Sedona, Arizona - Lisa Dahl scanned the horizon from the
patio of one of her five restaurants, watching thick clouds cast
shadows on red rock spires that formed outlines like desert
skyscrapers.
The restaurateur stood in the afternoon silence, a rarity at
Mariposa, billed as the best fine dining in a town about two hours
from the south rim of the Grand Canyon. She thought about what life
was like here, on this patio, before the coronavirus.
Reservation only. New Yorkers. Angelenos. Investment bankers. Tech
entrepreneurs. They sipped stiff cocktails and snapped photos in
front of a backdrop so picturesque it looked it was created in
Photoshop. As they savoured bites of $48 (about R900) veal chop, they talked
about how next time they were in town, they'd have to try the
flourless chocolate chile orange torte with vanilla bourbon gelato.
Such scenes have been relegated to nostalgia as a deadly pandemic has
upset an enclave that was once kept sequestered only by money. But
the virus has also exposed the stark divide between the rich and
everyone else in a nation whose disparities are marked by upward
spiraling joblessness and luxury cars racing through the desert air.
Dahl has adjusted to Sedona's rearranged lifestyle, setting up a
delivery service catering to those who have flocked to their second
homes in this high-desert valley to ride out the stay-home
restrictions.
"There are people who love the food and are willing to spend," Dahl
said on a recent afternoon as she cradled Leonardo, her Maltese
poodle. "These are trying times for many people, but many people are
also very blessed."
As the coronavirus continues its destructive path across the US,
killing more than 50 000 and devastating the economy - drive-up food
bank lines snake on for miles and about 26 million have filed for
unemployment, marking what could become the highest unemployment rate
since the Great Depression. Amid such reckoning, some well-heeled
Americans have activated pandemic escape plans.
They've fled big cities and headed to second homes or $8 000-a-month rentals in places like Sedona and rural coastal
stretches of the Pacific North-west. They're arriving by personal
travel buses, private planes and yachts.
On Fisher Island - a 216-acre luxury destination south of Miami Beach
that's home to one of the nation's richest zip codes - management
paid more than $30 000 for 1 200 employees and residents to be
tested for coronavirus antibodies. A similar testing effort took
place in the mountain resort town of Telluride, Colorado. By
contrast, governors of many states have struggled to secure an
adequate number of tests.
Hollywood billionaire David Geffen recently posted an Instagram photo
of the sun setting behind his 454-foot yacht in the Caribbean.
"Isolated in the Grenadines avoiding the virus," he captioned the
photo. "I'm hoping everybody is staying safe."
Faced with fierce criticism, he swiftly made his account private.
Some small, quiet towns have started to post "stay out" signs - a
message to those fleeing from cities - and mayors have publicly urged
people to stay away.
On a recent afternoon at the Sedona Airport, a strip of asphalt atop
a mesa overlooking the city, three private jets sat parked. Sedona's
mayor, Sandy Moriarty, has made a plea to potential visitors: Please
stay home. She told a local TV station that she'd seen social media
photos of tourists packing into local camping grounds and popular
hiking trails.
"It's incredible," she said, "it really is crowded, it's too
crowded."
So far, this stretch of northern Arizona has seen fewer than 100
diagnosed cases of the coronavirus infection, but some locals worry
that numbers could spike if there's too much travel here. And that
could mean more devastation, they worry, for locals who have already
suffered deep economic losses.
During the pandemic, Dahl said she's had to cut back from 345
employees at her restaurants - among the largest employer in Sedona -
to 45.
"This situation pains me for my employees," she said, noting that
some had worked for her for more than a decade. "I've poured my heart
into these restaurants and so have they."
Last year, her five restaurants grossed 20 million dollars, she said,
and she was on track to have an even better year in 2020. Then came
the outbreak and, within a matter of days, she had to scale back and
adjust to a new reality.
On a recent afternoon, Dahl put together a well-to-do version of a
care package for two New York dermatologists. They're among her best
clients, she said, and they had planned to leave Manhattan earlier
this month for Sedona. She shipped them a few familiar tastes from
her Sedona restaurants - macaroons, marinara sauce and tomato soup.
Twelve hundred miles from Sedona at Surf Pines, a gated community
north-west of Portland, Oregon, with homes overlooking the Pacific
Ocean, is another quiet, stay-home haven.
Gina Sjolander, her husband and their three adult children are
hunkered in their second home, where they pass the days playing board
games, gazing out across windswept dunes as elk wander by, and
ordering takeout from the Astoria Golf & Country Club.
They're visiting from the Seattle area - the first hot spot for the
virus in the US - where Lil' Jon Restaurant & Lounge has been in
their family for three generations.
The restaurant is closed for now.
"For us," Sjolander said, "it hasn't been too much of a hardship."
Head a couple hours south along the coast to Lincoln City, Oregon,
and you'll find Diana Hardy, a cashier at a grocery store. She spends
her days sweating behind a mask and wiping down counters with bleach.
"I feel in danger every day," said Hardy, 66, a coastal resident
since 1986. "Those of us that live here full time and wait on them
are the ones that are at risk."
Leaders of Lincoln City and other coastal communities acted quickly
in late March, when vacationers swarmed beaches, stripping store
shelves and alarming managers of local hospitals, who feared their
small facilities couldn't handle a surge. Cities and counties that
thrive on tourism banned visits by non-residents, booting guests from
hotels and shutting down short-term rentals a day before Oregon
Governor Kate Brown announced a statewide stay-at-home order.
Much of Oregon's shoreline, and Washington state's coastal Pacific
County to the north, remains off-limits to outsiders. Lincoln County,
where Hardy lives, and Clatsop County, where the Sjolanders stay in
their second home, have only 11 confirmed coronavirus cases between
them, and no deaths.
But coastal residents remain suspicious of outsiders, all too aware
that other parts of Washington and Oregon have more than 14 000
confirmed cases of the virus and a death toll of 770.
Hardy acknowledges that owners of second homes are entitled to stay
in their properties, although she wishes that more of them would stop
traveling back and forth between houses.
Claire Hall, a Lincoln County commissioner, says a gulf has appeared
between the haves and the have-nots.
"There's a class strain, in that people see privilege in those who
can afford a second home," Hall said. "But asking people to stay away
is not that great a sacrifice, when you're talking about people's
health and in some cases their lives."
Similar suspicion is on display in Big Sky, Montana, a resort
community north of Yellowstone National Park renowned for its ski
slopes.
"For a while if you went to the market and saw a license plate that
said Minnesota, California or Illinois, you'd get curious, maybe a
little afraid," said Eric Ossorio, who moved to the town from
Connecticut nearly three decades ago. "Luckily, the spike in
infections one may have feared hasn't happened."
Still, the region hasn't escaped unscathed. There are at least 145
confirmed cases of the coronavirus in Gallatin County, the hardest
hit in the state and home to Big Sky and Bozeman, the fourth-largest
city in Montana.
At the exclusive 15 200-acre Yellowstone Club community, where empty,
half-acre lots start in the millions and attract chief executives and
business moguls, management emailed members in the middle of the
March ski season, telling them to cancel plans. Several were already
on their properties, though, and have stayed there since.
Resort foundations have now raised more than 2 million dollars to
donate to the Bozeman medical system and community groups.
Ossorio, a 63-year-old real estate agent, said he regretted the
health crisis and shutdowns, but added that residents were enjoying
the slower pace of life with fewer visitors.
"It's so huge out here, the land. You can go Nordic skiing, you can
ride your bikes," he said. "It's frankly difficult to run into
anybody. Maybe at the post office you'll see people, or if you go to
buy groceries or takeout, but otherwise it's just you."
Back in Sedona, Scott MacDonald, an investment manager who lives in
Denver, had arrived earlier this month after loading up his Tesla
Model X and making the 12-hour drive south with his wife and two
children.
Los
Angeles Times/dpa