I don’t know where we went wrong,
But the feeling’s gone
And I just can’t get it back…
— If You Could Read My Mind, by Gordon Lightfoot
KUNR Public Radio reporter Kaleb Roedel knows a thing or two about love, apparently. Even living in Reno, Nevada.
He wrote a short article a few days ago titled:
As Mountain West towns risk being ‘loved to death,’ a new report offers solutions
He mentioned Durango, Colorado as one of those towns that risk being loved to death.
He could have mentioned Pagosa Springs. If any Mountain West town is being loved to death, Pagosa certainly seems to fit the bill.
It’s an unsettling image. “Loved to death”. You would normally think of death being caused by “hate” rather than “love”. Or by traffic accidents. Or by virus researchers playing ‘gain-of-function’ games.
Being loved to death makes me think of a jealous wife, finding her husband in a compromising situation with another woman, and then exercising her Second Amendment rights.
But “a new report” offers hope. Reporter Roedel offers this quote:
“What we’re hearing more and more was, ‘Where are teachers gonna live?’” said Megan Lawson, an economist at Headwaters Economics and lead author of the study. “And how do we build roads that can handle all the people coming in? How do we fund our local government?’”
The report published by Dr. Lawson and her co-author Dr. Kris Smith, is titled, “The Amenity Trap: How high-amenity communities can avoid being loved to death.” You can download it here.
Pagosa Springs is a high-amenity community. In fact, that’s about the only thing we have, is amenities. Certain kinds of amenities.
Not amenities like professional sports teams, or convenient public transportation, or reliable cell service. But we have mountains, and rivers, and T-shirt shops.
This picture from the study’s cover page looks a lot like Pagosa Springs. Especially, the guys unloading the refrigerator from the delivery truck. And the trees.
And we see little tent, at the top right, which is the only type of dwelling a person working in the tourism industry can afford nowadays. Or a person working as school teacher, for that matter.
Or, what the heck, even someone working as a brain surgeon.
You can’t tell from the drawing, but all the actual homes have been converted into vacation rentals.
The authors of the report have assembled some avoidance techniques, in case you happen to be a community that wants to be loved, but not necessarily loved to death.
I think the advice is aimed mainly at elected and appointed leaders, because it involves things like higher taxes placed on the shoulders of the tourism industry, and limiting the number of vacation rentals in a community, and building modular housing for underpaid workers.
Sort of like the different kinds of chemotherapy that a community can go through, to keep from dying from the disease called tourism. Although the authors didn’t actually use the word, “chemotherapy”. But it was implied.
They wrote:
Once amenities begin to erode, it can be very difficult to get them back.
I seriously doubt that the late songwriter Gordon Lightfoot was thinking about Pagosa Springs when he wrote his song, If You Could Read My Mind. It’s a wonderfully sad song. He didn’t understand what went wrong, but the feeling was gone.
I sometimes wonder if feelings are the only truly real thing we have.