Return To El Paso
I will be traveling to El Paso, Texas to visit my lone surviving Uncle and Aunt sometime later in the year. This will be a very momentous trip for me, as I am returning to a place that I last visited as a young boy of about 10 years old in the early 1960s. Although I have fond memories of chasing fleet footed lizards on the vast expanse of desert located just outside my relative’s backyard, I will not be shocked to see my desert playground replaced by housing tracts, condominium complexes, shopping centers and other manifestations of urban sprawl. As we all know that over a period of time, every place changes; and those wilderness areas that are in close proximity to our urban centers will for the most part degrade and eventually reach the point of no return as mankind spreads. Such is life…
I know that I will not like the changes to the El Paso of my boyhood, in particular the disappearance of the desert but for somebody visiting El Paso for the first time, they will probably have a totally different perception. These newcomers might love the colonial flavor and the hot and dry desert climate the present-day El Paso, not knowing what it was like 40-50 years ago. Then again, just outside of the urban sprawl known as El Paso, there are still pockets of desert wilderness.
This is just another example of the phenomenon known as the Kathmandu Syndrome of which I discussed in an earlier post.
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