The other day my wife and I took a trip to Summerhaven, a small community in Mount Lemmon. It has been a particularly hot week, and I wanted to see what the weather was like up there. The year we moved here there was a fire raging on the mountain; it could be seen from our cul-de-sac at night, a line of orange light stretching across the mountain range.

When the devastation was over residents were allowed to go back in to investigate the damage, and we heard about it in the papers. People have lived up there for years, some over 30 years have made homes up there. Most of the homes were destroyed, and we heard about it in the papers of course. There were sad stories all around.

One particular statement caught my eye, it’s always the complaining that does, I always wonder, 'judge' would probably be a better word for it, whether there is a valid complaint when I come across one. Like I said, most of the homes were destroyed, but there were a lot of smaller cabins up there, owned by residents down here in Tucson. This particular complaint was from one of those people, and I couldn’t believe they put it in the paper.

This person was distraught, anyone would be. But they were talking about how they lost their summer home up in the mountains. I can’t remember exactly what was said, but we as readers were supposed to feel sorry for the owner of this one cabin. There was devastation all around, and here we have someone that still had a perfectly ok house in the city lamenting about their summer place.

The only concern I felt was for the people that had enough insurance to replace their homes up there. I had none for the people that owned second homes, or those that didn’t have insurance.

On our recent visit we visited a gift shop up there. The owner of this business had already replaced her building, called the Living Rainbow. Just next door there is a restaurant that sells cookies and pizza, but they were closed. My wife wanted to visit the gift shop next door, and as we walked up the stairs there were road construction workers going by in vans. They were hanging out the window laughing, ridiculing the ‘rainbow’ aspect of the business. We walked through looking at the souvenirs and t-shirts as we talked with the owner. We mentioned the place next door was closed, and she remarked that the work force hadn’t returned after the fire, and that she didn’t post regular hours because she couldn’t keep them with only herself to do all the work. That made sense, they had no help because all the residents were gone, and nobody would come from town to work up there, it would be much too costly. So of course I said something to that effect, remarking that she couldn’t pay enough to attract help. She said there was nobody living up there, and she couldn’t have someone staying with her, she needed her privacy of course. I was trying to convey that I understood the lack of hired help, but I guess she could sense my unsympathetic attitude.

That made me wonder why this was so, cause there definitely was no sympathy here. She had obviously put a lot of effort into reclaiming what she had. Before the fire she was there for 25 years, and it was her home, all she knew. I realized what it was as we were leaving and I asked my wife if there was something she needed to buy. There wasn’t of course, and that is the point. The proprietor of the place had nothing we needed. I had hoped we could sit down for a light lunch, and down the street there was a place serving food. Those people make their living; make a living in this mountain community, providing food for visitors. The only things offered in the Living Rainbow shop were things of aesthetic value, the difference being one of necessity.

I don’t knock things of aesthetic value, but I got the feeling in this place that woman thought we should feel obliged to buy something to support her business. This is, after all, her livelihood, and if there were no patrons she could not survive up there. The point is I’m supposed to have sympathy for someone that chooses to live in the wilderness, but needs customers to buy things in order to do this. I have nothing against someone wanting to live up there; it’s nice, especially in the hot summer months. But this lady depends on others to support the life, and she offers nothing of value to anyone else in exchange for this.

Here’s another way of looking at it. This lady wants to live in the mountains. Nobody can argue that every person on this planet should provide for their existence as best they can. This lady is perfectly able to do this, provide for her existence. Yet the way she does it doesn’t seem quite right. She buys things that are nice to look at, but are otherwise completely useless, brings them up into the mountain 40 minutes away. She then asks others to drive the 40 minutes to pay more for them than she did to make a profit. I’m all for profits, people do have to survive. But she provides nothing more than the trinkets and a place to shop for them, no necessities. This in itself is perfectly fine, except when one gets the feeling this woman has a notion that others should oblige her and support her efforts by buying her trinkets.

It is trivial though, and I really shouldn’t spend so much time thinking about shit like that. Speaking of other things, I really need to catch up the list of books I’ve read. Maybe I'll get to it soon, maybe I won't...