OCTOBER 5, 2021 – Yesterday evening after sunset, I hiked to Little Switzerland for my daily “hill climbs.” In the distance appeared the twin TV transmitting towers near the northern beltway around the Twin Cities. The blinking red lights of the 1,200-foot towers reminded me of a preposterous idea I devised 20 years ago. Our younger son, Byron, was into Taekwondo, and the dojang was in the general direction of those towers. On every trip to Taekwondo, I’d rehash the idea, whereupon my wife would say, “Stop talking about that insane idea!”
The notion was prompted by acrophobia. Whenever I saw those towers, I thought about the crew who change the light bulbs. This made me woozy. My crazy idea worked as a counter-measure.
The concept was to excavate outside a half-mile radius from the towers and pile the excavated earth around them up to an elevation just below the top blinking lights. Out of the flat, Upper Midwestern landscape, the resulting ski area boasting a 2,200-foot vertical drop (the excavated circular trench plus the pile of dirt) would be the biggest deal between Europe and California. The artificial mountain would be visible 100 miles away and draw enormous crowds, turning a profit by its third year of operations.
I imagined a signature ski lodge at the summit, including a luxurious, revolving restaurant affording commanding views of the Twin Cities and 1,000 of our 10,000 lakes. Year-round gondola operations would make the mountain a four-season resort destination.
A full range of ski runs would cover the north half of the mountain, and in summer four championship golf courses would be among the recreational possibilities, all enhanced by luxury condos.
I pretended taking the “concept” through the local land development process. I’d need about a few million bucks of “fun(ny) money” from some hyper-billionaire with a sense of humor. Those funds would pay for an array of expensive visual displays—“concept drawings,” scale models, brochures, and other promotional materials. More funds would be required for a cadre of well-scripted actors to appear at meetings with local officials and media outlets.
The “story”: an anonymous oil sheik from Oman, now living in London, had spent much time at Mayo Clinic in Rochester (credible, since, in fact, many real-life royalty and ridiculously rich Middle Easterners go to Mayo), where heroic efforts by a large medical team had cured his wife of a rare disease. The sheik was so grateful to Mayo and enamored of Minnesota, he wanted to “do something big” in gratitude. He’d attended school in Switzerland, where he’d learned to ski. Combining his love for skiing and his affinity for the Land of 10,000 Lakes, he decided to do what had never been tried: build from scratch a major ski mountain.
A front of credentialed “lawyers,” “architects,” “engineers,” and “spokespeople”—all actors speaking with upper-crust English accents—would be assembled to pitch the idea.
How far, I wondered, could I take the prank before someone with clout would say out loud, “Uh . . . I think this is a boondoggle.”?
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© 2021 by Eric Nilsson
