A little powder for the Kids

Big Sky . . . a Big Mistake

As I sit in this small efficiency condo about 400 ft.² in floor area, with heat and electricity included, I am happy being free of thinking daily about crazy fuel costs. Emily and I are cozy and snug while looking through the window at the Big Sky Mountain. But haunting my good feelings is my mind wondering in the background…. Why …Who… and How has this place become one of the biggest examples of environmental, economic, and cultural ethics decay, disrespect, and destruction I have witnessed?

Emily and I came to Big Sky not to ski the mountain proper but to Nordic ski the small trails, glades, riverbed areas in the area, and to enjoy the yearly West Yellowstone Nordic ski Festival. We had no idea we were renting a condo

‘on the mountain’. When we arrived in a snowstorm we realized that we were to drive up a 7-mile road resembling a mountain pass to reach our condo. This ‘ski area access road’ is the place of death of travelers marked by white crosses and ‘lil’ johnny’s snowboard and flower arrangement.

The car road access arrangement is just the ‘foot-road’ to further ridiculousness in its access. Once at the mountain base a striking view of the Big Sky Mountain reveals that it has no summit! Man has removed the mountain’s very symbolic apex, a ‘symbolic of those places that we humans have to be strong to reach’. All this is to accommodate a tram tower to allow skiers of any fitness level to attain its summit.

The tram is the ultimate symbol of Big Sky and it’s associated accommodations and accessories found here. With capital to burn in the form of dynamite this majestic mountain has had no chance. Nor it’s valley, nor it’s glade, nor it’s natural passes.

The development of this tram is supposed to represent a triumph of man’s technological ability to access anything, anywhere anytime. With such a success all else in the periphery lay in a similar path ….the co modification and quelling of even the symbolic mountain, the supposed prize of the natural world.

When I think of a mountain and the ascending of it I envision a long arduous endeavor with the summit only attained after a process of strenuous climbing and perseverance. When I think of mountain living I think of small cabins fitting where they can be reached not by car but by foot. These envisioned cabins have a wisp of smoke coming from their thin stovepipes exemplifying simple heating system. Skis line the perimeter of the decks. The cabins interior is cozy, but not crammed, still allowing views of the grand natural place in which they are built. I think of simple accommodations that bring one back to the essence of primitive life, exemplified by a hearth for warmth, a place for our friendships, and re-acquaintance with our family or loved ones to flourish.

The Big Sky resort and peripheral housing and lodging represent the destruction and abuse of my idealistic, naive, and maybe old-fashioned principles. I believe the direction that this resort has headed is wrong. Big Sky development exemplifies the deterioration of our cultures ethics and aspirations, and exemplifies greed, wanton destruction of natural places, and shortsightedness. Big sky has driven its cruel stake through the very heart of the Mountain that it reveres for its challenges. The corporate and safety culture have reduced this mountain into a Disney land like co-modified experience. Every Banker, realtor, engineer, architect, contractor/builder has lowered their eyes to the wreckage they assist to prosper.

Everyone bows to the moneyman to get a piece of the pie. In the end what do they have to show for it? A decapitated Mountain accessible to any doughy family with cash. These people who prosper from the destruction of symbolic environments (the mountains, rivers, high natural passes) are seemingly exempt from making appropriate decisions. Even the financial decisions they have made are corrupt, delusional, and lack foresight.

Yesterday Emily and I woke to clear skies. We went for a walk along a small creek heading up the mountain; it was beautiful as long as we ignored the power line running overhead up to Moonlight Basin ski area. We felt freedom in the hills as long as we didn’t approach the massive lodges to the right and left that corner the creek and its populace of small animals. The Elk have long considered this place a lost cause, much like we consider those concrete parking areas around passé malls in and around almost every town in America lost causes.

We tried to avoid a massive 10,000 ft.² uninhabited single family “cabin”, we didn’t want to trespass. We wandered through some beautiful forests then popped up onto yet another traversing access road, accessing higher ‘cabins’. At one point we looked out and yes the eyes found the horizon, a ridgeline of imposing peaks. However, the foreground was unforgivable. Every which way a traversing, blasted in access road, to a modern stylized ‘cabin’ mansion cleaved recklessly into the hillside. In places the clefts are so big that massive condo complexes abound teetering on the edge. The pure acreage that the parking lots and buildings occupy makes it seem as if we were looking down on any suburban place in America. Not a single soul moved. These buildings are unoccupied ‘the ski season’ is not yet.

This whole ecological disaster with its associated sewage problems, energy infrastructure, and run-off issues has been speculatively imposed on this hill, (I can’t call it a mountain, its just too beat up) someone’s idea of a good investment. We climb higher hoping to escape the horrible truths of mans floundering existence and imposed wreckage.

We pass a sign that says that we are not allowed higher. This is Big Sky property. So here it be that even the mountain is owned as a real-estate endeavor. We break the law. We move up a slope where snowmaking ‘turbines’ have been blowing ‘man made’ snow. Even the neve’ is fake. The ski resort must guarantee that winter comes….even if mother nature is slow to crank up her ‘snow gun’. There are many condos and upscale lodges that need to be filled for ski season…snow must be a certainty.

As we all know our economy is in a bad place. Could it be that these places that were built during times of excess will never be occupied? And what becomes of behemoths if never sold? This whole system is contingent on cheap oil, electricity, and affluence. Not one of the homes even attempts to be sustainable in scale, energy saving, or material modesty. The mountains snowmaking is a prime example of energy just blown into the sky.

A lone father and son with helmets and goggles come down the icy slope bouncing hard on the ice paved way. They drove their car to this point 8500 ft. to enjoy ‘early winter”.

I wonder if this economy further fails who will be able to afford the $78/day plus accommodations, and food? Not many from what Emily and I see today, on opening day so few skiers are here, how can this place stay alive? As with most corporations there must be guarantees that some many trails, lifts, and acreage are open even if there are not the skiers to occupy them.

As we walk down the yet to open, rock covered ski trail we feel like we should not be there, Emily reminded me that we are trespassing. We wonder if we will get in trouble with a ski patrol. I tell Emily, if asked why we are there to just say “nanu, nanu” and raise the hand split fingered like Mork, Mindys friend.

We walk down under the lift which transports helmeted skiers with very wide skis upwards. Some look down at us wondering, I suppose, why we are walking there? Why are they not taking the lift? One guy looks like actually he is upset that we are on ‘their’ mountain….only made by god for the skiers.

Whatever has become of our world? Whatever became of us? Mechanized, safety clad humans hiding behind helmets, seemingly sexless, without self identity or critical thinking. We have become robots marching/skiing/driving towards a cliff that no amount of blasting will make safe. When, if ever, will we realize that the legacy we have are leaving the next generations is a mess, natural wonders of the world desecrated, scars that wont go away anytime too soon. Could we put behind our ego and greed to ensure these special natural features remain unaltered, and maybe difficult to get to without hard work? Or to run the current path, one leading to ghost towns of condos, uninhabited, or crumbling paved ways leading to phantom mansions. Our future generations have one thing to learn from Big Sky, what a disaster, what short sightedness, what greedy minded individuals prospered here.

The west (Part 1)

The West….

a place I have tried to avoid thinking about since leaving it. For to think about the West, states like Montana, Idaho, Wyoming, Colorado, Utah would just make my time back East harder, so one just tries to forget those lost loves..and Move on.

But once Emily’s suggestion hinted that maybe just going back there would be a good thing… that maybe staying in Maine ... and ‘Caahhmden’, Maine at that…burning oil in an in-efficient in-law apartment all 6 months long might just not be the thing for us. So she hatched a plan…the Nordic ski festival at West Yellowstone the destination, and got on Craig’s list and found us a condo in Big Sky Montana, just a mere 50 miles down the road to save money (more on this later).

So we packed up, found a cheap storage unit just a convenient couple of blocks away, packed and stowed our domestic lives, for the promises of the open road, and Westward to where snows are reliable!

Well sounds easy as pie right? We had to do so many things to get this ‘Dream’ underway. The jobs that had to be finished were many-fold indeed. We had to get a car that was not a Pig! We had to sell the Pig (Subaru Forester)! Then the customary walk down car sales lane is no picnic… it is long and arduous. But we came out the end with a pretty nice car (VW Jetta wagon), although Phil, my Brother, needed to point out the snow tires that would be needed out on the mountain passes. But Emily kept her head down and she even, in the end, sold her Pig car for a nice Penny!

I got my jobs done too…I had to keep my head down right to the day we left, for we couldn’t leave until they were done…design, permits, find the right metal worker to assist in the project, get materials, do insane on the water metal fabrication, and in the end get paid my old friend Mike Morrill….and brother Jon, longtime high school friend and conspirator.

Then we said goodbye to everyone, the nieces, the geeses, the parents, the siblings, the aunts, and friends…saying all these byes is hard for it gets one to wonder how they will deal when these people are all thousands of miles in the past.

Our final hurrahs were with Jon and Kate… always a party. I mean, these two paarrty! And Jon’s Brother Mike was coming in. Steven too~! So, Emily and I left my folks Place in Liberty, Maine… and I must mention it was a pleasure staying there (even if the turkeys were roosting on the railing that we toiled so hard on and crapped on the deck, clawed around on the roof). But the architecture…! Just kidding… it was nice to finally ‘test drive’ the product that I designed and built for my folks.

The drive to Portland gave the car a shake down…initially it was packed to the gills, but we pruned ‘her’ down, stowed some more in my sister, Danielle’s attic. The second-hand Thule ski box that we put on the roof was covered with stickers of places only a ski playboy could go. No problem, “We have the whole trip across this miserable country to peel them off,” I said to Emily. But back to the blowout that occurred on our way out of Portland… Let’s put it this way: Emily, Jon’s doctor neighbor Sarah, and Kate wore black electrician’s tape over their nipples that night! And the dirty dancing…. I did not approve of it, much like an old man would not have. So the few days’ laughs were had and many more beers downed… the timing to leave was good everyone went back to work… except Emily and I… we drove away… away to our new lives for at least a winter.

We woke early and got on the road by 7 am… not easy to do in November… it was Nov. 11 and the wide-open road was waiting. All of our toll money in a row, we drove off. By the time we got to Connecticut, we had made a mistake. Missed an exit. ”Oh, well” Emily said. “We will catch the next road and reconnect.” But not so fast, we hit a slow in the road…. And time goes by sitting in traffic…my goal for that day was to miss the NY turnpike and go by the way of the good ole Pennsylvania turnpike- cheap and dangerous….plagued with mini deer I told Emily. And we did get to see a whole bunch of them. I told Emily, wait ‘till she sees an Elk!

We almost made it out of Pennsylvania that night, but we decided to call it quits and pulled into a lack luster Motel 8. “And not necessarily cheap either,” Emily confided to me. So, we watched a few crappy reality shows and called it a day. Oh, I forgot to mention….It was a dry town… No beer for Greeno!

We were up and a frost was on the car. The car next to us had two smashed out windows. We were thankful ours were not. We drove off checking our fuel gauge and mileage, for we wanted to verify that we were not driving another Pig. So far we’re averaging 28-29 mpg.

Well, the tolls of Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois suck! We paid like 30 bucks to go through those miserable states. And all they had to show for it were a couple of Starbucks coffee joints housed in what I told Emily was the equivalent of a first year architect’s portfolio. We toiled on the road that day and drove through some of the most frightening places: suburban sprawl, electrical lines, choked highways, trash clinging to wasteland pedestrians’ legs. We achieved for a day’s labor: Iowa… the land of the truly lost. We pulled off the road when every trucker and his brother blew by in the early night hours….

The EconoLodge sign loomed and we suckered into it. I sat in the car thinking that I needed a beer, but all I had was smoke-ables… so I indulged. Emily came out. “We are room 215.”

We walk into the hall and its already a scene out of a bad horror movie. Our room is to the right… on entry an awful smell of pesticide hits my nose… I look for a window to open… its not operable, I say to Em “ look for bugs in the corner of the room” she looks at me oddly… In the meantime I see a brown thing on the floor, I examine….”looks like a husk”. “Lets look at the bed”… I say… On approaching the bed I see what appears to be a huge bedbug on the center of the mealy looking brown bedspread…. On closer examination…”Emily look at this huge bedbug” she runs over and the bug feels her horror and on queue runs across the bed and jump off into the dark….

We quickly gathered our bags before the word was out in the bed bug community and practically jogged out of there down the hall and Emily was getting her money back.

Now I had to drive again… and where? So we see this sign over the interstate pass… ‘Newton Inn’ …. “ well hopefully there are no bed bugs in the Inn” I think we both said at the same time. I am now in my ‘Nth hour’ and just want to be done with driving. “Emily… Where do we go? … you’re my co-pilot tell me where…”

Emily takes control, “take a left”. We arrive at the weird entry of the Newton Inn… a blue canvas awning … into what looked like a swimming pool? But alas to the left a high portico marking the true Hotel entry…or so we thought…Emily finds her way through the maze of entry doors and is met by a very tired drywaller at day hotel custodian at night Black man. I am sorry I am from Maine… its customary to mention when men are black.

Again I am waiting in the car…. She comes out… and triumphantly announces room 154 … so we go in under the glowing blue awning, down a hall wide like on entering a football stadium… covered with exterior grade blue carpet…? Walking into the stadium we find the smell of Chlorine and a giant swimming pool roped off. We go into the room… close the door… immediately inspect the bed… rip the covers off, flip the mattress up and no bugs! We celebrate…oh and forgot to mention I did have a beer this night but up to this moment had not been able to open it….I hesitate to open it… the room is damp from the nearby pool so I turn on a air exchange unit… instantly the air has the smell of burnt wiring…acrid… and I open the door … the smoke alarm goes off… Emily comes back in… I try some lights and the TV and all wiring is poached…. Blown breaker… The hotel manager comes down in his last hour stand…smells the wiring and sends us to another room.

The second room in the Newton Inn … more isolated… away from the noisy room, but what about bugs? We go through the whole bed, mattress thing again… No bugs… I conclude that it’s the chlorine in the pool that keeps the bed bugs away… and most bugs really I suppose. I finally get to drink my beer.. A Fat Tire… ahhhh! A flavor I have not had since last out west… beautiful… my first beer since we left Portland too. We watch a few reality shows and retire in a haze.

The night was long in the inner catacombs of the Newton inn… no windows saw day break, the only window looked dumbly out onto the pool which had crappy lighting…we came out of our catacomb actually early for we had no idea of daybreak… The continental breakfast was great! If you like captain crunch, and toasties… luckily we made our own coffee in our room…. Not risking that one. I had seconds on no one item, Emily didn’t like her breakfast so much. On leaving we got to reflect once again on the overall Parti of this hotel convention design… bring the kids too, they can make friends in the pool that will hopefully drown them.

We marked time against another Newton Inn customer wearily leaving a just dawn… his eyes blood shot and blurry…The Newton Inn a place for

Iowa sucks…. Once on the road… Iowa sucks… the drivers hated our Maine state license plate… they knew we were on the other side…the McCain side and they were soar about the recent lost to Obama. We knew we were in their territory! So I drove fast, and Emily hung on to the convenient handle over the passenger door. At some point I noticed that I was having a deja-vu experience …I had been through Iowa before…The middle of this sad country is frightful, it seems as if its become one power grid like tinsel on a tree strewn all about. The road scape is bleak, apocalyptic in its industrial usage of land. The farms that once embodied this region have sold out to the big box stores. As far as the eye can see corporate chains, fast food courts, and industrial parks own the landscape. No one smiles, and if they do I wonder what they are on. At this point I yearn to see a semi load of shitting cattle over the industrialness of this land. Our dreams were answered when we saw the windmill of yore all over the hills …Brand new shining windmill…huge in scale…going up all over the hills….Emily and I feel that now we are getting somewhere…. As the land opened up to the west….heading into the never ending Nebraska…

Nebraska is boring, but in a calming way, I-80 starts to thin out, and commuters…where are they commuting? We see a sign that tells us that we are half way through the state, only another 200 miles till Good old Colorado.

We stay in touch with Billy Bentley who is going to receive us on the other side of Colorado, over the passes of I-70. We realize that we will be hitting Denver just as darkness fully sets in. As we approach Denver its maddeningly crazy, the lanes come in and everyone is driving straight out….tumble weeds roll as the winds off the Front range of the Rockies begin to roar. As the grade steepens up the first foothill, which are quit steep snow begins to fly….I could see it all coming, that we would have to pay our dues getting over Loveland pass, and then Vail Pass, the semi trucks were trying to beat the weather before it got worse… and we started to wonder about the Jetta Wagon with all season radials. It was a white knuckled ride, and through the Eisenhower tunnel we raced with the big trucks western folk love to drive. When we popped out of the tunnel the snow was blinding, and greasy and building up quick… this descent was crazy, and I was pushed from behind by every asshole and his brother….I would like to say that it got better, but Vail pass proved to be a white out, and even more snow….the climax was when a semi loaded with cattle flew by on a steep snow slickened downhill, he must have been going 85 mph! We just stayed as far right as we dared. By the time we got to Beaver Creek, the snow had died and we had a relatively easy time through the Glenwood canyon, winding this way and that with the huge talus slopes above towering in a menacing way. I remembered Glenwood well enough and before we knew it we sat with Billy, Pattie, and their 2.5 year old kid Charlie, and the two dogs. Whew!