Rocky Mountain Dynamism Hudson Kalmans

Rocky Mountain Dynamism

Back in the 80s, there was a trend to carry around bricks and go up and destroy old abandoned buildings or gas stations by hurling them into windows and then running away as fast as possible. The consequences were obviously severe, but only if you were caught.

Playing with abandoned buildings used to be really fun. That was until the first homeless person also figured out how good a deal it was. Throughout the next decade, one abandoned house turned into a little cul-de-sac, a wasteland neighborhood. An array of kids on tricycles and new playhouses turned into dispersed pallets and broken power lines within a couple of years. The bricks that the kids used to play with are mysteriously gone too.

The park is also really different from what it once was. The only time where there is someone that you would want to hang out with over there is at 10pm on a Friday night. Maybe you’d find a group of high-schoolers trying to decompress for the weekend. Any other time you will just find a crackhead trying to decompress from life. Since it is so dry, it goes from hot to freezing very quickly. Nobody really likes to deal with the frigid wind coming from the desert—luckily there are plenty of options where people can crash for the night. Motel 6 was luxury living compared to the public housing with all of the mold and broken utilities. Hardly anyone owns anything anymore, other than credit cards and payday loans. In fact, almost everyone is in debt to one organization or another.

Rocky Mountain, Nevada has the most underrated sunsets in the west. The stars were bright and the moon was nowhere to be seen. I used to love coming to the park at the end of the moon cycle, just to see the dancing brigades of light. I could never understand how people lived without them. Somehow they soaked up all of the light in the sky to the

point where there was none left. All they are left with is Mars a couple times a month and Northstar when they have the compass app on.

I never really chose to be here. Very few people actually choose where they live. My grandparents were part of this weird church—my dad always described it to me as a form of off-brand Mormons. He used to go to church with them two times a week. For like six hours on Saturday and a quick two hours on Thursday. Now, the closest thing he has to religion is the lazy boy recliner that he found on an oversized trash day and the piles of cans right behind it. Ninety percent of his energy these days is dedicated to talking about how construction isn't what it used to be and how whoever the president was at any time was doing a horrible job. I personally started to agree with the latter, but for different reasons.

It’s not like I am living horribly. My clothes don't have holes in them and I eat well. I have friends and a decent family that always looks out for me. A couple of my friends are going off to basic next month, so that is going to be a shift. The military recruits super hard out of here because of the low college acceptance rate and general disinterest. Some people would say that our town is cute—a couple of Airbnbs popped up out in the desert with a good view of nature. One of them even has a pool. None of the people I know have a pool, not even the above-ground ones from Walmart.

All the kids in town are getting fatter—to be honest, I have no clue where these kids are coming from. They are raising hell just like everyone expected them to. It's already getting so bad that there is a list of middle school dropouts that made it to the paper. Nobody blames the kids. In virtually all of the cases, nobody was raising them, and they were pretty normal with general food insecurity.

Even the kids who come to school in polos didn't really know where their food was coming from. All the polo signaled is that their mom got up early to hit the bins at the Salvation Army. That's how bad it was. Oversized cargo shorts and thick white socks to stifle off the whispering sand.