For the first couple of years living in the rustic, homestead cabin Paul Fennell had purchased in Rio Grande County, it was basically camping indoors. Yet, in that time he had slowly grown a new skill set. He installed new in-floor heating, plumbing and electrical. He changed the floorplan and installed insulation. All of it he did himself, with the help of what he called “YouTube University.”
By early 2023, the small cabin was feeling much more like home. It was time to move his life back in, from the shipping container outside he’d had shipped out from Silicon Valley, California.
“I started bringing my furniture. I started bringing in the things I felt that I would need. The coffee maker and the record player,” Fennell said. “Then I looked at my records and I realized (the cabin) isn’t really going to afford the space of a record collection of a few thousand.
“I knew I had to do something with it.”
On a Saturday evening in mid-March this year, Fennell held a three-year anniversary party for the record shop he opened on Main Street in Del Norte. The party’s theme was “Pirate’s Prom” and locals from around the San Luis Valley took note. They dressed as pirates. They dressed for prom. Some tried to combine the two. They sang sea shanties and drank craft beer.
Trade & Post has evolved a lot since it opened. What started as little more than a place to sell his own vast collection of vinyl has expanded to encompass two spacious rooms. One is a live event space featuring a packed calendar of touring musicians. The retail space next to it sells the records, but also a selection of random curiosities ranging from tinned fish to shaving supplies to obscure potato chip flavors only found in international markets.
More than anything, Trade & Post feels like a comfortable lounge and tap room. Customers might shoot a free game of pool, play chess or relax in leather couches near a wood-burning stove. Fennell calls it an extension of his living room.
“When I have folks that have known me through the years come and visit me here in Rio Grande County, they walk in and they say, ‘Oh, I get it. This is just like your living room. Only you hold public hours,’” Fennell told Colorado Matters.
Running a record and tinned fish store represents a dramatic left turn on Fennell’s resume. Prior to the COVID pandemic, the now 44-year-old worked in the world of software startups in and around San Francisco. He bounced around among fledgling companies trying to make it big, working typically in customer relations roles.
“Living in the Bay Area and working in the tech world, a fast-paced world, really prepared me with the skills I needed to be an entrepreneur,” Fennell said. “But it really didn't provide me the lifestyle that I was looking for.”
Early 2020 brought the opportunity for Fennell to work from an office in Boulder. He moved to the Front Range just in time for the COVID pandemic to shut the world down. Now, working as a remote employee, he realized he wanted to be even farther from civilization and deeper into the mountains.
He didn’t have any grand plans. He just drove. Over the course of a few trips to northern New Mexico, he discovered the San Luis Valley.
“Life is funny. I find, oftentimes, when you stop looking for something is when you find it,” he said. “I wasn’t looking to put roots down here. I was looking to do some camping and lay my head down on a camper’s mat.”
But, in the San Luis Valley he said he was able to find space for himself. That first night, camping at 9,000 feet, he was surrounded by cows grazing in the high alpine ranges. The only other person he saw was on horseback.
“I recall that next morning when I broke camp and I was heading back to the Front Range … I saw myself in the rear-view mirror and I was smiling,” he said. “I found this moment of joy that I think was escaping me.”
A few days later, he was under contract for that rustic old cabin he would go on to rehabilitate. Working on that cabin and learning how to build things in the real world, he found himself drifting away from his digital career.
“As I was developing a new language and living here and working with my hands, I was kind of losing the old language of what it means to work in a corporate enterprise environment,” Fennell said.
“That change really solidified a feeling that I was having at the time, which was ‘There's something real that's happening here that you need to lean into.’”
Fennell took a job helping new friends run a farmer’s market one day a week. He set up tents. He booked musicians. He made new connections and built a sense of community.
And as he moved his life from his storage unit into his remodeled cabin, he knew he wouldn’t have room for his record collection.
“I met my partner within a few months of moving here, and we welcomed our first daughter the month that I signed that lease,” Fennell said.
So, both Trade & Post and his daughter Harlan recently celebrated their third birthdays.
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