Trailing off

Many of you recall the “chemtrail” controversy of 2003.

At the time, a small group of Durangoans sounded the alert on a plot they claimed was government funded and steadily poisoning the good people of La Plata County. If you believed the hype, chemtrails were jet contrails turned to the dark side of the force. Unmarked military aircraft were emitting vapor trails deliberately tainted with chemicals and pathogens, according to the pundits. Everything from bouts of unexplained illness to climate change could supposedly be attributed to the mysterious toxic lines, and as luck would have it, Durango and La Plata County were allegedly hotbeds of this “secret testing.”

Some blamed the Space Based Weapons Act, a congressional and executive mandate they claim opened up the American public to chemical and biological experimentation. Others boasted they had successfully dissected the “chemtrail,” discovering that it contained a witch’s brew of germs and cancer-causing materials along with barium, aluminum oxides, iron oxides and other heavy metals. Others pointed to the unusual fog that tends to hang over the Animas Valley in early spring and late fall as evidence of widespread poisoning.

Had the people of La Plata County angered the Great W.? Was California taking drastic steps to procure La Plata County real estate? Nobody seemed to know, but just like a trail of smelly vapor, the chemtrail controversy vanished a few months later. That is, it vanished until a few short days ago, when I, Mr. Will Sands, briefly became a chemtrail theorist.

The Sands family has faced a particularly trying year on the bacterial front. Like many Durangoans during this winter of all viral winters, we’ve tasted the full germ buffet.

It all started last August with three cases of good old-fashioned Colorado crud (marrying a teacher and having a 4-year-old have perks beyond mere lively party conversation). From there, we moved on to two colds and a nasty case of the croup. Over the Christmas holiday, three cases of stomach bug hit, one timed so perfectly that I nearly spewed on a United Airlines customer service agent (one of the great missed opportunities of an otherwise pleasant trip) while trying to salvage a cancelled flight. January found us back in sunny Durango with another pair of colds (dad dodged it this time but landed sympathy votes thanks to a gnarly hangover). A month later, my wife, Rachael, and I scored our first cases of flu and nearly shared romantic, his and hers IV drips out at Mercy Medical. A cold virus sporting a pair of longhorns – no doubt flown in on a Dallas charter plane – hit in March. The cost? – Eight missed powder days, 134 decorative boxes of Kleenex, $1,176 in homeopathic remedies which were all strong “maybes,” and three trips to the clinic/hospital when the “maybes” became “definitely nots.”

That brings us up to last weekend, when a particularly nasty little dude – a virus people are affectionately calling the Super Flu – nailed us while we were trapped deep inside the Land of Enchantment. As an added plus, Rachael and I were celebrating our 10th anniversary – a fact quickly rendered irrelevant by the potency of the bug.

At the stroke of midnight last Saturday night, we both learned firsthand how 36,000 people perish each year because of the innocent little flu bug. After a fitful night, racked with body aches and shakes and bleary, feverish dreams, I tenderly shoveled my comatose wife into the backseat of the car and proceeded to set off on the greatest of adventures – a fever-induced drive from Santa Fe to Durango complete with a bonus stop in Española.

There I was, my temperature cooking around 103 degrees, the windshield bubbling in hallucinogenic splendor and somehow lost in the back streets of the “Jewel of Northern New Mexico.” It was at that moment, that split second of crazed mania, that the notion of chemtrails flashed before my eyes.

What is happening in Durango, I asked myself, searching for answers. I made a left hand turn and suddenly found myself trying to recall last week’s density of contrails. Maybe someone up there is starting to the take the Durango Telegraph a little too personally, I said dipping deeper into dementia. I briefly pondered the possibility (like I said briefly), and then my wife flew to the rescue (like she usually does). “I just can’t wait to get home,” she muttered from the backseat, her first words since the bug hit.

The statement snapped me back to reality. Do I believe that we’re lab rats in a secret plot to gradually poison the people of Durango? Hell no (I’ll actually say almost totally, mostly no). I do, however, believe in bad luck and know many of us had a big dose of it over the winter.

Back on psychological course, I quickly found my inner compass, successfully navigated the inner recesses of the Española grid and turned the car back toward home. I’ll always take La Plata County over the other options, even if it does mean having to suck down the occasional chemtrail. Just be sure to pass the Tamiflu and Cipro.

– Will Sands