Aspen
I am riding my mountain bike, heading west along Government Trail near Aspen. I am looking for something that is lost.
I stop at what I believe is the right spot and glance down the hillside, through the aspen into a meadow where we used to picnic when I was a boy. It was my great-uncle Steve’s pasture, a place good for summering cattle, cutting firewood, and dreaming.
I spy a big, modern house by the lake where there wasn’t one before. It’s a perfect spot to live, now that this place isn’t so far from town. I wonder what’s become of the little cabin we used to spend weekends in. If it hasn’t been torn down, I am sure it’s been rebuilt to appear authentic, a decorator hired to pick out curtains.
They’ve built what looks like a barn out back. My mind sees what the eyes are tricked into missing: There’s a Harley-Davidson on a polished concrete floor. They’ve ordered rust-colored tractor-seat barstools for the audio/visual room. The ranch is gone. It’s the veneer of a reality that no longer exists.
This scene in front of me is typical of what has taken place all over the West. Things are changing rapidly. Mine is not the only small town that is no longer what it was. In Aspen we have changed so much in the past decade that it seems we hardly notice progress anymore.
I am an ardent opponent of change, at least when it is proposed for here. I am outspoken. I liked what this town was, more than what it is.
Who can blame me? Days past were a time in my life when everyone I ever knew was still alive, and it seemed like I knew everybody. Fault me if you can for wanting to preserve reminders of those times.
Many are critical of my affinity for the way things used to be. They deride that change is inevitable. From that skimpy logic, the conclusion is drawn that change is good. They think it silly fighting change’s unavoidable march.
And I wonder: are there really people so divorced from their past that they can look at it with a stare so cold that it says, “Stay put! Don’t bother me again”?
The answer is no, because the ultimate change is to permanently reside under 6 feet of earth, and all other change is a reminder of that. So, people cry when the hue of a favorite school’s colors is altered. Protesters lie in front of bulldozers to save old buildings. Petitions are circulated opposing a name change for the new stadium.
How do the unaffected masses react to these events? With stolid indifference! They don’t assess the personal risks. It’s easy to gamble with change when they are not your memories to lose.
I am beginning to understand change and the new people in my town who profess to be proponents of improvement. The damnedest thing about the advancements they stump for is that they are not really new at all. The things they want are mostly things they miss from wherever it is they came.
The West has never been an easy place to live. When people move here, sometimes rural, wide-open living doesn’t live up to the hype. It’s not comfortable living without familiar things and the memories attached to them. In Chicago they have this. In Los Angeles they have that. In New York they have everything else. We are soon convinced that we need to get it all here.
The truth is that you can’t remodel the past and, because of that, many of these new amenities fail to satisfy the nostalgic cravings of the people who bring them. Many move on to try again somewhere else, leaving us to deal with the pasts they couldn’t let go of. In the process, our small towns are losing their identities.
I mount my aluminum steed and roll down the rest of this trail that was ridden many times on horseback by my great uncle. I’m trying to recapture something he had. In doing so on a mountain bike, the irony is not lost that this, too, is change.
Roger Marolt (roger@maroltllp.com) is a lifelong Aspen resident.
