A tale of winter solitude in the Rockies

The dateline for Kirk Johnson's story is Creede, Colorado, population 412 and elevation 8,852. The headline is "From Delta to Winter's Deep Blues." Here's the lede:

Mary Jean Wallace has a stockpile of wood and a caulking gun to patch the drafty walls in the barely winterized cabin that she will be living in through her first winter in the Rocky Mountains. The wardrobe of her old life in Louisiana was tossed aside this fall — linen giving way to flannel, flip-flops to fleece.

Here's a description of the town:

If it is after 5:30 p.m. and you want to buy as much as a stick of gum, you are out of luck, and the nearest town, not much bigger, is 20 miles down a treacherous canyon road.