This small, sweet town has been discovered – some might say invaded – by an army of prosperous tree-hugger types: retirees who’ve lately chosen this quaint place in which to spend their sunset years. They cherish peace and quiet, horses, hiking, biking, flora, fauna – all that wholesome, high-on-nature stuff. They breastfeed owls and worship weeds, and do not seem to be aware, or care, that they may seem like Martians to the “ordinary” folk who came to live here years ago when this was just a no-frills ranch and funky mining town. These “rich retirees” (as we’ve been carelessly described) are mostly senior refugees who – by some blessed twist of fate – didn’t need to swim the Rio Grande or climb a daunting wall to settle here in heaven with y’all.
Like any smart expatriates, we pay our way by doing things to benefit the town. We hire local contractors; we open, fund and staff the local library, theater, visitor center, art center, youth center, newspaper, senior transport van, and other worthy projects far too numerous to list, and hope that makes the locals glad to have us in their midst. We’ve even hatched an affordable-housing plan to help assuage our sense of guilt for buying local real estate and raising prices / taxes to a level that the locals can’t afford. We are this region’s New Age Mongol Horde.
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On Iwo Jima, Everest, or anyplace you name, a flag, displayed, seems to proclaim “We own this place! We’ve won the game!” It all seems quite familiar, thanks to newsreels we’ve all seen: the French or Afghan village, looking as it always has, but swarming with the vehicles of an invading force: the Wehrmacht or the U.S.A., or, hereabouts, these days, South32.
The mine-year-old – oops, nine-year-old – in me thinks they look cool, the fleet of big white pickup trucks with slender whip-antennas and their bright orange battle flags. Those flags are not some show-off ploy like the lurid green tee shirts the pro-mine folks wear to meetings at the high school, every other year or so, where we’re informed, unfailingly, of all the good and noble things the Forest Service hasn’t done to save this lovely town. Those shirts are brilliant in two ways, one good, one not: They proclaim solidarity and instigate polarity.
Those orange flags, on the other hand, were born of concrete need: the huge earth-moving trucks used by the mines are dangerous. The driver can’t see squat; his rig’s too big. A normal car or pickup truck nearby will be squashed flat. The mines, therefore, quite sensibly require those who drive out there to fly a bright orange flag.
Though dreaded by the Eco-Freaks, the mines may save us from a fate far worse than heavy trucks or manganese – the cancer known as preciousness, which seems to plague small charming towns like these. Consider Taos, Tubac, Tombstone, Telluride or Santa Fe…or even – Oh, Sweet Bleeding Lord – Sedona, worst of all, with its hyped vortices and upscale spas. Those places were all glorious till beauty and tranquility conspired to make them known. The rich move in, the word gets out, and wham, your cover’s blown. Reality concedes to cutesy, upscale, theme-park crap, which turns your town into another high-priced tourist-trap.
Let’s make our motto “Better Real Than Precious” and, here’s why:
The undertaker makes you pretty right after you die;
Your rosy cheeks and well-kempt hair – some sort of
lifeless lie.
With luck, this funky, charming gem will never gentrify.