I just spent a week in Colorado driving around, visiting
friends, experiencing the Rocky Mountain high. My impression? Too much of
everything: water (I’ll explain this in a minute); traffic; bikers; hikers; rafters;
ATVers; tourists; pot (there’s a glut). Welcome
to the capital of eco-entertainment bourgeois consumerism.
I started out in Cañon City, which may be best known for its
prison fortresses, state and federal, where both New Mexico’s Manny Aragon did
his time and the Unibomber is still doing time. But it’s the mighty Arkansas
River that is the real distinguisher. The river’s irrigation system, which winds
throughout the entire area, used to water fields of alfalfa and grains,
orchards and vegetables, but now flows in little canals along the streets in
front of houses, and everyone who lives in those houses has a water right and
an irrigation pump. I’ve never seen so many green lawns in my life. When I
arrived the temperature was 99 degrees and it hadn’t rained much all summer,
but the river was still running high from winter snow melt and the pumps were busily
delivering it to the grass.
The other ubiquitous water use in Cañon City is recreational:
running rivers in large inflatable rafts, plastic kayaks, fiberglass kayaks, inflatable
kayaks, inner tubes, etc. From its headwaters in Leadville, Colorado through
Buena Vista (which the locals pronounce “Byewna” Vista), Salida, the Royal
Gorge, to Cañon City these rafters infuse money into the economy, traffic onto
the highways, and bodies in the river: there have been 10 deaths so far this
year on the Arkansas.
The Arkansas Valley through Cañon City would be the perfect
place to create George Sibley’s “post-urban” culture or “basin-centric
cultures capable of watering and feeding themselves” that I wrote about in La
Jicarita on July 17. It’s not too late for
Cañon City folks to replace their lawns with vegetable gardens and berry bushes;
fortunately, the real estate developers are not knocking down the door and the
rural nature of the community remains intact. Coupled with the money generated
from rafting and tourism, maybe the economic base is there. Beware the real
estate developers in the front range cities, however; I suspect they will
always see water as commodity for sale to the highest bidder.
In Leadville, the rafting business, along with four-wheel
drive tours, bike competitions, and mountain climbing have transformed the old
mining town into a tourist haven of renovated buildings full of restaurants,
bars, and boutiques. A lot has changed since my El Valle neighbors lived there
many years ago to work in the silver, lead, and molybdenum mines in the
mid-1900s. There is also a large Hispano population in the area, immigrants who
commute to Vail, over two mountain passes, to work in the ski and summer resort
industry. When I stopped to gas up in Leadville, which I passed through at the
end of my trip, I heard Spanish being spoken for the first time since I’d left
New Mexico.
After visiting my sister in Colorado Springs, that bastion
of family values, I drove north on I-25 towards Denver. Fortunately, my friend
who lives up Boulder Canyon in Rollinsville, told me about a bypass around
Denver. But that didn’t save me. From the Springs north to Castle Rock, which is
located in Douglas County (I recall that it was the fastest growing county in
the U.S. for awhile), traffic was bumper to bumper on a Saturday—no accidents,
no road work, both sides of the highway. What were all these people from the
Springs and Denver doing out there? Escaping their urban confines to recreate .
. . in Castle Rock? Shopping at Ikea, one friend suggested.
I finally made it to Rollinsville, which sits right in the
middle of Rocky Mountain high country; Rocky Mountain National Park is just a
few miles away and the Indian Peak Wilderness and Eldora Ski area are 15
minutes down the road. Some new recreationists have recently joined the
bicyclists, skiers, runners, and mountain climbers: Black Hawk and Central
City, former mining towns half an hour away, are now home to gambling
casinos.
Rollinsville also sits right in the middle of a lodge pole
pine forest that is being ravaged by the pine beetle. The previous decade’s
forest fires caused last year’s floods to wipe out entire mountainsides and
houses in Lyons, Ward, Estes Park, and Jamestown. These communities are mostly home to
urban commuters who work in Boulder and Denver (the hippies are still there,
though, in Ward and Nederland) but recreate at home. The commuter traffic up
and down Boulder Canyon is phenomenal, particularly in the winter. When the
floods hit the canyon last year and caused its shutdown, commuters had to find
alternative routes through other dangerous, beetle infested canyons that may be
the next to flood.
The recreational traffic is also phenomenal. When
we went out to hike in the Indian Peaks Wilderness area we had to navigate
entrances guarded by officials in orange vests with notebooks issuing permits
and directing us to a parking area that would have added a mile to our hike. My
savvy hiking friend lied and told the guards she was only dropping me off and
drove through the barrier. We found a parking space someone had just vacated.
When I complained to her that I hated
all the regulation and permitting required to go for a simple hike in the
woods, she remarked that if they didn’t control the traffic the place would be
overrun with cars trying, just like us, to get to where they want to go. There
are hundreds of thousands of recreationists from Boulder and Denver, as well as
locals, using these trails every weekend.
In part
three of his series on the politics of sustainability, La Jicarita editor David Correia explored what he calls “bourgeois
primitivism,” a “magic act . . . to fashion forms of consumption that
appear to reduce environmental impact without requiring any sacrifice of
class-based luxuries.” Or, “environmentalism as self-improvement via an urban
lifestyle.” In the world of recreation, this translates to driving many miles
over paved roads to participate in a bike ride over mountain passes, raft a
river, or run the Leadville ultra-marathon. It also translates into an enormous
amount of money spent on high tech bikes, kayaks, skis, jeeps, and ATVS.
In a recent High Country News article, “The
Death of Backpacking,” Christopher Ketchem talks about
finding it increasingly difficult to find anyone to go backpacking with him. There’s
no one under 40, which is his own age, willing to join him in that “wretched
fun.” Instead, what he finds are “gearheads,” or those who are out there trying
out the latest technological toys—daypacks, bikes, carabiners, rafts—on day
trips that have comfortable beds and beer instead of tents and freeze dried
food at the end of the day. That’s where the money is: lots of mechanical stuff
to purchase and maintain, apps to guide you to that equipment, paid
professionals to guide you on the actual adventure, and motels and resorts to
rest your body.
So, my final assessment? I’m glad to be
back in New Mexico where there are fewer people, no 14,000-foot peaks, more
funky soul. But we’re headed in the same direction as Colorado: water brokers
keep trying to move water to Santa Fe and Albuquerque to underwrite growth;
city fathers want to expand the Taos airport to shuttle in more people to Taos
Ski Valley (recently bought by billionaire Colorado hedge fund and real estate
developer Louis Bacon) and Santa Fe’s eco-bourgeoisie are just the latest
manifestation of colonialism. Fortunately, however, by the time the b and b’s
reach El Valle, I’ll be dead.
