The foresight in which former planners and builders have constructed our mountain towns and ensuing infrastructure never included the concept that “we are our neighbors’ keepers.” Selfishness can be a virtue, and who can worry about all the townships and their needs up and down the valley?

In our ambitions to succeed and to have and to build, as American and capitalistic to its core, is to forsake any consideration of those successes in the next valley or in the next town up or down the rail.

And now we must pay extraordinary amounts for temporary fix. A temporary pedestrian bridge. A temporary roundabout. A temporary bypass. And much to the delight of the builders. Build it all up just to tear it all down and build again. Nothing is ever built to last for long anyway. Due to the natural forces of decay and erosion and weathering of times passing, our efforts succeed only to the degree of integrity in the planning and foresight of the process.

And don’t forget Mother Nature in all this planning and building. A 100-year rain event might wash away the memory of what has been as we stand in the recent mist to sign and implement the change order to build anew.

I pray that men’s minds will be solidified in the notion that construction of our world will never be complete, but rather a continuous process to improve and better our world for generations to come with the foresight and planning that includes all the neighbors and townships affected.

During the upcoming final phase of the Grand Avenue bridge replacement, I will be operating a ferry service to boat all willing commuters, at a small fee, from the Sunlight bridge to the South Canyon bridge, which should prove considerably faster than driving through the narrow confines of the overdeveloped urban sprawl of the lower Roaring Fork Valley.

Alan Noland

New Castle