Letter from Slim Wolfe
Dunes National Park – April 2000 – Colorado Central Magazine
February 15, ’00
Editors:
January’s days were too short and gloomy to shed much light on anything, including Quillen’s comments, which appeared in February. Greatness will surely regain the throne at Colorado Central as the light improves, but your attitude towards yuppo-tourist regional rape has been manifest before. It’s inevitable, you seem to tell us, so we’d better lie back and enjoy it. Some among us might be more inclined to bonk ’em — where-it-hurts-and-run-like-hell.
Marcia Darnell optimistically wrote that almost everyone thinks the Dunes National Park scheme will iron out the local water disputes, but Quillen dissents, predicting endless squabble. A projected fifteen percent increase in Dunes traffic is gonna precipitate industrial-strength tourism and turn Crestone into the next Estes Park.
“STUPID ZONE, Don’t miss this opportunity. Sell bottled water at roadside. House, lot, well, pump, five million cash, some empty bottles included.”
That should be my next move in the face of doom and gloom. But I’m in denial. Let me offer up some alternatives to the Quillen tragicomic scenario.
Alternative: Boyce buys Dunes and Baca ranch, wholesales sand to Silicon Valley manufacturers. No dunes, no tourists. Park Service takes new hip road to finance, raises venture capital in cyberspace, opens casino in Walsenburg.
Alternative: Polar Ice Caps melt. Turistas drown before arrival.
Alternative: Saguache County annexed by Alabama. Confederate flags displayed near highway result in worldwide boycott. Tourism off.
Alternative: Crestone eaten by giant lynx.
Alternative: President Bauer’s daughter inaugurates northern Dunes entry checkpoint, is forcibly impregnated by dredlocked bear. Abortion not being an option, the Kingdom of Zion is declared instead. In the ensuing Armageddon the whole planet turns to sand. Tourism falls off dramatically.
Alternative: US goes bankrupt bailing out computer industries. Dunes sold to Kuwait.
Alternative: Chaffee County wakes up. Salida, one of those few towns anywhere civil enough to have schools but not require an army of crossing guards, decides to stay that way, encourages politicians to shunt tourist traffic through Highway 160 and less-flourishing Alamosa instead. La Veta becomes a mecca for tow-truck operators but Crestone…
Oh, hell, maybe we should give ’em Crestone, and I’ll just move to La Veta instead… Can we vote on it?
Slim Wolfe
Villa Grove
