Paying (a lot) to Play

Midcurrent.com links to an article about a new wave of upscale sportsman's retirement communities. Situated in prime outdoor destinations, these enclaves offer "the wealthiest generation of retired people...ever" an opportunity to live out their retirement in genteel rusticity. As Marshall at Midcurrent remarks, we've come a long way from the days when going to "camp" meant holing up a toiletless cabin in the Adirondacks or gathering at Grandad's deer cabin.

We're talking about country club angling in the truest sense. At one of these outfits, The Snake River Sporting Club of Jackson Hole, WY, homesites begin at $1.25 Million. Residents will pay a one-time membership fee of $125,000, then $8,600 annual dues afterwards. Not cheap, but with that outlay comes fine fishing and hiking at your doorstep, a fitness spa, a golf course, and an equestrian center. Members also have at their disposal a lodge built in "the style of national park lodges from the 1940s, making the lodge look as if it's been part of Jackson Hole for years," and offering "fine dining, the pro shop, [and] luxurious locker rooms." To ensure clients get the most out of their fishing or hiking experience, the club offers not guides but "personal ambassadors." At the SRSC, its website promises, "you can be a pioneer, an adventurer and a cowboy—all in a single day."

Clearly, "camp" is not the only word whose meaning has changed lately.

The phenomenon of wealthy sports paying to enjoy the thrills of the outdoors while experiencing none of its privations has long been a reliable source of comic fodder; places like the SRSC may simply infuse it with new levels of unreality. But the truth is, something similar occurs all along the economic spectrum. Getting away from things increasingly involves taking more things with us. Some of us have a streamside fitness spa, some just have the Cabelas catalogue. Either is an invitation to excess.

My retirement fantasy is living with Kristine in a small cabin somewhere in the vicinity of a trout stream with a shelf of good books, a garden, and some woods for wandering. I'd like my life to be a simplifying, a process of reducing to essentials. In the present, there have been many opportunities to simplify that I've passed up, it's true, but the goal remains. It's something you can work for week to week and year by year, sort of like saving for at lot at Lake Exclusion.