I’ve never before waited until the last minute to begin an article, largely because my early drafts are unfailingly dismal. I think most of us have trouble seeing clearly what we’ve just created. Like new mothers, we’re blinded by attachment; unable to perceive the hideous deformities everyone else finds obvious. This column—typically baggy, digressive, and unrefined—must often seem like an early draft to some readers, even when it’s been winnowed down repeatedly. Modern art sometimes achieves childlike appearance by virtue of great effort and time spent. Good thing I’m paid by the hour.
Were an asylum pleasant enough, the inmates would stay of their own free accord. There’d be no need for walls. I’ve been volunteering at the new Patagonia Visitor Center. Both tourists (passing through) and those who live here comment affectionately on this town’s “quirkiness.” What a varied collection of cartoon characters has washed ashore here! Some just happened by unwittingly, on their way from Tombstone to Nogales. Others, including, starry-eyed seekers, come for local institutions: Native Seed, The Tree, Borderlands, Deep Dirt Farm, etc., and find they like it here. Once done with their apprenticeships, they stay here anyway, to eke out what living they can. Atop the original, quiet Hispanic community, you’ve got prosperous, well-educated retirees, sophisticated people of means, who’ve traveled widely and have other options, young agrarian idealists, fossilized hippies, spiritually ambitious seekers, bird freaks, laconic Sasquatchologists, etc. Most of them—despite differences in background and lifestyle—know one another by name and are casual friends. This town, with its enchanting smorgasbord of humility, variety and soulfulness, reminds me of a grease trap under the kitchen sink of a truly excellent restaurant.
It’s a friendly place. “Be yourself!” could be the town motto. Nobody really wants you to be much different than you already are. Occasionally, some transplant exhibits signs of normalcy, prestige, or urbanity—appearances perhaps viable in the outside world, but anomalous here. Patagonia requires no credentials. Those who think they must declare their historical “identity”—or are just unconsciously in the habit of doing so—are noticeable simply because most of us here don’t bother. These folks, too, will almost surely begin shedding their protective exoskeletons during the first few months. Within two years either they or their masks will be gone.
Nobody can say for sure why vital energies develop in one place or another, but it’s certain they do. Call it zeitgeist, feng shui, vortices… call it whatever you like… for some length of time it’s quite real—a fertilizing synergy of sorts. Given time, it will end, then show up somewhere else. Our job, so to speak, is to appreciate it and be nourished by it without allowing it—or ourselves—to grow precious, self-conscious, or smug. Patagonia’s economic limitations are an important part of the immune system keeping us real. Failing that, we will slip down into the cesspool of glamorous self-congratulation that has already swallowed Tubac, Telluride, Taos, Santa Fe, Marin County, the Hamptons and—King of Such Mishaps—Sedona.
Every one of these “special” places is beautiful and charming. Their beauty brings doom upon themselves. The artists and rich folks come first; not a problem at the outset. But, then, the word gets out and, next, “discovery” ensues. Where tourists flock, prepare for schlock. Cute, vapid art galleries outnumber ordinary businesses. Buildings are painted unusual colors only because they are unusual. Elegance becomes competitive. Privileged people saunter from gallery to gallery, chattering glibly, wineglass in hand, up and down Canyon Road in their $4,000 cowboy boots and $7,000 concho belts, like spoiled children at a masquerade, aping local history. Before we let that happen here, please, let’s just move to Benson or Wilcox or Sells, where plainness, limited opportunity and bad diet will ward off the scurvy of arrogant vogue. It may take mines and trailer parks to save us from this blight.