Eagles Over the Kennebec

I didn't say I approved of it. But as a native Mainer, having gone back after quite some time away, I found a Lot more condos than there used to be. We've always had an uneasy relationship with the "summer people." Leave your money and go away pretty much sums it up.

It's tough too when prices rise so high no one local can afford them. Nantucket and Cape have taken that to toxic lengths. Apparently OOB is trying to make itself so unappealing that nobody wants to live there. It's a choice, I suppose. Next step: ghost town. We in the West know a bit about those.

I live in another favorite resort area now, and the inevitable is happening: outsiders move in especially from California and drive housing prices so high that wages and services can't possibly keep up. My lovely remote valley is rapidly being bladed and filled with half-million-dollar "haciendas" jammed one on top of the other. The oldtimers on their little ranches with their elderly trailers are seeing property taxes rise impossibly high, and traffic is going off the charts. And let's not even mention the water situation. This being desert and all.

There's got to be a solution somewhere in between there.