The Podcast Chronicles by Kathryn Dodson

Author:Kathryn Dodson [Dodson, Kathryn]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Renegade Reads
Published: 2023-10-11T16:00:00+00:00

Chapter 16

Sue checked her email as soon as she woke. One had arrived at eleven o’clock the previous night. The renderings had been uploaded. She took her iPad into Chase’s room and woke him by sitting on the bed beside him.

A pillow line running down one cheek, Chase howled as he looked at each of the six pictures. The cries woke Jaxson and lured him from his bedroom.

While the boys’ responses were loud, the images stunned Sue to silence. Captions accompanied each depiction. The hotel caption read, “In a beautiful reflection of the lofty peaks of the San Gabriel Mountains, the resort village architecture recreates a mountain wonderland.”

It was horrific. A massive triangle rose out of a three-story rectangular platform, dwarfing all around it. The hotel was a child’s drawing of a mountain, flag flying from the top. Hundreds of rooms would be crammed in there. The artist had redrawn the ridge Sue climbed with Samson into a series of triangular mountains, trying to make the surroundings fit the man-made abomination. Despite the teenage laughter and pointing fingers, Sue didn’t see the hilarity. This could happen, this thing that might change her valley forever. She wouldn’t stay here if that happened, and she didn’t want to lose her home.

The other pictures were equally absurd, if not as frightening. There was the Winter Wonderland Snow Train Rollercoaster, which tried hard to look like the beautiful narrow-gauge train that already graced the valley. Instead of making its way through forty-five miles of valley, canyon, and mountain the way the real train did, the rollercoaster swooped and swirled through skies currently dominated by soaring hawks.

The climate-controlled, enclosed, year-round ski experience looked like the business end of the world’s largest shop vac. They had a real ski mountain here already. Yes, you had to depend on the weather, but indoor skiing?

Then she saw the river. This one divided her sons. Chase was furious, but she saw the struggle in Jaxson. As the river entered the resort, the meandering curves split three ways to offer three different experiences within a few hundred yards. The lazy river diverted from the actual river like a pig’s tail, with happy families on inner tubes relaxing in the water, the mom with an umbrella’d cocktail in her hand.

One swath of water led to a rectangular pool, showing a teenager who looked disturbingly like Jaxson riding a manmade wave on a red surfboard. Below the pool, the rest of the river flowed into channelized rapids bedecked with boulders, around which young, happy athletes performed Olympic level kayaking maneuvers. Of course, today’s river already hosted rafting and kayaking, just not all within the same few feet.

Another picture showed a street, a near copy of Durango’s own Main Street, but instead of the local shops and restaurants, the signs, while not actually showing the names of companies, looked like they belonged to Tiffany, Apple, Louis Vuitton, and other swank, recognizable brands.

The remaining color drawings showed the entire development from several viewpoints. Sue noticed a climbing wall decorated in neon lights.

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