping high in the Himalayas with a mule, enough local contraband to pacify a herd of stampeding buffalo and very little else when IT happened. George and Richard swear that upon emerging from their tent one evening they witnessed a strange airborne creature heading towards the campsite. They say the creature, which was now looking increasingly like a flying dog, barrel-rolled through the camp sending sherpas scurrying for their lives. George and Richard were apparently left untouched…well almost. The duo were in fact so inspired by the sight of this mischievous, non-conforming creature that they totally forgot about the loss of their mule and the contents of their tent now rolling down the mountainside and took it as sign they should do something big. Something really big.

Long time friend, neighbor and co-conspirator of Flying Dog owner George Stranahan, Hunter was a large influence on George’s life and subsequently on the creation of the Flying Dog brand; whether it was riding motorcycles, blowing shit up, or just getting a good, old-fashioned drunk on at the Woody Creek Tavern. These two were fast friends long before Flying Dog Brewery was even a thought. When George opened up shop in Aspen, Hunter would have been one of his best customers; if he had ever paid his tab.

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