Journal

This weekend carried a kind of quiet magic that I didn’t expect.

On Sunday, I stepped out of my role for a moment and stayed at the Inn as a guest. A friend came up from Denver, and the two of us spent the afternoon wandering Frisco the way you only can when you’re not rushing anywhere. We walked the Marina under a sky that couldn’t decide if it wanted to storm or glow. The lake was low, the clouds dramatic, and the air felt like it was holding its breath.

There’s something about being with someone you enjoy in a place you love — everything familiar suddenly feels new again.

We drifted down Main Street, stepped into the warm timelessness of our sister property, the Frisco Lodge, and then — on a spontaneous streak — drove to Breckenridge for dinner at Rootstalk. The sea bass, the agnolotti, the soft lamps on the tables… it all felt like a perfect, unplanned chapter.

My friend left Monday morning just as the weather began to shift. By noon, Frisco was wearing its first real layer of winter. The mountains softened, the rooftops turned white, and the streets took on that early-season quiet that always feels like a secret.

And then, because I couldn’t resist, I ended up outside making snow angels in the street with our guests — laughing, freezing, and loving every second of it. The kind of memory you can only make at the very start of winter.

This morning started differently. I woke up early to my phone ringing. It was Bruce.

He told me a guest was downstairs, holding my book, asking to meet the author. There’s no preparing for a moment like that.

I threw on my jacket, ran downstairs, and met someone who had come all this way wanting two copies: one for his mother, and one for the people he stays with here in Frisco.

Signing those books — right there at the Inn, with the snow still falling outside — felt unreal. A full-circle moment on a Monday morning.

And then, as if the universe wanted to add one more layer, the Summit Daily article about the book was waiting for me later that day. Me, standing in the snow, holding a newspaper with my name on it. It still doesn’t feel real.

Somewhere between the walks, the snow angels, the kitchen laughter, the newspaper ink, and the quiet corners of this town, I really felt the heartbeat of this place again.

Frisco has a way of weaving your story back to you.

And I’m grateful — for the weekend, for the snow, for the people who show up, and for the little moments that keep reminding me: I’m exactly where I’m meant to be.

— Avery

The first time I held the hardcover of Still, by Design, I didn’t open it right away. I just held it. The weight of it, the deep blue cloth, the gold lettering pressed into the spine — it all felt heavier than a book should, but softer than I expected. Like it was breathing.

I sat down in Plato’s Corner, in the same chair where I wrote so many early chapters, and let the moment settle around me. The fire was going, the Inn was quiet, and for a second, it felt like the room and I were both remembering at the same time.

When I finally opened the cover, I didn’t just see pages — I saw every late night, every early morning, every whispered promise to myself that I’d finish this story even when life tried to pull me apart.

I thought that was the moment the book would feel real. I was wrong.

A few days later, I was at the front desk, halfway through recommending the lake trail, when a guest paused, looked at me with this spark of recognition, and said:

“Wait… are you Avery Maxwell? The author?”

I think I laughed out of self-defense. “Just Avery,” I told them.

They said they preordered the book the moment they saw the cover — and the second they walked into the Inn, they recognized the fireplace from the photos. They came here because they wanted to stand inside the world the book was born from.

That moment hit differently. It wasn’t about the weight of the book in my hands — it was about the weight of someone else carrying the story with them.

I’ve decided a book becomes real twice: once when you hold it, and once when someone else knows it’s yours.

I will never forget either moment.

Today, the Inn became a post office for dreams. On the coffee table in Plato’s Corner, I stacked the first hardback copies of Still, by Design — midnight blue cloth, gold letters catching the firelight. For a moment, they didn’t feel like “product” or “inventory.” They felt like small, bound pieces of my heart.

I signed each one at the same table where I’ve poured coffee, checked in guests, and written emails about early check-in and extra pillows. Same room, same view of the fire — but this time, the names on the page were people who chose to invite this story into their homes.

There was something holy about the routine of it: open cover, breathe, sign, close. Repeat. As if each signature was a quiet promise — that whoever opens this book will feel a little of the stillness that saved me.

When the boxes finally left the Inn, carried out through the front door and loaded into the car, the lobby felt different. Lighter, somehow. The story that was born here is now traveling away from the mountains, into mailrooms and kitchens and bedside tables far from Galena Street.

I used to think a book launch would feel loud and glamorous. Instead, it feels exactly right: a stack of blue books on a wooden table, a fire in the background, and the sound of tape sealing the last box while snow clouds gather over Mount Royal.

The house knows. It’s sending them off the way it holds everyone who passes through — gently, and very much by design.

This morning, the house felt a little bit different. Not louder, exactly — just more awake. The coffee machines hummed, the light over the kitchen sink was softer than usual, and there was that sense that something was about to be witnessed.

Summit Daily came to the Inn today to talk about Still, by Design — but in a way, it felt like they were really here to meet the house.

We talked about Frisco, about the mountains that hold this town in their hands, and about how an inn at the base of Mount Royal became more than a place to stay. I tried to describe that strange and beautiful thing that happens when a building starts to feel like a living organism — how it remembers the people who pass through, how it teaches you to slow down, how it gives you back pieces of yourself you thought you’d lost.

I shared what I could about stillness as a form of courage. About coming back here and rebuilding my life one early morning, one late-night check-in, one small act of care at a time. About the way Still, by Design was written in between refilling coffee cups and wiping down counters, listening to the quiet.

The best part wasn’t talking about the book. It was looking around the room — at the corners of the Inn that have held so many stories — and realizing that this one, somehow, now belongs to Frisco too.

Wherever that article ends up, my hope is simple: that someone reading it feels a little less alone, and a little more willing to design a gentler life for themselves.

If you’re reading this and you find your way to the Inn, I hope you feel it the moment you walk in — the warmth, the weight of memory, and the invitation to be still, by design.