Highlands

The elderly woman brushed us aside with a harsh hand gesture. “Go, go,” she was saying. “Get out of my sight.” I’d been late to see her and her white-haired partner crossing the intersection and so had stopped short. I’d gestured them on, apologetically. Her brusque response commanded us to drive on through. I laughed. It was as if I were a servant who had made a predictable mistake. We were trying to find a place to park. It was a Saturday, midsummer, and this touristy mountain town was in full bloom. Our car, a dusty Subaru Forester, and the two kayaks strapped on top, had told the woman all she needed to know. We were interlopers. A friend, now dead, who lived up in these mountains, once told me, “You know they’re really rich when their driveway is marked by a single river stone.” The super rich don’t want you to see them, but they can’t help marking their territory. Hungry, we ended up at a burrito joint on the edge of the downtown grid. It was empty when we got there, but soon after the noontime bell, it began to fill with people. All of a sudden, in a town seemingly made up entirely of rich white people, we were surrounded by Latinos, blacks, working class whites. “We’ve come to the right place,” I say to Ali, who smiled in agreement. After a half hour of window-shopping, we’d tired of the scene. We got back on the road, happy to drift down the mountain, leaning into the curves, letting the air rush through the windows.