Willoughby: Expanding experiences
Library of Congress/Courtesy image
Each generation experiences the world in a different way that expands their lifestyle and interaction with their surroundings. Since we experience it one day at a time, we often lose track of just how much change there has been. Every once in a while, it is worth glancing back at even the simplest of daily routines.
My parent’s childhood included the rapid adoption of automobiles. My father’s first time in Aspen was a trip with his father in 1918 from Hotchkiss. With the poor quality of roads and many flat tire changes, it took two days. He had not gone far from home before then; it opened up a whole new world to him, and a decade later, he was doing his own exploration of the American West from Aspen to Los Angeles.
My mother was talked into going with older friends in a brand-new Stanley Steamer. They went to Glenwood and back. When they returned, they all agreed that they could not tell their story, especially to their parents, since they thought no one would believe them, that they could have made the trip in such a short time.
Think about how autos changed their world. But here is another thought: When you started driving, it was a challenge, but we grew up riding in vehicles going 60 miles per hour. The reaction time necessary to drive at that speed was normal to us; our brains were already programed.
To the non-skiing world, what we do on snow seems wild and crazy. Those of us who grew up on skis think nothing of it. Consider this: Would you sit on a chair 50 feet above the ground in your back yard in the summer? In my parents’ childhoods, it would seem like a trapeze circus act. We think nothing of sitting on a ski chair, one that is moving, and for many of us, for years, there were no safety bars on double chairs. We think nothing of sitting in a chair way above the ground with heavy boots and skis tugging us toward the earth. We conquered acrophobia.
When I was young, a trip to Glenwood was a major adventure. As an adult, commuting to town from Emma – before the four- lane – was routine, except on snowstorm days.
I had an interesting realization in the 1970s that was a harbinger to today’s Aspen. I was doing a geography lesson with my third-fourth grade combination class at Aspen Country Day School. I think we were discussing different states and developing an understanding of just how large our country is. One of my students kept making size estimates that seemed, not just to me, strange. What we were thinking of as 500 or 600 miles wide, or the distance from Aspen, he was saying 50 or 60 miles.
I, or another student, pointed out that Glenwood was 40 miles away. We discovered that he had never gone to Glenwood. He was not a stay-at-home child; he had traveled all over the country and internationally. His father had a Lear Jet, and he exited and re-entered Aspen by air. His numbers, it turned out, were not miles, but minutes it took him in the jet to go from one place to another. At that time, the term jet-setters described his childhood. Around the same time, too, we had a mother who had her own plane and pilot’s license and commuted to LA, not daily but every few days. My childhood Aspen was an isolated place, and the rest of the country was mostly something I read about in books. In a short time, the universe has shrunk.
Tim Willoughby’s family story parallels Aspen’s. He began sharing folklore while teaching at Aspen Country Day School and Colorado Mountain College. Now a tourist in his native town, he views it with historical perspective. Reach him at redmtn2@comcast.net
