Kim Filler is my friend and property manager in Steamboat Springs, Colorado. She asked me to consider writing about why I decided to get a place Steamboat and name it “Bonita Vista.” Here’s what I wrote:
I am a storyteller. My stories are built around strong characters and entertaining plotlines. Because of that, I think a lot. And because I think a lot, there’s only so much city I can juggle.
I came to Colorado from Miami, which was sort of like trading a tricked-out classic car for a fat-tire bicycle. I lived ten minutes from South Beach; I miss people-watching from a sidewalk table on Ocean Drive at the News Café. I miss little else, except perhaps the fishing. I do not miss being robbed by boat or having all four hubcaps stolen while inside a 7-11 pouring a black coffee to go. Nor do I miss stepping over a gruesome bullet-riddled corpse so I could enter a local diner and order a tuna melt for lunch the Friday before Christmas. Miami is a hard town. LeBron will learn soon enough. Miami ages people in dog years; so for us, leaving became a quality-of-life inevitability.
The move to Denver was a great one and free time our first five years was spent wandering the state, looking for the place with the blended best of Colorado. Steamboat was our first foray deep into the mountains and the trip was a disaster. Coming into town we got caught in a blizzard atop Rabbit Ears Pass in a rental van, and then we got caught again in another one when leaving. I cussed the town a thousand times and swore I’d never return. I lied; now I catapult out at every opportunity.
Aspen was too overpriced and comedically full of itself, Ouray and Telluride too far. Vail and the I-70 corridor resorts are the antithesis of what I sought—a relaxing place to relax and think. The Vail Valley is a paved interstate highway. The Yampa Valley is wide, glorious, and green. Even better, Steamboat is bisected by a silver ribbon of river stuffed with trout that flows through downtown. I needed a creative hideaway and found one. I’m very happy there. Happier than anywhere else I’ve lived.
Steamboat has the best of everything any grateful person could want: brilliant world-class skiing and snow sports, fabulous fishing (more than an angler can ever master), bountiful wildlife, an unpretentious sense of community, hundreds of anonymous great athletes, privacy and solitude, and wide-open spaces with views that tease the imagination. All four seasons are perfect, from the powder dumps of winter to the explosion of springtime flowers, the grasshoppers and dry flies of summertime trout fishing, and the high mountain horseback rides through trails snaking through the autumn gold of aspens. All year round, Steamboat is a privilege.
Deciding on where we’d invest in a second home took five years of field research. Once we knew Steamboat was the place, our attention shifted to where specifically to buy. As with most families, the search for consensus among unequal options became a spirited and interactive exercise. We looked at units down by the gondola, newer ones a couple blocks farther away—all sizes, prices, and types. Most suffered the same problem: their views ended when you walked inside. I knew I couldn’t write in a place like that. Looking at someone else’s wall does not inspire me.
I am a thinker, which is a gift and a curse. I watch movies but little else. I do not watch commercial TV except for House and never listen to the radio. I understand the need for both and have guested on shows coast-to-coast and around the world but my life is a right brain/left brain ping-pong game of relentless thought. I leave the city and come to the mountains to think. I think on the three-hour drive up, pretty much the entire time I’m town, and all the way back home again. Whenever possible, I keep quiet, stay busy, and keep thinking. My record is 2½ days without uttering one word. I have met and developed some great characters in Steamboat and written some superb sentences.
I have shaped characters and story arcs for two screenplays in Steamboat and worked on four books, Searching for Tendulkar, Jurassic Trout, and Tuki Banjo, Superstar among them. Much of the emotional drive to write Managing the Worry Circle came during the private and quiet solitude of fly fishing in the ‘Boat after one of my best friends slipped gravely ill. The book has become my biggest global success and has helped a lot of people.
When we first visited the condo we eventually purchased, I knew immediately it would work for me (and for my family, friends, and guests). I had the endless view I needed, one of the purest and grandest in all of Steamboat. Hence the choice of Bonita Vista, which means “beautiful view.” Bonita is my wife’s name, so naming the place and screwing in the engraved brass plate was a fun and easy culmination of a long, rewarding search.
Aside from our 70-mile view we have a daily bonus: a spectacular sundown that sinks behind nearby Sleeping Giant mountain. I try to be home on my porch to toast the disappearing glow with a glass of good Malbec. I sit and rock gently on my patio bench each morning too, sipping coffee and watching colorful hot air balloons lift up and out of the valley’s blanket of morning fog. If this is heaven, I am grateful to have found it. If it’s not, it’s close enough for me.
We found the right town, and then the right location. The final puzzle piece was to decorate Bonita Vista to be a warm, comfortable, and happy home. So far it’s done the job.