DENVER–The West has finally won out.
How else to explain what I was feeling as I looked out the tenth floor window of the JW Marriott Denver at Cherry Creek, with the carpet of the Rocky Mountains stretched out along the horizon like a sentinel. In the days and weeks just past, I had returned to my past–to New York, Boston, and Vermont–I had gone East, my friends, and found that there was nothing left back there for me.
I was at peace with my decision three years ago to come West. From the window of our room at the Marriott, it seemed as if there was nothing between us and the mountains:just a few blurbs and suburbs. We were one with The West.
In the past of Horace Greeley, more than a hundred years ago, the West beckoned as the land of opportunity, the final frontier, a place where anybody could go and make their way. A place with space, in other words.
I was feeling the space as I looked across to the Rocky Mountains. A historian famously wrote of “the closing of the American frontier” but I was was seeing up there was quite the opposite–unlimited opportunity, and not just for the likes of me.
If you brush up on domestic politics these days you will know what I mean. The West is where the American politics of the 21st Century will be fought to the death, much as Sun Belt politics dominated the last thirty years. The West will change the face of national politics. You could look it up.
Immigration is, of course, a huge part of it. Mexican families, Catholic and largely Democratic to start with, are not only saving the Holy Mother Church but will have a profound effect on the politics of at least a half-dozen states, including the Colorado I could see out my hotel window.
Red States will go blue. Latinos will ultimately rule.
But it’s more than just immigration, legal or illegal. The vastness of the West–them wide open spaces–means there is still room to grow out here. There is still emptiness to be had, and the opportunity that paradoxically arrives along with so much nothingness. You can still make your way out West, and the sanguine climate means there’s every reason to give it a shot. The great population growth of this century will be right there out my hotel window, and the political clout will shift along with it.
And there’s more: as I looked out at the Rockies, I realized there is really no reason to ever go “back East,” the phrase that I adopted unconsciously upon my arrival out here. People go back East for any number of reasons, but I see no reason to go anywhere East of Denver. People used to go back East to shop, but right here in Cherry Creek there is more than enough shopping to make you drop, and all the sports and entertainment you can swallow within four miles. ESPN’s Tony Kornheiser called Denver “a cow town” last month, but nothing could be further from the truth. The West is cool and hip and happening.
Back East is the past, and the future is right out your window if you live out West. Go West, young man? Why not? There’s no place like home.
I left this valley for college at 5 a.m. on a 36 degree August morning in 1979. Everything I needed fit in a ’66 Ford Mustang with room to spare. Apart from trips to Denver, I’d been to a handful of U.S. states, neighboring mostly. So choosing a Texas University meant a new experience. Frankly, after a summer working at Mid-Continent, I couldn’t wait to ditch this valley.
That was back in the time of the 55 mph speed limit. My college roommate and I drove all day without stopping to make good time, so when we got to Dumas, TX, we were famished. We stopped at the Best Western at the south end of town and ordered chicken fried steak…
We rolled into Amarillo as dusk set in and a big pink sky developed over the rolling hills, a sunset like you never see in Western Colorado… As darkness came on, I suppose it was radio towers in the distance, or maybe it was just the fact that I’d lived my life on the Western Slope of Colorado… whatever it was, I felt swaddled by vertical terrain. By midnight, we had reached our muggy, 87 degree west Texas destination. After 17 hours of driving, my drool hit the pillow before my head did…
When I woke up the next morning and stepped out the door of that Motel 6, I saw an 18 wheelers driving down the highway an easy half-dozen miles away.
I contend it was in that moment of breathless panic that I realized my home is where I live today.
[Red States will go blue. Latinos will ultimately rule.]
I know what you mean by that. I just wish you’d left it where you came from.
Cheers,
I left this valley for college at 5 a.m. on a 36 degree August morning in 1979. Everything I needed fit in a ’66 Ford Mustang with room to spare. Apart from trips to Denver, I’d been to a handful of U.S. states, neighboring mostly. So choosing a Texas University meant a new experience. Frankly, after a summer working at Mid-Continent, I couldn’t wait to ditch this valley.
That was back in the time of the 55 mph speed limit. My college roommate and I drove all day without stopping to make good time, so when we got to Dumas, TX, we were famished. We stopped at the Best Western at the south end of town and ordered chicken fried steak…
We rolled into Amarillo as dusk set in and a big pink sky developed over the rolling hills, a sunset like you never see in Western Colorado… As darkness came on, I suppose it was radio towers in the distance, or maybe it was just the fact that I’d lived my life on the Western Slope of Colorado… whatever it was, I felt swaddled by vertical terrain. By midnight, we had reached our muggy, 87 degree west Texas destination. After 17 hours of driving, my drool hit the pillow before my head did…
When I woke up the next morning and stepped out the door of that Motel 6, I saw an 18 wheelers driving down the highway an easy half-dozen miles away.
I contend it was in that moment of breathless panic that I realized my home is where I live today.
[Red States will go blue. Latinos will ultimately rule.]
I know what you mean by that. I just wish you’d left it where you came from.
Cheers,
Pingback: hot latin teen
Pingback: hot latin teen