There is nothing more splendid on earth than the crescendo of thunder cascading through the mountains. First the massive crack and then the rumblings bouncing down the valley. The steady rain yielded to sleet and finally soft puffs of snow. It was quite serene, especially for a guy from coastal Texas.
Of course, sitting on a balcony of a trendy hotel overlooking a manmade pond in the dark of night isn’t really embracing nature on her terms. All the same, it left me in awe.
I usually use our road trips to the West as a way to gage the mood of Middle America. This time there didn’t seem to be a mood. In some places it felt as if people were celebrating an end of an era. From others I could see the pain of an economy slowly destroying those on fixed incomes. In most places, it seemed that people were doing the best they could with what life is presenting.
Overall, the mood of the nation, in the Western part at least, is subdued. In 2020, the first major inflection point of this current turmoil, there was hope and optimism. As we drove through the countryside and backwoods of Colorado, Trump-Pence signs were plastered on fences, barns, and on the street corners of small mountain towns. People drove their cars and trucks with Trump 2020 flags ripping through the wind. There was none of it this time; just a few Trump flags limply fluttering in front of lonely farms.
Our waiter in Basalt was Salvadoran. At first, he annoyed me; however, after a couple of beers, he grew on me. Once I passed the third one, we became best of buds. He had emigrated to the U.S. about ten years ago, at a time when his country was overrun by gangs and corruption. When I queried him about what was currently happening in El Salvador, a strange expression crossed his face before he burst into a smile. He liked the anticorruption policies and that his family felt much safer than before. Nayib Bukele, the current president of El Salvador, has been labeled by the leftist media as a dictator because—horrors of horrors—he’s locking up tens of thousands of gang members; murder rates have plummeted. What a novel concept: destroy what is destroying you.
I ventured into the Bitcoin realm and asked him what he thought about Bukele pushing its adoption as legal currency in his native land. He nodded his approval but I think, like me, the whole Bitcoin phenomena is lost in translation. I praised his country and the amount of pride that came from his wide stretched smile told me what I needed to know: At least someone was trying something else.
We did a pub crawl in Aspen with my friend from high school—now a local—and his two dogs, one a giant Bernese Mountain dog. If you’re single and looking for a sugar mama, trawl a Bernese Mountain dog through Aspen and you’ll be set for life. We sat in the lobby of the St. Regis, a hotel where the self-important go to be seen as being self-important. Kitty is the house dog, a giant Bernese Mountain dog. On two different trespasses into the land of the make-believe, I have yet to meet Kitty but gobs of sugar mamas believed my friend’s dog was this infamous hotel mascot. Of course, Mak is better than Kitty, announced my friend, and the well-appointed women tended to agree.
Aspen was receiving a massive April snow dump—something a bit unusual and no doubt brought on by Climate Change! We warmed ourselves in front of the fire and a parade of these self-important millennials, with burgeoning trust funds, did their best to play the part of Gatsby on the eve of the stock market crash. I had never seen a bright red fur coat on a man before. Checked that off my list.
There was a lot of expensive cosmetic surgery on display, something not available during the Roaring Twenties. Sipping champagne as they passed through the lobby—and no doubt munching down on foie gras and caviar—they appeared to be anticipating their carefree lives but it is an expectance, I think they realize, with no tangible results; they were partying but the music has stopped. C’est la vie.
We moved on to Utah, a beautiful state, arguably the most beautiful in North America. It is where we spent most of our time and it was serene. It’s a great place for four-wheel driving which gets you away from people and into the rarified realm of solitude, something that everyone should experience so as to put life back into perspective. A Jeep is a great investment for this—or for outrunning the hordes of panicking zombies when the music does eventually stop in economically stressed cities. It can go where no man has gone before—it just eats up a bunch of gas. Gas was very expensive in Utah, something that adds to their economic misery. As would be expected, gas prices in Texas are much less than most anywhere else. In Utah I didn’t pay less than $3.99. Of course, in the middle of nowhere, it costs a lot of gas just getting gas to the stations—a double whammy.
We stayed at a mountain ranch just outside of Zion National Park. Having been there before and knowing the solitude—thus lack of convenience—we stopped in Kanab to pick up breakfast stuff. Prices have gone up in Houston—many household items being seventy-five percent above pre-Biden prices. In Utah, a box of cereal that costs $4.50 in Houston was $7.50. Milk was double what it is in Houston.
The store was busy with a lot of elderly roaming the aisles lugging oxygen tanks or wheeling about in wheelchairs. They were haggard looking folks that held faces of resignation, hoping it won’t get much worse. These are the people who should be of greatest concern to our politicians. Instead, let’s bail out Ukraine. Great use of make-believe money printed out of thin air.
The ranch is known for its Great Pyrenees dogs. The last time we were there, I had an amazing encounter with one of them who came up to our porch late at night and smothered me—literally. This time, I wrestled with four of them at once. Incredible beasts.
My last two observations: First, while I love Utahans for their straightforward, hardy friendliness, they do not know how to brew a good IPA; much too much carbonation and much too sweet. If they can perfect an IPA then Utah would be the perfect state of mind.
Second, I was able to coin a new term. We stayed in the central area of Moab, home to two of the great parks that the state offers, and that allowed us to walk to most of the restaurants in the area. It is a place where men are men and women go au naturel. Men who decline the support of boxers or briefs are termed to be going commando. I will now moniker women who forgo artificial support as going Moab. There were ample examples of fine young women practicing their freedom.
We received rain then snow in Aspen, snow in Zion, and the rain steadily fell from Van Horn, Texas to San Antonio and again on into Houston. The thunder in Basalt was an announcement that our trek would be adventurous; and it was. The snow opened the possibilities to magic, and the nature in Utah confirmed the existence of God. The rain reminded me that our nation is stagnated but that the possibilities remain for the magic to return.