One month after Jayebird and I moved into our cozy, pre-fab house-with-a-view in Aspen Springs, my parents visited from Dallas. Dad asked how deep the well was. I told him there was no well, there was a cistern. He asked if I collected rain water from the roof. I told him, no, I had to haul water from a pump station on the west end of Pagosa Springs.
Dad replied: “What? Are you living in Appalachia, 1923? That’s crazy!”
I couldn’t argue with him. (And to think that we had moved there of our own volition.)
The drunken Aspen Springs developers had planned on piping in water, but that idea – which had been an important selling point – never materialized due to the exorbitant cost. So the city water idea died a mournful death. Excited newcomers moving onto their new, gorgeous properties have to drill wells. One catch: the water in Aspen Springs is foul sulfur water and is not potable. After making the expensive mistake of drilling, many pay thousands of dollars extra for water purification systems that rarely get rid of the stink and, in some cases, systems actually catch on fire! No kidding.
Most “settlers” put in 1,800 gallon cisterns and haul water from many miles away. Or they can call one of the industrious water haulers that will fill your cistern in one truckload ‒ for a hundred bucks. I call my Fundamentalist Christian water haulers and they bring us a truck load of Holy Water. (I’m afraid the redeeming qualities of the water haven’t kicked in yet.)
Aspen Springs is an “experimental” rural subdivision gone horribly wrong. It might have originally been called paradise, but not anymore. Now everybody calls it Outlaw Land (and it’s dangerous and backwards). There are actual criminals hiding out in the hills and lots of gunfire, but the nickname actually comes from the lack of restrictive ordinances for land owners. We’re free out here: free to be as irresponsible as we choose. In other words, the place is wide open. (Archuleta County Sheriff’s deputies avoid Aspen Springs at all costs.)
This is not Pagosa Lakes. If you want to turn your acre in paradise into a rat-infested junkyard, you may. If you want to keep horses, sheep, chickens and grow crops and call your acre a damn ranch, you may. If you want to fortify your manufactured home with a .50 caliber machine gun in a watch tower and take pot shots at trespassers, you may. If you want to let your gnarly pit bulls run loose through your neighbors’ land taking bites out of their kids, you may. But if you want to remain six feet above ground you will behave yourself. And that, my friends, is the unwritten law of the Wild West:
“Your liberty to swing your fist ends just where my nose begins.”
Aspen Springs was planned as a “scenic mountain community” with a proposed golf course that never materialized. “A great place to raise your kids and build a new life in the country,” they claimed. But the project was designed by unscrupulous land developers who made a fortune selling pipe dreams that usually turned into nightmares.
The smarmy con artists got drunk, sat down and planned out the roads and property units so as to sell as many lots as possible. Any perfectly good ‒ and safe ‒ pre-existing roads on potentially salable land were torn up and rebuilt on nearby unsalable, steep hillsides making for the most dangerous road system in Colorado. The treacherous, third world dusty, gravel roads are a joke – but no one’s laughing. There are few stop signs, yield signs… and no guardrails! Every lead-footed fool in Outlaw Land thinks he or she has the right-of-way, when in reality no one has the right-of-way.
If you come to a four way intersection with no stop signs, legally you don’t have to stop. Anyone with half a brain knows you should, but everyone speeds right through, sometimes with interesting consequences that only a money-grubbing funeral director could love. And when winter hits hard, the whole area turns into a demolition derby/Ice Capade. (I hope we get lots of much needed funding from Biden’s new infrastructure plan. We’ve got to start from scratch!)
Aspen Springs is truly a third word country and should have an American Consulate here.
How can we forget the great potato famine of 1973? If it wasn’t for the UN airdrops, the denizens would have starved to death! And what about the murderous Mutton Melee of 2014? The war between cowboys and sheepherders: A time when men were men and sheep were afraid. And who can forget the sight of a suicidal drug addict hanging from a tree, or the time a maniacal gun nut got out his AR-15 and filled his strolling neighbor full of lead? And what about my poor friend who was found in the snow frozen to death?
Where else does all this happen?
Jayebird and I have had enough. We recently applied for asylum status and hope to legally immigrate across the border into the United States soon. As refugees from a backward, third world province, we will slowly assimilate into the American culture and one day become full fledged citizens. God bless America! And God help Aspen Springs.
DC has been a frustrated musician for over fifty years, and now has decided to become a frustrated writer. Learn more at DCDuncan.com. He’ll keep you posted.