Rocky Mountain High, Colorado

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.