You Can Go Home Again
For three weeks I’ve been in Colorado, my beloved state-of-choice for 16 years. In 2004, we sold our Aspen home, shed most of our belongings, and moved to Nevada. I have only returned for a brief few days each year.
Nothing is unique about my packing up our belongings and heading further West. According to the U.S. Census Bureau, one in ten U.S. residents, more than 31 million people, traded places in 2009. I’m thinking that’s probably enough Hertz rental trucks to circle the Equator!
While most of us move for housing, family and employment reasons, I needed, because of my husband’s health issues, to trade snow for sun, altitude for sea level. Our move, like many, was out-of-necessity, not choice.
Although Thomas Wolfe says you can’t go home again, I say you can. Luckily, I still have a small condo, for rental purposes, in Aspen. For the past three weeks, I’ve been the Renter. Returning home, and Aspen will always be that, has caused a myriad of emotions to wind their way to my surface. Honestly, it’s been more a gusher of feelings. Finally, after some sleepless nights, I gave in, declared a truce and said, bring it on.
Not surprisingly, the gorgeous, breathtaking Rocky Mountains are still a major presence here and, as always, I rejoice in their beauty every waking moment. Give me a mountain to climb and I’m a happy woman.
The old eating joints have stubbornly dug in their heels and remain competitive in this tough restaurant arena. My traditional first lunch was a juicy burger at Little Annie’s, an evening meal, the deliciously messy rib stack at The Hickory House. I met my friend, Jane, for a margarita during Friday Afternoon Club at the Cantina. Make that, two margaritas and nachos. I loved my premier meal at BB’s Kitchen, a contemporary place just opened by Bruce Berger, a friend from Manhattan,. He’s 70 years old, just handed his real estate interests off to his son, and loves to cook. So, why not open a restaurant in Aspen? Yeah……….
For shock value, and I thought I was prepared, I drove, for the first time since leaving in 2004, down Silver King Drive. Perhaps, just maybe, it was a mistake to re-visit my old neighborhood. Our house, thrown together in 1971 by ski bums, who worked only when they couldn’t ski or hunt, was a small German chalet, 3400 square feet of space, anchored permanently, so I thought, into Red Butte Mountain. After purchasing the property in 1988, and learning the house was framed rather haphazardly, we made some necessary structural changes. Wild and wooly Aspen in the ‘70s. Apparently, those laborers drank and smoked pot on-the-job as well as off. If walls could talk.
What I discovered, at our old site, left me speechless, not something that happens often. Almost never. The chalet is gone, replaced by two adjoining townhouses, extending to the property lines (above). Plowed under, cut down, and irradicated forever, are my potato plot, rhubarb clump, raspberry patch, wildflower garden and 50 Colorado blue spruces. C’est dommage! And, Readers, you won’t believe the asking price, $5.5 million……….EACH. The economic journalist who lives in my head, understands this concept. To be honest, I just laughed, thinking, there goes the neighborhood!
What forever will bind me to this tiny enclave tucked into the Rockies are the people who call it home. I’ve woven the social fabric of my life through 25-years of interaction with the community of folks gathered here. Most of us didn’t begin in Aspen, we chose it. Coming as strangers, we’ve determinedly folded into our communities of friendship. Glitz and glitter for some. Grits and granola for others.
Friendships need fuel. Nurturing. Updates. Generosity. And, Kindness. For the past 7 years, thanks to modern-day innovations, I’ve clung to these bonds quite effortlessly. To the question, “Can you hear me now?”, I’d answer a resounding, “Always.” Bash the “social media” all you wish, but through e-mails, Skype, Facebook, iPhones and Blackberries, to name a few, my Colorado ties have remained tightly bound together.
We lose only what we choose not to feed and fortify.
