They're Back


Twice a year our little mountain community is the focus of an alien invasion of sorts. The tourists return. And the second homeowners come to enjoy some of the mountain peace before renting out their investments to those tourists. For some reason this always puts me in mind of the movie Poltergeist II and the little girl saying, "They're back."

I generally look forward to seeing the second homeowners. I have friends among their numbers, and owning homes here they are not totally alien creatures from another planet. The remaining tourists can be divided into two camps not unlike spirits into good and evil. There are the visitors who I find very benign and quite charming in total. And there are the invaders. The invaders are primarily from one neighboring state and are convinced New Mexico would profit by taking their advice on everything. They have felt that way since the late 1800 range wars. Anyone remember G.W. Bush? Multiply that by 6000 and you will get the feel. I have great sympathy for the Iraqis.

I was working in the village this weekend and it was a chilly day with threatening thunderheads blocking the sun. The invaders were wearing shorts and tees and bitching about the weather. They came here to escape the heat and could not appreciate that they had escaped it beyond their wildest expectations no doubt. But I don't think that gives them the right to accuse us of ruining their vacations with our variable mountain weather.

The longer I live here the more practiced I have become at ignoring them. But then us locals take for granted UFO's and ghosts too with our many ghost towns. And at the end of summer we will have our state back to do with as we wish until ski season when we will be expected to give them fresh powder snow AND warm days with lots of sunshine.

Ghosts are just so much less demanding on the whole.

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