'Planet Boulder' a world apart

Boulder County population: About 300,000 in 700 square miles Lee County population: About 600,000 in 804 square miles Boulder median home value: About $365,000 Lee County median home value: About $268,000 Boulder property taxes on a 2,000-square-foot home: About $3,100. Lee County property taxes on a 2,000-squarefoot home: About $1,100

(Source: statistics taken from a variety of Web sources.

Taxes are estimates.)

Let me tell you, these liberals know how to live.

I'm resting on the side of a hill about 6,000 feet above Fort Myers, staring over the tops of the pines at a white speck on the side of a cliff, maybe 100 feet below the top. Thanks to a bunch of tax-happy liberals, the cliff is open to the public. Known here as a flatiron, it rises roughly 1,000 feet above my position toward the sky.

The speck moves.

My wife, Amy, and my sons, D.P. and Nash, are nearby. So are some other people who are watching me stare.

"Is there a climber?" a woman asks.

"He's two fingers right of the pines on top, and about a finger down, just below the rosy birthmark in the rock," I tell her.

My boys start looking. "I see him," says D.P. At 12, he has eyes like a hawk. So does Nash, who can see like an eagle. He's 5. The woman is about 25.

"Where?," she says. "He's coming into that fissure," I tell her.

"Or she," she says.

"You're right," I say, slightly embarrassed. It's true, for one thing - some of the best rock climbers you'll ever see are women, and they live here in Boulder, Colo., where my mother lives. She turns 80 this month, and if there's one rock climber tougher than she is, I'll eat my hat, the one in the goofball picture.

"There's a 50-percent chance she's a woman," the woman adds.

I'm trying to think of a response to this sobering statistic, when a man standing just behind the woman decides to speak. "There's a 100 percent chance it's a woman," he says. "100 percent."

I turn. Uh-oh, it's her dad, apparently. A family argument.

"Yep," I say, "a 100 percent chance, especially if that climber is a woman." My boys are staring at me. Their expressions suggest pity. My wife is studying me with compassion.

"There's a 100 percent chance I'm a feminist," the young lady adds, eyeing me like a shotgun. Her younger brother and sister, if that's who they are, are standing next to her, gazing in admiration at their black-dressed, pony-tailed, bare-armed, finely freckled, confident-looking, hair-trigger of a big Boulder sister.

"I'll bet some of these climbers around here, the women, can out climb anybody else," I say, offering a statement so sexist and patronizing, as defined by a true feminist, that I should probably be just tossed off the mountain. By Boulder feminists.

But fortunately for me, the young lady turns back to her view of the cliff top.

"Oh, there he is," she says. And for the next five minutes, she explains to her siblings that lots of people in Boulder climb without ropes. She uses "he" everytime she describes the climber above us.

"He's gotta have a rope," insists her little brother. "He'd die if he fell."

"Nope," she says. "He doesn't have a rope."

"No rope, a 100 percent chance," says her father.

I round up my crew, and we hike out of there. It's too dangerous at the bottom of the cliffs, but that's Boulder. They don't have a beach here, but they have mountains, and a lot of high-falutin' opinions.

I want to expose every Lee County commissioner, and every city council member, and every planner on the Gulf Coast to this city, and this county, where strong opinions and high property values go hand in hand.

Even the bumper stickers on cars parked in my mom's hill neighborhood might help them cop a "for the people" attitude:

Beef: It's what rotting in your colon. I'm pro-wolf - and I vote. Who would Jesus torture?

Save the planet: kill a Republican.

Practice acts of sensible kindness: Go vegetarian.

Support an Exit Plan. Fight the power.

Real patriots oppose empire.

Boy I wish Big Brother were here watching me to make me feel safe.

Go home and practice.

I love Ethiopia.

"What good fortune for governments: That the people do not think." - Adolf Hitler.

Here's the thing about Planet Boulder, which, except for the altitude and the rocks, was once a lot like Fort Myers is now: many people want to live here, and the real estate market be damned. The public facilities - from gyms and tracks and pools and schools to parks and trails and "open space" - are unmatched, at least anywhere I've been. Conclusion: out of its willingness to tax itself - to invest in itself - Boulder has achieved a higher quality of life, not just a higher altitude.

Here, county officials have surrounded the town with about 35,000 acres of public land. That means taxpayers bought it and preserved it. In addition, they've added carefully maintained trails for walkers, runners, and bicyclists - all connected from the prairie to the mountains - along with extensive space elsewhere for four-wheelers or dirt motorcycles.

(To be fair, Lee officials are making significant progress. They have 17,500 acres of 20/20 public property, and they just helped the state buy more than 70,000 acres of Babcock Ranch. Maybe they're getting liberal even without bumper stickers - something in the water, perhaps?)

Boulder County, along with Denver, has a public transportation system so easy to use that many people do, leaving their SUVs at home.

A catch-and-release trout stream flows out of the mountains through town, and the University of Colorado, with its red flagstone buildings and roofs, dominates the center of town. There is constant music or theater, scores of good restaurants, and a plethora of quaint and appealing shops.

All this has resulted in property values that appear inured to national market conditions: The assessed value of homes in and around Boulder seems to remain in orbit, far above what people came to expect in Lee County even during the market surge that ended a year or so ago. A bunch of lefties did this?

In that case, we Southerners could use a little preaching and a little more thinking, Boulder style, especially if it somehow adds to the quality of life. Couldn't we?

Sure we could. And if we don't like what a didact or a bumper sticker says, we can reply

in kind. Or maybe with this: My karma ran over

your dogma.

And then watch our property values skyrocket. ¦