Donna Jean Peiffer

Donna Jean passed away peacefully in her home on June 29, 2026.

“The Trout Charmer of Fourmile”

Donna Jean was one of Fourmile Canyon’s true originals. She helped make Fourmile what it is and was herself shaped by life in the canyon. Donna Jean didn’t try to be original; it’s just that she was never particularly interested in being anything other than what she was.

I admire that.

DJ, as I like to think of her, came to Fourmile as a young woman. After a childhood of moving through too many places, she had gone to “like nine different high schools,” and when she found the canyon, something in her landed. I can relate: When I found Fourmile as a young woman, something in me landed, too. Those of us who found Fourmile, succeeded in landing here, and have the good sense to count our blessings, well, we are fortunate beyond measure.

DJ preceded me by a bit in Fourmile, and when she got here it was wild. I am jealous of the odd characters and wild times she described to me. It would be easy to romanticize, but life in the mountains has always been hard, especially if you only have enough to get by. And for years and years, Donna Jean barely had enough to get by.

Donna Jean lived at times with no heat, no running water, no electricity. Sometimes she had a car that worked; sometimes she didn’t. She hiked in and out before dawn to get to work (in town!). She carried jugs of water. She lived out of a van in winter with two cats and an office job. Donna Jean was tough—in a way that I could only hope to be. Where I have calluses, she had claws. Claws that allowed her to scratch out a hardscrabble life.

A hardscrabble life of devotion to a place—to land—to Fourmile.

Before life pulled the harp away from her too many times, Donna Jean was a harpist. She started as a little girl, sitting through her sister’s lessons, absorbing what she was not allowed to touch. Where she was denied, she found a way. When no one was home, she would sneak into the room, sit down at the harp, and play. Later, she played weddings. She played for children at Gold Hill School. When she lived at the Junction, she would pull the harp onto the deck, and the deck became “a giant sounding board.”

Donna Jean lived at the Junction when I moved to Fourmile, and I can imagine that harp music moving through the Fourmile air, across the creek, into the trees. Maybe I heard that harp music myself when I was too young to wonder… How? Why?

When Donna Jean talked about the land where she made her home, she lit up from the inside. When writing this, I had to scratch out the line where I referred to Donna Jean’s “property” because… well she didn’t talk about her land as a possession; she thought of herself as a steward. A steward who was devoted to the land for decades.

When Donna Jean found the land that would become her home, it had been treated like a dump. There was garbage, glass, tires, batteries—but somehow all Donna Jean saw was the sacred.

“It just broke my heart,” she said. “So disrespected.”

So before the land was even hers, she began her devotion.

Let’s be clear – it was Donna Jean, so I doubt she had permission. What was a little trespassing risk when you’ve lived through winter in a van with 2 cats in the mountains?

She picked up glass. She made piles. She cleared one small area, then another. A bear came to her in a dream on the land and embraced her. The land was hers and she knew it. And she was devoted to the land.

Through hardship and tragedy she was ultimately able to buy the land and build her house. Not one step of it was easy. Does it matter how the house got built? I don’t think so. The point is, one day, after decades of determination, she stood back, looked at her house, and said, “I did it.”

As I interviewed Donna Jean, I snuck surreptitious glances at each nook and cranny of her beautiful home. She made a sanctuary.  Donna Jean paid attention; every corner had intention. Every window a stunning view. The moon rose through a window and she watched it throughout the night from her refuge.

Donna Jean got to know the rocks along the old railroad bed on the land, not in some abstract way, but as companions. She knew their lichen patterns. Some felt, she said, “like part of my being.” She connected to the land in a way I connect to my own land in Fourmile. I understand that feeling that it’s so beautiful, so poignant, that you ache.

DJ always had a magical connection to the land.  Years ago, she would sit by a pond with one of her little harps. She had trained the trout with breadcrumbs, and then she would play so they could feel the vibration. Eventually, when she played, they came up to the surface.

She called herself a trout charmer. Of course she was.

Only Donna Jean could have a cat, Jazzpurr, who had his own daily circuit through the neighborhood. Apparently with a disposition like his mistress, he was once seen chasing a herd of deer!

And then there was the most Donna Jean story of them all: the mountain lion story.

Donna Jean was meticulous, and she was out sweeping her walkway. She saw the lion come up from the creek and go for the neighbor’s dogs. Everything happened in slow motion. She had a broom in her hand. Every four-letter word she could think of came out, and the lion, surprised by the ferocity of this woman, turned toward her. The mountain lion crouched and began moving slowly in her direction, stalking her.

Donna Jean backed up until she could go no further. With her back to the propane tank, she started banging on it with the broom handle. The lion stopped, and seeing perhaps a kindred spirit, abandoned the chase. Then, in one leap, the cat flew across the creek.

Donna Jean told me that she could still see that lion’s face in her mind’s eye. “But she was so beautiful,” she said. “Like she just came from the kitty beauty parlor.”

That was Donna Jean: facing down a mountain lion, broom in hand, and still absorbing her beauty.

When I wrote this, Donna Jean was in the process of surrendering—surrendering to the land and beauty she was connected to and loved with her whole being. She let  the creek do what creek water does: move things along. She let the moon do what the moon does—cross the sky. She let the rocks be rocks, the birds be birds, the house be the house she made, and her life the life she lived.

A strong life. A creative life. A stubborn, solitary, tender, funny, hardscrabble life.

Donna Jean told me that she did not especially want to come back as a person.

How about angel duty in Fourmile? I’ll keep an eye out for you.

By Tisha Schuller

June 2026