Mitchell's Aspen Scraps Reveal the Vanishing Horse Culture

Aspen —Will your next trip to Aspen be a vacation or a flashback?

The short version: the town you remember is gone. It was replaced by what Aspen Times columnist Sarah Mitchell calls "middle-class degeneration."

Mitchell published a collection of unused writing scraps in the Aspen Times. She calls them "scraps" because they never found their way into print. The pieces cover skiing, horses, cars, and the specific cultural rot of 1970s Aspen.

Read that again. Middle-class degeneration. That is a heavy label for a ski town.

Mitchell writes that young people thronged to 1970s Aspen with a "city-escaping frenzy." They turned the town into a mecca. The community developed zero tolerance toward outsiders while proclaiming its uniqueness. Personal freedom was treated as an original idea. Escaping reality became commonplace.

She does not mince words about the social fabric of that era. She notes a shift from horses to cars. Her father drove a 1948 Chrysler New Yorker, fluid-drive, shiny black with chrome trim. He bought it new in his 20s. It was the only "fluff" he ever owned. He drove it to Community Church on Sundays and for dinner with his maternal grandmother. Otherwise, he rode horses or drove them to check cattle and irrigate hay fields.

"More cars and fewer horses, and the world was changing," Mitchell wrote.

That shift is the hinge on which modern Aspen turns. The practical, working landscape of the valley gave way to a lifestyle brand.

Mitchell’s writing on skiing is blunt. It isn’t about speed or skill. It is a "life’s dedication, an affair of the heart." Treat the mountain with respect and you fulfill your mission. Mistake arrogance for heart, and the comeuppance is severe. Without passion, skiing becomes a footnote in a mediocre story about someone who made too much money or drank too much whiskey. Maybe both.

She paints a picture of the skier who fails to connect with the mountain’s spirit. They end up in a pinstripe suit and a goofy tie, wearing freshly shined shoes on spittle-infested sidewalks in some city. That is the cost of treating the mountain as a commodity rather than a partner.

The scraps also include poetry. One piece describes hearing a horse nicker in the night. "Lonely, echoing strength," she writes. The horse is a figure of unconscious sleep and wild existence. There is an "indivisible wall of death" between the speaker and the animal, yet the horse remains amorphously present in her heart.

Another poem captures a quiet moment of connection. It is the cool of fall. She does corral work along a stream, post and rail. On a cabin porch, she paints a woman’s portrait. The woman is relaxed, her gaze inviting. They walk inside hand in hand. The poem cuts off mid-sentence: "A year later, the affa..."

The abrupt ending is fitting. Life does not always resolve neatly into a bow.

Mitchell’s final scrap offers a prescription for the current moment. A cabin in the mountains, away from phones and tumult. Sweat and sunshine and being together.

It is a simple image. It contrasts sharply with the "frenzy" of the 1970s she describes. The town has always been "town." That is how her father referred to Aspen. It was a place for church and dinner, not just a destination for escape.

The question locals ask is whether the town can return to that baseline. Can it be a place where people live, not just a place where they escape? Mitchell’s scraps suggest the answer lies in respect. Respect for the mountain. Respect for the history of the land. And a deep regard for the quiet, unglamorous work that built the community before the chrome and the whiskey arrived.

The 1948 Chrysler is long gone. The horses are fewer. The phones are everywhere.

The mountain remains.