The other day a photographer friend of mine got shamed and berated on Facebook for sharing some beautiful pictures touting the location of a local recreation spot up in the forest. The place isn’t really well known, is kind of hard to get to, and it’s appeal is ethereal in nature, meaning it’s a pretty neat place depending on certain conditions that don’t last very long if they happen at all. The place isn’t near and dear to me personally, but I lamented that yet another special, dare I say secret, spot was being discovered. I wanted to jump in and chastise him too, but instead, I thought about it a while, and it sparked the following combobulation that revolves around a sense of place and how we interact with the land we occupy.
For me, the natural world is what gives me the most awe, hope, and joy in my life. It is indeed why I wound up on the western slope of Colorado. I cherish the fact that I can still head out into these mountains and find relative peace, beauty, and solitude.
Like my photographer friend, one of the activities that has supported me most in my life has also been photography and film making. At times, I have resorted to this activity as a career and other times it’s just a hobby that brings me joy. Thus, the beautiful, usually remote places of Colorado and the Southwest have been the overwhelmingly most common subjects in my photography and film making over the past 35 years or so. In 2007, I bought my first digital camera. Having been trained in and received a college degree in the craft of film-based photography, I could see this new technology had the power to revolutionize image making, and indeed it has. No more blown rolls of film. No more expensive developing bills at the photomart. It provides instant gratification, and is really amazing when you think about it. In 2009, I got my first “smartish phone” – the same year my son was born. It took pretty darn good photos and it was so cool to pocket a great little camera to capture those special moments as he fell asleep in his spaghetti at dinner or flashed his first toothy grin. It was also pretty convenient on those longer hikes to have such a lightweight camera to capture the natural beauty that brings me so much joy. But, as with most technology, there is another edge to this sword.
That early phone didn’t really connect to the internet in a useful way. Apps were only just beginning to be a thing. Over the years I have continued to upgrade my phones, and the phone I have today, released in 2019, rivals the image quality of the first stand-alone digital camera that I bought in 2007 and blows away the high-end PC work station I bought back in 1998 in computing power, storage, and ease of use. The photos my current phone takes really are amazing quality with little to no editing required. They actually look BETTER than the situations and scenes they depict! How is that possible? And WHY did someone decide to create an algorithm that makes the real world seem more fabulous than it really is?
I think I joined Facebook in 2007, but I really don’t remember exactly, because it seems that with the advent of social media our lives have become an infinite and endless loop of “memories,” cat videos, and extremely short, almost amnesia-like news cycles. I do remember that, initially, Facebook was just about posting random thoughts and happenings in your life. We accessed it on our home computers and seldom posted pictures or videos because at that point you still needed some fairly “techy” skills to manage digital imagery. How many of us still have the digital photos we took early in the digital photo revolution if we failed to print them? Even if we did print them, the early inkjet printer ink was so crappy you were lucky if those early photos didn’t fade into oblivion within five years.
Facebook became an app for your phone in 2008. I had to look that date up. With Facebook on your phone, the powerful cameras now built into them coupled with broadband internet speeds allowed us to immediately share every and any moment in our lives, no matter how banal or earth shattering. We could also share the exact location, down to the foot, of the places we captured and shared on social media because phones now had powerful GPS capabilities. We didn’t even have to ask where that beautiful waterfall was or how to get there. The metadata stamped into each image could lead us right to it. No longer did we have to explore on foot to find these special places or have conversations with friends about where they went over the weekend. It was all right there for the taking – instantly.
According to the U.S. Census, in the past 20 years the U.S. population has increased by nearly 50 million people. Another 50 million is expected in the next 20 years, if we don’t get wiped out by an asteroid. Colorado has seen an increase of ~1.5 million people over the past 20 years, and it looks like that growth curve might continue to ramp up instead of leveling out over the next quarter century.
There’s a perfect storm brewing in Colorado and the West. People are figuring out that it’s a nice place to live, and increasingly don’t need to report to an office for work. The proliferation of broadband in Colorado and elsewhere has paved the way for this population growth to continue. High-speed internet coupled with smartphones, social media, and a new-found passion for the outdoors, has enabled us to make our favorite places in nature go viral. It’s sad to ponder but these magical places that have attracted us to western Colorado are being loved to death. Moving forward we will need to behave in a different manner if we don’t want permit systems to exist for all of our special places.
I used to be part of this problem. I’d take a stunning sunset picture of a remote lake at sunset and just couldn’t wait to share with EVERYONE. I mean, if a beautiful place or moment made me feel joy, why shouldn’t I share that joy? But as much as it pains me, I no longer reveal the locations of the places that inspire me and fill me with awe. I do it to protect the solitude and health of the public land that can only bear the weight of just so many of us. I recommend you do the same. Let people get out and explore and adventure on their own without you hash tagging it for millions to instantly see. Let them look at a map and speculate what might be at the end of the road and then go find out for themselves!
I also recommend you take into account just how many other people are getting turned on to the great outdoors, and practice and share outdoor ethics. Don’t create new fire rings in dispersed locations. Be sensitive where you are parking at crowded trail heads. Keep your music volume down or perhaps use your earbuds instead. Control and leash your dogs if they are not obedient. Stay on established roads. Leave only footprints. And above all, be considerate to others. We all want to enjoy the outdoors but don’t do it in the same manner. I think it’s also important to realize that social media can have large and lasting impacts on the special places. The “buzz” can now spread infinitely faster than wildfire and have similar impacts.
And now, the moment you might have been waiting for. This is a real estate column, isn’t it? In a nutshell, the overall trend in real estate, as of July 2023, continues to be choppy with reduced inventory and reductions in sales prices compared to last year, especially the further “up valley” you look. A quick look at June’s stats for the North Fork Valley reveal a 40 percent decrease in the median sold price year over year (YoY) and 28 percent fewer new listings on the market. Sold listings are down 25 percent. Regarding Delta County as a whole, median sold prices are virtually unchanged YoY, and new listings are down almost 20 percent.
Cheers everyone. Stay cool and be happy.
Jay is a broker associate with ReMax Mountain West. He can be reached at [email protected].