Summit County and the living is easy

speak English at home, and their children often struggle in school. Others are typical ski-town transients — young, here for a year or two to snowboard and smoke pot, but other than the free dinner each Tuesday at the local Elk’s Lodge, not particularly engaged in the community.

I equate those lives with that of poor Dante the fish. In comparison, recently I crossed paths with my old doctor, who, at 72, told me he finally was retiring to travel and live in leisure in his old age. He was on his mountain bike, which he rides — fast — and he mentioned he still enjoys distance running.

So many of our old-timers are physically active that the Summit County Senior Center often seems more of a meeting place for heading out on hikes than a gathering spot for canasta and doily-tatting.

In fact, people who spend their lives in Summit County can expect to reach the ripe old age of 87 on average — as much as 20 years longer than regions in the country with the lowest life expectancy, such as the Deep South and Appalachia where sedentary lifestyles, cigarette smoking and fried foods are far more prevalent.

My theory is that we live longer here simply because we want to. Steve Lipsher (slipsher@ comcast.net) of Silverthorne writes a monthly column for The Denver Post.