Photography by: James Yang

HOMETOWN, SWEET HOMETOWN

In times like these, the most enticing trip may be the one not taken.

As I sit at the computer this morning, I’m in shock. Or maybe it’s simply that I’m having an epiphany and it has yet to sink in.

I just received news that a press trip to India (read: all expenses paid), which included a visit to a tiger preserve and a stay at a palace, has been postponed. It’s not what you’re thinking — I’m not the least bit upset about it. Rather, for possibly the first time in my life, I’m actually feeling something akin to relief at the thought of not traveling. And for someone who has spent the better part of 30 years running around the world at the speed of light, it’s a very odd sensation.

Sophisticated Aspenites, who have been everywhere and done nearly everything, can easily relate to my long-standing travel lust. As a travel writer I’ve always been able to take things to the extreme. Without children I’ve been free to pick up at a moment’s notice and head to Angkor Wat in Cambodia, where I hiked the temple’s stairs in hundred-degree heat, loving every second. Who wants to go to Hawaii when hurricane warnings are in the air? I do, I do. Rioting in Johannesburg? A coup in Thailand? Count me in. Heck, I get excited going to Carbondale for dinner. I can’t swear to this, but I think I was the one who came up with the saying “Aspen is the best place in the world to come home to.” Which is to say, how can you miss it if you don’t go away?

But now, suddenly, as summer is upon us and Aspenites with kids out of school plan family vacations, I can’t think of anyplace I’d rather be than home. (I’ll need vapors for my husband when he reads this.) As far as I can figure it’s a combination of factors. First, I suppose my ever-advancing age and the hassles of air travel have something to do with it. I can no longer sardine myself into the back of the plane and fly 14 hours to Kathmandu. I also have little tolerance for the person ahead of me in the airport security line who doesn’t have shoes off, laptop out, and spare change in hand the second they reach the conveyor belt. But I also suspect my sudden desire to become a homebody may have a little more to do with the times.

It sounds cliché, but when the nightly news makes me want to pull the covers over my head it feels good to live in a place, as the saying goes, “where everybody knows your name.” Of course, they also know all your secrets. But unless you’ve gypped them out of a pile of money, most Aspenites are pretty quick to overlook your past. I love entering a restaurant where the waiter brings me my cocktail the way I like it without a word being spoken. And I’d much rather support one of the incredible shops in my hometown than buy an Indian sari that will be worn once and live out the remainder of its days in the bowels of my closet. When times are tough, we need to support the places we want to still see  around next year. In Aspen that’s just about every place.
Then there’s the simple issue of where you want to be when everything falls apart. Think about it. If we have to live through this awful recession, could there be a better place to do it than here, where the views out the front door are worth more than any Picasso original? If you really want to get depressed right now, take a trip to New York City, where empty storefronts on Madison Avenue and price-slashed restaurants scream, We’re suffering!  Take care not to look like you’re enjoying yourself too much, because the person next to you probably just lost his job. People here are cutting back, too, but they don’t worry about being castigated for buying a nice bottle of wine, having a world-class dinner, or laughing too hard.

I’m sure my wanderlust days are far from over. There are still so many places in the world I want to see, but I’d rather wait until everyone is feeling better. I can live with the possibility of a tsunami, but not with this weird desperation on the faces of the people in my favorite cities around the globe. With the exception of the New Year’s Eve debacle and a few unfortunate Madoff victims, it seems everyone in Aspen is holding up pretty well. Still…a free trip to a tiger preserve in India? Well, ask me again after the Food and Wine Festival, and we’ll see.