< PREVIOUS ] [ 1986 and Before Index ] [ Ed Quillen HOME ] [ SEARCH ] [ NEXT >
Social life in Salida had settled into the August routine of waiting for school to start, so I tried to find some excitement in the mountains last weekend.
As a native, I lack the high culture required to
appreciate any of the cinema, opera, jazz or classical
music festivals that occur every weekend in some mountain
town or another. But there was one event that sounded
intriguing -- the Second Annual Telluride Ideas Festival --
whose theme this year was Reinventing Politics.
If anything could use some reinvention, it's politics. The festival is organized by none other than John Naisbitt. He wrote Megatrends, the book which uses exhaustive research to predict how American society will change.
Here's an example of Naisbitt's research. He discusses
Denver in Megatrends, and says Gone are the days
symbolized by the `unsinkable' Molly Brown's Brown Palace
Hotel.
The hotel was built in 1892, financed by William Bush,
Maxcy Tabor and H.C. Brown, a real-estate developer who
owned the triangular lot at 17th and Broadway. When it
opened that August, it was known as the H.C. Brown
Palace Hotel.
Margaret Tobin (Unsinkable Molly
)
Brown had nothing to do with the hostelry, until Naisbitt
came along. Maybe next year's festival theme will be
Reinventing History.
In the same Denver paragraph, the Seer of Telluride also
announces that gone too are the days when you could . .
. feel properly dressed wearing jeans, boots, and a work
shirt
in downtown Denver.
Has he ever tried? A month ago, I wore jeans, boots and a flannel shirt to call on various high-powered newspaper executives, magazine editors and real-estate promoters about writing jobs. Not one threw me out of his downtown office. No receptionist told me to put on a coat and tie before my appointment would be honored. I was not arrested for indecent exposure. I felt properly dressed. I also felt that Naisbitt doesn't care whether he knows what he's talking about.
But that's probably because he moved from Washington, D.C., where facts are as expendable as tax dollars, to Colorado, where, if the truth gets in the way of sounding exciting, so much the worse for truth.
For instance, Jake Wolcott brought to my attention a brochure from Joni Ellis River Tours of Dillon, Colo., which says her firm offers raft trips down Gore Canyon, further described as an ideal run for beginners.
Just west of Kremmling, the Colorado River slices
through the Gore Range in a terrifying chasm of waterfalls,
sharp rocks and Class VI rapids. According to Rivers of
the Southwest, the guidebook by Fletcher Anderson and
Ann Hopkinson, Gore Canyon is the most difficult
paddleable whitewater in the Colorado River . . .
Ill-informed rafters have twice attempted this run. Both
attempts failed dramatically in the first mile.
That's an ideal run for beginners? I know that some ill-informed rafters who attempted Gore Canyon a decade ago, when I lived in Kremmling, got their misinformation from a river outfitter's brochure. That's what they told the local Boy Scouts who fortunately happened to be on a canyon hike; with ropes and rock-hopping, the scouts earned their lifesaving merit badges that afternoon.
The next canyon west is called Hartman Canyon by old-timers. It's also called Azure Canyon, and most generally Little Gore Canyon. Rafts can navigate its slower water, and that's where the commercial river trips really go.
But why tell the truth on a brochure, when a trip
through Gore Canyon
sounds so much more thrilling
than Little Gore Canyon?
Why be honest about the
namesake of the Brown Palace, when Hollywood never made a
musical about Henry C. Brown? Why admit that Denver is
still, in many pleasant ways, something of a cowtown, when
emerging dress-for-success mania is more dramatic?
Last weekend I stayed close to Salida, where life can admittedly get pretty dull. The major event was a field trip, sponsored by the local Audubon Society, to an abandoned iron mine above the San Luis Valley. It is a summer home for 200,000 migrating bats. We watched them fly out at sunset. Then we went home.
Had I gone to Telluride, instead of the ghost town of Orient, I'd have gotten to see some migrating dingbats. I probably should feel disappointed, but I don't.
< PREVIOUS ] [ 1986 and Before Index ] [ Ed Quillen HOME ] [ SEARCH ] [ NEXT >