Saturday, December 11, 2010

Sustainable excess

One of the joys of skiing at Aspen is the breathtaking amount of bling that's apparent here, even at this time of year. Aspen is the home of the million-dollar fixer-upper. (They don't actually get fixed up. They get bulldozed and replaced.) Sally Wife gave up skiing with me in Aspen because window shopping here had become so preposterous that she no longer enjoyed it. Why gaze into shop windows when the stuff on display is so upscale that you can't even pretend to aspire to it? (One time on the  Snowmass bus, Sally nudged me and nodded toward the woman in the seat opposite. "She's wearing," Sally whispered, "more than our net worth!")

But so pervasive is  Good Thinking that it has spread even to the citadel of excess. The Aspen Times has a pull-out advertising section on the theme of Sustainability. I saw a hymn to Sustainability on the safety bar of the Ajax Express high-speed quad lift. And I saw a large sign--green, of course--on one of the lift towers begging me to Fight Global Warming.

Fight global warming? If I wanted to fight global warming, I would have stayed home and snowshoed through the woods. Blue skies! -- Dan Ford

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1 Comments:

At 3:11 PM, Blogger Unknown said...

Next time try Crested Butte. Same snow...just one range south of Aspen. CB has a little less bling.

 

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