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Friday, 28 December 2007 |
Home for the holidays
Mammoth actually feels like a real town during the Christmas holidays. Houses are lit up, Christmas trees twinkling in living rooms, colored lights framing the life within, cars in driveways. It's always easy to tell the Californians…their cars are always facing out, ready for a quick getaway.
People bring their lives with them, transplanted in whole cloth from elsewhere—you can see snowmobiles, skis, snowshoes, dogs and kids—and what’s wonderful about this is that for a brief time, it feels as if Mammoth is a real, pulsing, flesh and blood town—the houses are inhabited. People are home.
In condo complexes, Jacuzzis are steaming, people chatting over beers and martinis. Game rooms are filled with the sounds of knock hockey and kids having fun.
There’s actually traffic, people going to buy Christmas trees, walking around, shopping for holiday dinners at Vons, picking up presents at some of the very special shops in Mammoth. Eagle Lodge parking lot is maxed with two-wheel drive SUVs and impractical sports cars, all loaded down with ski racks and sporting chains on the front tires. With all the bursts of fresh snow, the town and feels looks like the “winter wonderland” described in the song. Meridian Boulevard is lined all the way to Minaret with ski and snowboard cars, people carrying their gear toward the beautifully snow-covered mountain.
Evenings find parties where friends get together after long months away, lots to talk about—fires, global warming, political campaigns and primaries, and how great the skiing/boarding/snowmobiling are in the magnificent landscape of Mammoth.
The rest of the year you can take evening walks with your dog and meander past empty homes…visited only on a time clock by landscapers and property managers, who mow and water lawns, and make sure light bulbs switch on as darkness falls. You can marvel at the ghost towns the condos become, and you can hear the faint echo of the festive sounds of holiday visitors.
For now, all these holiday people bring town to life, life to the town, and we are ecstatic about how much people love our town. We must be doing something right
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Last Updated ( Friday, 04 January 2008 )
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