Amanda Rae Was Here...

I live right across the street from the Aspen Airport, so I see GVs pull in every morning and every night.

It’s humbling, sure, because I’m usually trudging to the bus stop (using the area’s free public transport system is far more convenient than trying to find/pay for parking). But it also reminds me that this little town of 7,000 is a destination, a place to be. I’m living in an isolated mountain paradise that is cosmopolitan to the core.

Yesterday, on the chairlift at Snowmass Mountain, a local originally from New York commented that she’s noticed an uptick in international visitors this season more than ever before in her twenty years here. (Mediocre ski conditions notwithstanding.)

I wondered aloud if this is a real trend. She was adamant that it was. In my own experience, I work for a German and with three South Africans and one Japanese; my neighborhood baristas are all from Italy or Russia; my bus-stop bud moved here from Peru going on twelve years ago; and one housemate is from Argentina.

On the next chair, I chatted with a spinal surgeon from Holland. He actually said that it’s less of a hassle for him to fly out to Aspen for the weekend (for a medical conference, natch) than it is for him to drive to the southern French Alps.

The hyperbole leaps off the page, but still: the fact that he’d rather be here than there is pretty cool.