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Show THE ZEPHYR/OCTOBER-NOVEMBER 2003 RETURN TO MOAB 26397 AD. REDON BY JIM STILES I don’t know what made me do it. Some kind of grim, masochistic satisfaction, I suppose. To prove to myself, at least, that it was as bad and weird and crazy as I'd feared. That I hadn’t been a lifelong cynic for no damn reason at all. Now I know. Now I know that everything we'd feared was here. And ahead of schedule. I moved away from the United States in 2006 and relocated on a small island chain in the South Pacific called Funafuti. I was a fool to go there, however, and had already been warned. Global warming and rising sea levels jeopardized the island atoll as far back as 1999. By 2009, much of the island system began to disappear and by 2016, Funafuti was gone. Its inhabitants were allowed to immigrate to New Zealand. I was lucky enough to find a sponsor in Australia and moved to a small town in Western Australia called Boyup Brook, bought a small farm, married a woman of aboriginal descent, and raised sheep until I was almost 80 years old. But recently I'd begun to wonder about America and the place I'd called home for almost 25 years. I wasn’t even sure I’d be allowed to return to Moab. Transportation schedules had become a lot more rigid in the last decade. International flights were exorbitantly expensive and difficult to book. The background/security checks alone required two years and $10,000. And in the U.S. the highway infrastructure of the country had deteriorated badly. The government could simply not keep up with the demand that 400 million citizens placed on it. Tt was a strange irony--until the mid-2030s, the cost of oil and its $100/barrel price tag had put a virtual end to leisure driving as we knew it back in the "good old days” of the late 20th Century. How I miss those times and my old GMC pickup. But the mass introduction of economical, fuel efficient hydrogen-powered "personal transportation vehicles" (PT Vs) returned Americans to the road, en masse. It had often been said that oil was too precious to burn---suddenly the precious Black Gold was available in massive surpluses and the price plummeted. All that oil could now be used in the manufacture of synthetic materials and the never ending development of new products to keep the growth economy growing. Free from mandatory conservation measures that had slowly turned Americans toward a simpler and less material life, now the country and much of the world embarked on a spending spree of an unheard of magnitude. It made the 1990s look like the Great Depression of the 1930s. With inexpensive transportation and cheap oil, the cost of living in most respects plummeted as well. But the impact on the nation’s highway system was staggering; while buying and maintaining a PTV was inexpensive, the cost of using the roads became exorbitant. And so the government was faced with some options: It could raise taxes to levels sure to trigger a major downturn in this booming economy. Or it could restrict use and hope to extend the lifetime of the rapidly crumbling Interstate System. I spent a small fortune on my flight, applied for a U.S. domestic travel visa and hoped for Rich just chuckled. "You're in for a shock, my friend...it’s going to get worse.” He explained that all national parks in the U.S. system required advanced booking. Every morning, at dawn, hundreds of permit-less travelers waited at a huge reserve parking lot near Cameron, Arizona and waited for the 7 am lottery numbers to be called. An extra 50 permits were provided each day for a handful of lucky and persistent Grand Canyon aficionados. "I’ve never won anything in my life..I guess stopping would be a waste of time.” "I guarantee it," Ingebretsen said. "Keep going driver." We hurtled north through Monument Valley at sunrise and into Utah. The scenery looked the same, or what I could see of it, but the long vistas were long gone." "What is this haze? Is there a forest fire?” I asked. "Stiles, you’ve been gone too long. This is ‘Blade Runner’ come to life. Remember the old movie with that actor? What was his name?" "Harrison Ford?" "Yeah...the guy who became governor of Wyoming. THIS is the way it is. The crap blowing in from California, from Phoenix, Las Vegas, St. George, Salt Lake...it’s brown sky by day and orange sky by night." Old highway 191 was gone--swallowed by the interstate. At Devils Canyon, I glanced over my shoulder, then turned away. I didn’t want to know. Hole "n" the Rock, was now on a freeway off ramp, but what shocked me more was the exit ramp sign: "South Moab.” According to the Fodor’s Guide in Ingebretsen’s PTV-GT, Moab’s population had recently passed 60,000, more than double what build-out studies in the 1990s calculated the valley could handle. And sure enough, the growth had spilled over Blue Hill and even beyond the now defunct tourist attraction (I learned that Chinese investors bought Christensen’s sandstone home in 2027 and now use it as a private vacation resort for many of its high-level executives. HOLE "N" THE ROCK WAS NOW ON A FREEWAY OFF-RAMP, BUT WHAT SHOCKED ME MORE WAS THE FREEWAY RAMP SIGN: "SOUTH MOAB.’ ACCORDING TO THE FODOR'S GUIDE,, MOAB'S POPULATION HAD RECENTLY PASSED 60,000, MORE THAN DOUBLE WHAT BUILD-OUT STUDIES IN THE 1990S HAD CALCULATED THE VALLEY COULD HANDLE. the best, but without much hope. Even if I was given a visa, I was in no condition to drive. I had to give it up years ago, not because Id lost my driving edge, but because I could never grasp the new. technology. I liked using a steering wheel and pointing the vehicle where I wanted it to go. These auto-lane sensors were an annoyance to me and I kept trying to override the system. I may be pushing 90, but I didn’t need some damn computer system to tell me where to go My travel prospects looked bleak. Then, and this is how much of my life has been, coincidence and good luck changed my fortunes. But a few weeks ago, out of the ether came a faintly familiar sound. The caller had put an electronic block on the video transmission, but the voice and the words shook long-forgotten memories from remote corners of my brain... ‘Jim Stiles! It’s your good friend Rich Ingebretsen!" I stared at the static on the monitor. My hands began to tremble. "Jesus Christ,” | muttered. "No...’m still a Latter Day Saint, but haven't ascended to that level yet." "I can’t believe it....How are you Rich?" "Still waiting to see them drain the lake." "IT heard you’d come close." "Tl tell you all about it.” Dr. Ingebretsen had done well for himself in the past half century. A physician by trade and a tireless proponent of the movement to drain the Powell Reservoir in the last days 20th century, Ingebretsen had done much to legitimize the issue and his reasonable approach to many environmental issues thrust him into politics. In 2018, he was elected lieutenant governor of Utah. So it was arranged that he and his wife Nadine would pick me up at the jetport and that we'd travel by Interstate 10 to Phoenix, then north on I-17 all the way to Moab, Utah. "There’s an interstate highway in Moab?" "Been there since 2025." With lane sensors, the drive was effortless, although the traffic was insane. Even with driving restrictions, cars and trucks were bumper-to-bumper and moving at 80 mph. We by-passed Phoenix and Flagstaff during the long night drive, but I considered a side-trip to the South Rim. "Can’t do it,” Ingebretsen advised. "Not unless you made a reservation four to six years ago. "Four to six years? That's impossible." | Finally, we descended Blue Hill and into "town," 13 miles south of the old city limit. In 2037, Grand County finally annexed a 35 square mile segment of neighboring San Juan County and a year later, after almost a century of debate, the county and city governments consolidated. The vote was close and many of the "old Moabites” were furious. In the early days of the 21st century, after the passage of an ‘anti-junk ordinance’ many of Moab’s residents had moved across the county line where building codes and land ordinances were less strict. With consolidation, the city moved to condemn and remove many of the residents and their modular homes, trailers and vehicles. They had all sought refuge in San Juan County and now they faced an uncertain future. The old owners could derive some comfort from the price their land brought (A five acre ranchette lot with water and power sold for about a million dollars.), but for many the money meant nothing. There was no place else to go. Many of the old homes in Moab were gone--torn down to make room for more high-density housing developments. I tried to find my old house on Locust Lane, but couldn’t even find the street, much less the structure. Incredibly, Dave’s Corner Market was still standing at the corner of 4th East and Mill Creek Drive, but was now called Maynard’s & Maynard's and featured optional "nude shopping.” Downtown was unrecognizable. Most of the old buildings were gone; of course, there weren't all that many old buildings left in 2000--Moabites never did have much use for leaving things alone. Much of the valley was covered with ten to twenty story condo developments. PAGE 20 |