It seemed like an ideal location. Unpolluted air. Clean water. A nearby ski area. It even had concrete sidewalks in some places.
And trees. Lots of trees. But they don’t block the view, unless you get too close to them.
Mostly, though, it was the isolation. The idea of living in the middle of nowhere, far removed from the American Rat Race. Not as far away from California and Texas as I would prefer, but beggars can’t be choosers.
My main concern was, of course, the nuclear weapons under development in North Korea. I’ve heard that Pagosa Springs doesn’t even appear on their maps, which means we’re probably relatively safe, here. In the middle of nowhere.
But I have other concerns. (Don’t we all?)
Mostly, it’s strangers. Entirely too many strangers.
When I first moved to Pagosa, you could make a left turn. A left turn was no big deal. You stopped at the intersection, and looked both ways, and saw no vehicles coming, from either direction. Or maybe one. Maybe an older Ford Bronco, with the front bumper tied on with baling wire. You felt sorry for the guy. In fact, he was a friend of yours. You had a beer with him on Saturday night and you both agreed that Pagosa Springs was the Divorce Capital of the World.
We hadn’t known about the ‘Divorce Capital of the World’ state of affairs, when Darlene and I moved here, but we did finally notice the difference between the people who were born and raised in Pagosa Springs, and the people who were moving here from California and Texas and other places. We’d make friends with a nice couple who had recently discovered Paradise, and had built themselves a nice suburban house on Lake Forest Circle, and presto, the next time we saw them, they were divorced.
Darlene and I would look at each other and shake our heads, feeling sorry for them. Little did we know.
Of course, the story is right there in the bible, for everyone to read. How long did Adam and Eve get to enjoy Paradise, before the whole thing fell apart? Maybe, a week? A month, tops, I would estimate, considering it took only six days to create the entire universe.
But I’m not complaining about the divorce. Darlene and I got to enjoy almost ten years of living together in Paradise. Sure, we were fighting the whole time, and the marriage was, really, a house of cards just waiting to fall apart. How we managed to stay married for ten years in the Divorce Capital of the World, only God knows.
It probably had to do with the fact that we only had one car. But in those days, like I said, you could make a left turn.
Unfortunately, there were people who thought Pagosa Springs would be a better place if we invited strangers from California and Texas to move here. The general idea seemed to be that more people meant more money in everyone’s pockets.
What they didn’t think about was, more people meant more strangers who are looking to have an affair with your wife.
The story was right there in the bible, for everyone to read. One man and one woman, with nothing to do all day but give names to the animals and eat the fruit off the allowable trees.
Then the stranger shows up. Eve, being innocent, doesn’t notice that this particular stranger has a forked tongue. And everything does downhill from there.
I’m not complaining, though. About the divorce. We had ten years in Pagosa, together, and that’s a sight more than Adam and Eve had in Paradise.
It’s the left turns.
Underrated writer Louis Cannon grew up in the vast American West, although his ex-wife, given the slightest opportunity, will deny that he ever grew up at all.