Almost Paradise- Part VI

The land of disenchantment and where I finally got math

Post Introduction:

When I complete a Substack post, I go to my newsfeeds to search for the next topic of interest. As my readers and subscribers have come to expect, my topics vary widely from business and politics to religion and philosophy. If the topic captures my imagination enough to warrant 1500 words, I develop it into a future post. Recently, I stumbled upon an article talking about the "suicide belt" of the American Rocky Mountains. Specifically, the article described how suicide rates had quadrupled in America's mountain towns. My research on this topic led me to a recent documentary titled, The Paradise Paradox produced by Podium Pictures and Hall of Fame skier Bode Miller. It is available on Amazon Prime for a nominal fee.

As a lifelong, visitor to many of those resort towns in the "suicide belt" and a recovering alcoholic, I relate to the mental health struggles that many in America's resort towns experience. I feel compelled to share my recovery journey, not because it is ever pleasant recounting the low dark crevices of my past, but in the hopes that my story may help someone who is struggling with depression, anxiety or addiction find hope and recovery. My work on this topic will span multiple posts. If you connect with any part of my story, please sign up for a free or paid subscription. Moreover, if my story compels you into further action, consider donating to one of the mountain town organizations working to expand mental health services and stem the tide of suicides.

Twenty-eight years old, searching for work in an exotic location I could call home and a looming capital gains tax bill, I set off across the Southwest states searching to fill the void. After a brief stop in Sun City West in Phoenix Arizona to visit a grandparent and attend a funeral, my companion and I packed up our well-warn 5-Series and headed east on I-40. Phoenix, with its hip yet unaffordable area around Camelback and Scottsdale, had no appeal for this young man. There were simply too many old people driving too slow with nowhere to go for me to find comfort in that desert town. Also, I didn't want to reside in a valley, I was an adventurer and the mountains were calling me. We motored towards Albuquerque with Santa Fe being our ultimate destination target.

As a Minnesota boy, I had never thought about Santa Fe as a possible home. Somewhere in my distant past, I memorized it as the capital of New Mexico, but that was about it. Quite frankly, I never thought much of New Mexico either as I categorized it as merely a pass-through state from Texas to the Western coast of California. But my traveling companion knew of the town. By the early '90's Santa Fe was one of the escape towns disaffected Californians relocated to. Anyone located in a mountain town from New Mexico to Montana knows the drill. Californians, fed up with crazy-ass political policies (they cheerfully voted for) that drove up crime and made California living unaffordable combined with the scarcity of desirable real-estate, creates West-Coast refugees that are fat with cash and delusional enough to pay four-times the value for mountain town real-estate. And like the saloons and brothels that quickly materialize in Western mining towns of the 1900's, newbie West coasters attract bougie coffee shops, celebrity chef driven cafes and more Western art galleries then one "can shake a stick at” when they exit their coastal homes to seek refuge in swank mountain resort towns.

Santa Fe, in the 90's was one such California escape town. She was Adobeland for the not so rich and famous. Culinarily speaking, Southwest food was just coming into its own. Mark Miller had recently established Coyote Cafe in Santa Fe and put out a renowned cookbook. The art scene was also picking up in Santa Fe in the 90's probably due to the fact that Georgia O'Keefe called neighboring Taos her home. And, although it makes about as much sense as me moving to Key West to soak up the writing vibes of Ernest Hemmingway, wannabe artists flocked to Santa Fe out of some notion the artistic greatness can be absorbed through osmosis via proximity to a famed dead artist. Canyon Road, on the East side of Santa Fe became the home of those thousands of dollars per painting Southwestern artists. If the art was brown and depicted a cactus and a cow skull, it was Santa Fe gold. Other mountain towns know the feeling. Jackson Square in Jackson Hole is home to high end art galleries and $1,000 tack shops peddling Stetson hats and Miron Crosby cowboy boots to well-heeled vacationers. Most will wear them once and stow them in the back of their walk-in closets along with their many other vacation-acquired trophies like Pope-blessed t-shirts from the Vatican gift shop. As a up and coming business mogul, I surmised that there must be some job available for a young restaurant guy like me in Santa Fe.

The time was late February and as we approached Albuquerque, an ice storm brewed. Having grown up driving in Minnesota, I knew how to handle the situation and steered to the shoulder and maintained a twenty-mile an hour speed. I never in all my years witnessed so many accidents and individual cars in the ditch as that fateful night driving east into Albuquerque New Mexico. It was like witnessing lemmings on a ledge as one by one, cars followed each other into the ditch, rolled over or collided with one another. There were countless injuries and a few deaths on I-40 that night and perhaps it was a sign that I should keep traveling east. But I have always been a poor reader of Divine signs, so restless discontent and co-dependent ignored the omen and ascended I-25 towards Santa Fe, the city of brown streets, brown buildings, and brown landscapes.

The funds in my checking account were running thin as daily vodka and beer for two was adding up. Flittering about the country, living in hotel rooms, and drinking all day takes a toll on the daily balance. I needed work, and I needed it soon. In the early 90s pre-Internet job searches required picking up a local newspaper and searching the "want ads." As I drove out of Albuquerque towards Santa Fe, I circled the ads for restaurant managers in the Santa Fe area. After checking into a non-descript over-priced hotel on the commercial end of Cerrillos Road, I went about compiling my job prospects. I spent about two days canvassing the town dropping off resumes to local restaurants and hotels advertising for help.

After exhausting the open job pool in Santa Fe, we packed the car and headed north. The next stops for employment searches were Taos, Angel Fire and Red River New Mexico. While sitting in a ski lodge at the base of Red River, I received a hit from Santa Fe. The F&B director of the Hilton of Santa Fe got my resume and wanted to interview me for an open banquet manager position. Back in the car, we traveled back to the land of dirt and adobes. I got the job and started my training within days. I learned ten times more than I ever cared about Conrad Hilton and his dream to link hotels in the pre-internet, algorithm-induced and dynamic-pricing days of travel.

But I had a job and could start replenishing the vodka and beer account - or so I thought. Housing in Santa Fe, thanks to the California defectors, was insane. We finally settled in on a 400 square foot dirt floor adobe guest house off Alameda Street in the high hills east of old downtown. Our landlord was a nice old fella, a Hollywood insider who himself escaped Tinsel Town by the name of Don Johnson. No, not the Don Johnson of Miami Vise and married to Michelle Pfeiffer fame, but a Don Johnson of some fame. If memory serves me correctly, my landlord was a sound tech for the television industry. He had won several Emmy Awards for his work on the Television series, Lonesome Dove. Don was a congenial guy, and we enjoyed an occasional beer with him in his equally dirt floored mud hut which represented his home.

That guest house cost me $2,200 per month and groceries, gas, spirits, and taxes consumed the remainder of my $3,600 per month salary. After about three months of the "groundhog's day" existence of working, drinking, sleeping in a brown world started to weigh on me. I was existing but could see no pathway to advance myself into an unaffordable tiled-floor, adobesce home of my own on a mere $692 per-week salary. Remember, I had recently sold a house in Minnesota, and I was staring down a capital gains tax bill if I could not find a new home to park those rapidly dwindling proceeds.

Becoming desperate for a solution to my problem I approached the hotel general manager with my predicament. I either needed to make more money or I was leaving Santa Fe. Work ethic was never my problem, and I knew I had value to my boss and to that hotel. In fact, I have only been fired once in my life and that was not for lack of hard work, but that story is yet to unfold in this series. The F&B director supported my request for additional income because he knew he had a winner Midwestern boy working for him who did not push everything off to "manana" but accomplished his tasks before leaving “hoy dia.”

I will never forget the smug look on that GM's face when I gave him my ultimatum of more money or “adios jefe.” He promptly denied my request and informed me that expensive rent was the price I must pay for living in paradise.  Now, I have had some notions of what living in paradise might look like, but mud roads, mud houses and mud floors wasn't it! I promptly tendered my two weeks notice, canceled my guest adobe lease, lifted a bottle of Jack Daniel's from the liquor room and broke the news to my, yet to find suitable employment traveling companion, that we were blowing the Santa Fe popsicle stand and heading back to Minnesota.

Minnesota wasn't paradise, but it was affordable, and I was employable, at least to the extent I could earn enough money to buy a house, save a little money and dream about the next paradise that I might attempt to afford. The one thing the Santa Fe experience taught me was that I did understand math. When housing, groceries and gas consume 100% of an income, paradise can feel a lot like a jail cell overlooking a sunny beach. You can see people enjoying the carefree life of sun and fun from the tiny window of your eight by twelve, but you will perpetually be unable to participate in that joy. That type of existence, paired with a substance abuse of one's choice can cause a despair that only a fellow sufferer can understand. To live and work in a mountain town under like conditions, especially when the days are short, the winds are cold, and last night’s snow is a foot deep can cause a type of melancholy fit only for a brooding writer on a rainy day.

Despair, alcohol and co-dependency are not just strange bedfellows, they are toxic ones. For some of us, learning that lesson is slow going. In my next installment, I go to “The Deep” in search of happiness and a purposeful paradise that will stick…