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| Even the aspen trees were ready for winter last week. Almost. |
I caught up with some close friends yesterday from my hometown in Vermont. Our plan to meet for lunch happened to coincide with the first big winter storm of the season. No biggie. The roads were fine and getting to catch up, hear about their recent adventures, and generally enjoy their company was terrific in every way. Lunch was yummy, we split a disconcertingly sugary desert, forestalled the inevitable diabetic shock with a nice stroll in the cold air along the river, browsed in a great local bookstore, and then parted ways certain that we’d see each other again soon. The hour and a quarter drive home was easy and provided some great views of the new snowfall in Glenwood Canyon. Wait, what? An hour and a quarter drive, you say? Insert sound of the needle skipping across the record here.
Yes, I met friends for lunch in a place that was an hour and fifteen minutes from where I live. It’s about halfway between my house and theirs and a great spot to spend the afternoon. No, none of us thought that was weird and, no, it was not unusual. Not for Vermonters, anyway.
In Vermont, when friends invite you over for dinner it’s common for that to mean a trip that takes an hour to the next town over, along roads that never ever go in a straight line, where conditions are frequently very dicey, cell service is inconsistent and totally unreliable, and we love it. I can immediately think of a few people whose dinner tables are among my favorite places on the planet (you know who you are, Ali & Chris) and whose homes are close as the crow flies but can be an hour away in good weather, and that’s using the river road shortcut. It calms the mind, feeds the soul, and blessedly slows down this hectic world for the evening. It’s wonderful.
In stark contrast, among some Aspen locals there is a very particular way of looking at distances and the effort of traveling across them here in the Roaring Fork Valley. In winter, when Independence Pass is closed to vehicles, the City of Aspen is the end of the road, literally. Colorado Highway 82 is the major thoroughfare into Aspen and, critically, just as it enters the city there is a roundabout. The best way to think of that roundabout is that it functions like a cork – it bottles everything and everyone Aspen inside the box canyon and backs-up traffic of everyone and everything trying to get into the city.
What yesterday’s little trip brought to mind about Aspen is the effect that the roundabout has on the mindset of the people there. Notable numbers of Aspen residents find having to travel past the roundabout to be a serious pain in the derrière, even a distasteful thing to have to do. This particular sociological phenomenon, to be clear, cracks me up. It cracks me up so much that I willingly have ended the prior sentence with a preposition. It reminds me, in a way, of native Manhattanites who smugly refer to the people who travel onto the island as “the bridge and tunnel crowd”. Please note that I say “smug” and not “snobby”: it’s a fuzzy distinction but a critical one because the smugness is applied regardless of socio-economic status.
One entertaining, specific example of this is my favorite restaurant in Aspen. It’s a North African bistro with exceptional, interesting food from an award-winning local chef, with great service in a cozy environment. However, because the bistro is ever so slightly past the roundabout, many self-styled foodies can’t be bothered to try it and prefer to spend their time at the ludicrously expensive name-brand extravaganzas in town whose food is, well, less good. You’d think it was as though you’d recommended a restaurant in Newark to someone from the Upper West Side, only it’s about five minutes away from the Aspen Epicenter. They’re missing out.
Buttermilk and Snowmass are two of the four mountains in our resort. Both are past the roundabout and so are the recipient of that same smugness despite their considerable value to skiers and riders. Aspen Highlands is actually level with the roundabout, not technically past it, so it somehow squeaks under the umbrella of being ‘in town’ despite its historic and proud quirkiness. Highlands is like the far frontier, the wild west of ‘in town’. Skiing at Highlands for residents of downtown Aspen would be like someone from the Upper West Side going all the way off the grid to Greenwich Village if the Village was five blocks away.
I live in Basalt. It’s about 20 minutes from downtown Aspen without traffic (notably, describing 82 as being without traffic is like describing a Vermont drive as being in good weather). In Basalt we have our own authentic main street with shops and nice restaurants; we have great parks, exceptional hiking, two rivers converging right in downtown; and those of us who live here are quite happy being “down valley” and past the roundabout. Basaltines, as we call ourselves (thank you, Rob), happily go to Carbondale with friends, do our shopping in Willits, and run errands in Glenwood Springs (“Glen-Vegas”). Maybe that makes us a tiny bit more like Vermonters and maybe, just maybe, that’s why I like being here.
Entertainment aside, most Aspen residents quite happily include Snowmass, Basalt, and the rest of the Roaring Fork Valley in their orbit without hesitation. I like Aspen and the wider valley a lot. I am glad to be here, very glad to work at Aspen Snowmass, and am very much looking forward to my first full-time non-pandemic winter season here. Still, I will happily make the drive to Edwards, Dillon, or wherever my friends are to share a good meal and hear their stories. After all, though the highways are straight and wide and the winter weather is pretty benign here, their company makes this place more like home wherever we happen to be. Thank you, Todd & Erin, for a great afternoon. I’ll look forward to the next one!
