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Days of Last Resort

An unpopular story about some popular notions

By Ken Wright

" We have confused money with wealth."

- Alan Watts

At last, winter has come home.

So this morning, with the mountains grinning with a gleaming layer of fresh snow - and this on top of our recent gift of the lately-elusive stuff - my family and I grab our clothes and boots and skis, load the car, and venture north, to the mountains. And to our favorite mal-named but much-loved rinky-dink ski area.

We head north, along with a thin but steady stream of skis and snowboards strapped to roof tops, up the Animas Valley - past the redrock bands like welts on the valleyside's fresh skin of snow, then along the base of the morning-lit aurora-like curtain of the Hermosa Cliffs, to the whitewashed spruce-and-aspen glades at the base of Durango Mountain Resort. Which none of us calls it, since that particularly malevolent marketing moniker balls up like peanut butter on the tongue. How about "DMR"? Ack. So we still just call it Purgatory. Or "Purg," when even that's too much, too formal, too impersonal, too unfriendly for the deep, warm familiarity we feel for this place. Especially on a grand powder day such as we have before us here today.

Parking is easy - we four-wheel our way into one of the snowy lots near the bottom runs. Soon, we've geared up, walked over, and loaded onto the short lift up to the main base area. There, queued up for few minutes as the jabbering crowd shuffles through the lift line, we greet several friends and acquaintances from town and school and work - all joyous as saints, all sporting grins toothy and bright as the Needles Range rising behind us. Then we're on the lift to the top, my family and I looking, pointing, scheming routes and runs, salivating over the thick, glistening meteorological bounty around us, and staring down enviously on those who hustled up a little earlier than we did as they paint sinuous, sensuous lines down the rolling white face of the mountain.

A spectacular blessing of a day. And a rare blessing of a place: a balance of ample space shared by some - but not too many - good people with whom to enjoy it.

And that's why its our favorite little rinky-dink nearby ski area. The way its has been for the entire Four Corners for 40 years now.

Of course, the sentiments and situations I have just described, and the way I have described them, are exactly what must drive the movers and shakers and innovators and investors of Durango Mountain Resort, and any wannabe resort (think, say, Red McCombs and his proposed "Village at Wolf Creek") absolutely Freddy Kruger - a money junkie's conditioned response to any sort of long-term economic stasis, restraint, or unfulfilled financial potential.

But these impolite, illogical, and unprofitable sentiments I humbly offer here are out there. Everywhere, in fact, even if there's no seat for these views at the economic-development dinner table, where only food-for-thought digestible by a calculator is served. And there's no better place to catch a whiff of the sweet scent of those anti-growth-and-development perspectives than on the snow-covered sandstone stairsteps of Purgatory on a powder day.

You still can catch those because Purgatory is a disappearing breed: a small-time ski area in an era of the big-time year-round mega-resorts. Yet Purgatory, at least for now, remains a throwback: a pretty small, pretty much straight-up skiing-focused 1970s-style ski area - a time when most ski areas were simply small economic pumps that supported remote, affordable mountain communities and the devoted cast of mass-culture outcasts willing to live the life required to really live there. Because of the place itself. And for the companionship - the culture - of others willing to do the same, for the same non-economic, non-quantifiable but highly valuable, highly human reasons.

Today, though, most of the finer mountain towns have been sledgehammered into real-estate brothels, where skiing is just one of the many services rendered to suck a buck from the mountains. Into resorts: juvenilia for the moneyed, urbane urbanite.

Resort development is the West's 21st century extractive industry - social strip mining - disemboweling places to market manufactured "lifestyles" to People of Money, pandering to gluttony, wealth, laziness, and greed while driving the mountain culture out of the towns and into commuting serfdom. It's about generating wealth rather than making a living. And, yes, I do believe there is a big difference. And, no, I don't believe that wealth imbues someone or some group of people with the wisdom, vision, or moral authority to recklessly, ruthlessly, or unilaterally destroy a place and its community for more money.

Blasphemy, I know. But no matter: This being the 21st-century New West and all, there are, of course, grand plans for Purgatory's joining the frenzy, pumping itself up so it, too, can pimp the countryside year round. The first symptoms are apparent from the lift when I crane my neck around: I can't help but note the recent spread of condo cancer and town-home tumors and McMansion malignancy bulging like boils in the woods up and down the valley.

It already feels like the Last Days.

For now, though, Purgatory isn't like one of those Front Range behemoths. In spite of its big-sounding name, Purgatory is still relatively tastefully adorned with only a simple base area and mountain restaurants, is still surrounded by mostly woods and mountain, and thanks to its location far from an interstate, major airport, metropolitan area - and, often, the jet stream - there are only a few times a year when you have to deal with lines of weekend warriors or wealthy well-suited vacationers.

So even though it drives some insane, Purgatory on a powder day is still mostly just lots of grinning, snow-covered, happy, hillbilly locals. Like us.

At the top of the lift we gather to tighten our boots and coordinate on our first descent. And here a funny thing happens: Webb and Anna, ages 13 and 11 this year, appoint themselves guides. Sarah and I can't help but share a knowing glance as we stand there while the kids take it upon themselves to discuss the best plan for staying ahead of the tide of our fellow powder-run seekers.

My wife and I, who have been playing the very same powder-hound games together for two decades now, including the past few years with our kids, sense some kind of rite of passage taking place. Over those years of our sharing so many days with them up here together, we have watched their knowledge and understanding of the mountain grow, their sensing of its moods and snow conditions sharpen, and their observation of the habits of those who use the place deepen. And today, it seems, this training has come to fruition as we listen to our kids negotiate this place. Another wintermark in our "ski trek: the next generation" lives made on Purgatory mountain.

And that's how the day goes, with the kids showing off on the slopes their year of growth in body and mind, and movement further into the world, as Sarah and I follow them down runs, over moguls, and through trees that challenge even our more experienced (albeit another year older) technique. We spend the first couple of hours with the kids leading us down uncut powder-bump lines. With Webb hooting and Anna scooting through powder shots. With their showing us shortcuts through the trees that they'd learned from friends and ski school. With their wending our way back and forth across the many faces of the mountain seeking those lines they know will still be there offering fresh lines even as the day's powder gets eaten by skiers or settled by the sun.

The chair rides are fun, too. They are their own sacred shared experience, where we get to sit and talk about school, friends, the day, the last run. Anything. Many things we don't get the time to just sit and chat about in our busy lives at home. Sometimes we just sit, together, quietly. Sometimes the kids ask to ride the lift alone, leaving us to wonder what they're thinking up there, looking around. Other times they ride the chair with strangers with whom they chatter all the way up the mountain.

For most of the day, the kids wait patiently for us at the bottom of each run. This - not their waiting patiently, but their having to wait at all - is another first this year in our shared skiing careers. Yet another wintermark. And when they get tired of that, we splinter off for our own runs - adults and kids separate - setting up a meeting place and time later.

And Sarah and I feel good about that. Comfortable with that. Happy for them and proud of them and secure with their being able to go off and explore and enjoy this mountain world on their own - exactly because Purgatory is not another corporate mega-mountain resort-city freak show.

And this year, we feel it: This mountain and its people are now officially theirs. And what more, what better, could middle-aged long-time ski-bum parents want to pass on to their kids? Because to live well, you need places to live well. And to raise good kids, we need good places to raise them in.

But I can't help but wonder what they'll have left to pass on to their kids.

Ken Wright blasphemes the cult of Growth and Development from his fortified bunker in Durango.