We were sitting there, as we always do in our home in the quiet of a Basalt Saturday morning when we heard the shots.

They sounded just like gunshots and they were loud, though how could that be in a place like Basalt?

It couldn’t be, any more than the sound my brother heard on 9/11 in his apartment two blocks south of the South Tower of the World Trade Center.

What did it sound like? I asked my brother. Like a really bad car crash?

Much worse, he said. You knew something really terrible had happened.

We heard the gunshots in Basalt and just assumed we had heard something else. Didn’t even think about what. What did it matter? We went about our business or lack thereof—errands, playoffs, reading, napping, cooking, weeding. Not until I opened the paper Sunday morning did I think about it again.

The gunshots we heard from our home were gunshots from one neighborhood over in Basalt. After a “manhunt,” the police arrested a man from Snowmass Village and charged him with breaking multiple laws regarding the safe operation of firearms.

The man had an Hispanic name so of course you immediately think “illegal” without any evidence to back it up. Illegals in the Roaring Fork Valley are now the boogey men for all that ails this corner of paradise. It’s unfair and even wrong but there it is. It’s your first thought around here when something bad happens.

Police are saying it was probably a family feud but details are sketchy. No one was hurt. The shots hit pavement and not people. People one neighborhood over called 911. Casings from a .45 were found on the ground in Basalt. The man was booked at Eagle County Jail. Details at 11.

So the shots we heard were gunshots one neighborhood over. What else could they be?