Itching to get away from our overcrowded
- corporate ski resorts and regional effects of global climate chaos I packed
up the car and headed north, adapting. I motored at a safe and prudent 84.5 mph
in my modern Turbo VW wagon listening to satellite radio and talking on the
remote, mind and hands-free phone, as the other cars and my baggage peeled
away. Nothing like a road trip to focus
thoughts and dreams while resetting priorities and passions. It is an indulgent 400 miles to Montana but only 5 hours. The smoky Utah valleys cleared and my mind
reawakened somewhere above the Idaho border.
It is so nice to come to Utah but so liberating to leave it.
The sun flattened on the horizon
to the south west while the Tetons played peek-a-boo over the local sepia-colored
farmland hills to the north-east. A
closer view revealed countless small, shithole farms mired in the poverty of
subsistence living and immune to the concepts of aesthetic, architecture,
design, or maintenance. The huge
corporate-clean farms in the distance faded away eventually with their
subsidized silos and seasonally stalled, center-pivot sprinklers bleeding the
aquifers to the bone, until all that there was left to see were the dilapidated
snow fences and a few miserably cold, lost cows. Are they immune to cold and climate or just too
numb and dumb to mind? Are we?
The sun flattened on the horizon
to the south west while the Tetons played peek-a-boo over the local sepia-colored
farmland hills to the north-east. A
closer view revealed countless small, shithole farms mired in the poverty of
subsistence living and immune to the concepts of aesthetic, architecture,
design, or maintenance. The huge
corporate-clean farms in the distance faded away eventually with their
subsidized silos and seasonally stalled, center-pivot sprinklers bleeding the
aquifers to the bone, until all that there was left to see were the dilapidated
snow fences and a few miserably cold, lost cows. Are they immune to cold and climate or just too
numb and dumb to mind? Are we?
Finally,
over the divide into Montana, the land and the farmers seemed cleaner, more
organized and proud. The men in the Co-Op
feed store wore real cowboy hats and boots, not hay-seed hats with sneakers,
with button-down shirts under their Carhartt that didn’t have shit all over
them. They took off their gloves when
they shook hands and looked each other in the eye when they talked. The houses I passed were neat and clean with one
unflattering neon light on in the kitchen and comfortable smoke curling out of
the chimney. Montana is like a big
clean, conservative, empty Massachusetts with huge mountain ranges floating
everywhere you look and big water flowing in all the icy rivers.
After
filling the gas tank in a drippy muddy college-town that was feeling, but still
denying, the warming winters, I headed off into the hinterland, the mountains
and the wilderness. In the fading light
I shifted into four-wheel drive and turned north towards a small un-plowed
canyon, past a small ski resort and up to a rustic hot spring resort where I
found a small cabin with a wood stove and an old friend having a beer and an
appetizer of cheese and crackers, shrimp and guacamole. I expertly parallel parked my car backwards
up a steep side hill. When I got out and
slammed the door proudly, the car began a driver-less slide down the hill and
crashed innocuously into my friend’s truck.
I had arrived.
My
old buddy and I told old stories and partied away the night. We took a nice soak in the adjacent hot spring
with a crowd of millennial Montana locals replete with modern mullets, omniscient
goatees, beer-belly bikinis and tramp-stamp tattoos, who were, under their own
admission, ‘hooking up for the evening’ - whatever that means. I felt very welcomed and at home in that place
with those people except my friend’s dog kept biting me suspiciously and instinctively
in the hands and face. It kind of
freaked me out, just a little bit. Bite
me once, shame on you, bite me twice, shame on me.
After
a fitful night with several trips to the frozen, snow-blown out-house, where I
wondered odiferously if it was the shrimp, the healing hot spring waters or the
dog bites, we woke to warm Montana clouds and snow flurries. After a hearty biscuit and gravy breakfast at
the rustic log lodge, we headed down the road to go skiing at the local resort. Showing up at ten on a Saturday was not a
problem as we squeezed into the front row of the dinky parking lot and let the
dog out of the truck to go bite other people.
Lift tickets were a miraculous $36, $28 if you had a season pass to
another resort, so we felt lucky as we headed to the one small slow lift that
served this cone of a mountain.
After
a refreshingly long, slow ride to the top that allowed a snack, a smoke, a nap
and a complete conversation[1], we disembarked to good views and better snow. It had been a day or two since the last storm
but there was still good powder everywhere.
We took a warm-up run down something we called ‘Death Cookies’ before
heading to the trees, both north and south facing, that held plenty of ‘snippet’s’
of pow in varying degrees of ‘bakeage’ – from Crème Brule to powdered sugar. None-the-less it was refreshing to ski at a
place where there was more powder than people and more terrain than time. There was no snow-making, minimal grooming and
the only high-speed quads on the mountain were on our legs.
We
repeated these languid but luxurious laps all morning before stopping for lunch
at the small, cozy lodge. Unfortunately,
it was packed with 20-30 kids from ski classes eating corn dogs and fries,
running around randomly and using their outside voices inside the hot and
humid, cramped cafeteria. After
immediately fogging up we decided this wouldn’t do and so we went out to let
the dog out of the truck and eat lunch in the parking lot. This seems to be a Montana past time since
there were several pic-nickers eating on tailgates, letting their feral mutts
run around to fight and bite, poop and pee.
After
lunch we returned to the slopes, exploring new angles and aspects, all good,
all empty. We adopted a European tempo
we call Stop-en-Snacken where we would ski a few laps and stop at the pub for
some Jalapeño Poppers or Greek Gyros, beers or bourbons, then go out for a few
more laps. We eventually closed the
slopes and kitchen down and watched football on TV until the band finally showed
up after five and began playing bluegrass jazz while the après-ski crowd slowly
drifted home in the orange alpenglow of the northern evening. It seemed odd to me that the kitchen closed
when the people showed up and the band began to play while the people
left. When I tried to leave a healthy trickle-down
tip the waitress chased me down outside and said it was too much. It was a Montana business model I could not
understand but I was going with it, at least for the weekend. Simple ain’t easy.
We
went back to the cabin for a fire, a nap under down sleeping bags,
hors-d’oeuvre’s, a warm soak, dinner with the band at the lodge and a great
night’s sleep until the very next morning when the day broke early, sunny and
clear. We had another soak in empty
pools and breakfast at the lodge before we said our good byes, each of us
heading our separate ways to the backcountry or another ski resort.
I
drove further west and north through cold valleys and one-horse towns, to the
Continental Divide, where the gas station attendant said it was 'way below zero'. I found a slightly larger, more sophisticated ski resort, magically enveloped in the fog-cloud that was streaming over the Divide
like a wave of water over sand castles at the beach. Here was more snow and more terrain but about
the same amount of people and powder.
With the direction of an overly helpful, volunteer patrolman[2], I explored the Sacajawea trees and the Lewis and Clark chutes. Everything was named after the Corps of
Discovery here since this was where, in 1805 they hired an incompetent Indian
guide named Toby and wallowed around in these woods for months before finding
the Snake river and their ride to the sea.
I guess it was tougher seeing the forest through the trees back then,
but with my trail map and chamber-of-commerce guide book, it seemed obvious to
me the best way home.
In
a few short days up north, I had renewed my faith in winter and my love for
skiing and the skiing lifestyle. I had
returned to my roots and discovered who I really was and what I really enjoyed
about the sport and the season. I wasn’t
tired of winter or skiing, but of what it had become. I found good, affordable, uncrowded, low key family
skiing. This new experience wasn’t a
combat-corporate-industrial experience where I was treated like a widget to be
manipulated and minimized or fulfill someone’s duty to the stockholders and
bottom line.
I
found good simple people, complacent with their modest, sustainable northern lifestyle,
needs and ambitions. I found a resilient
régime that was simple and social, based on a brotherhood of people devoted to an
extreme season and an athletic, outdoor aesthetic that doubted but still adapted
slowly to the modern realities of the outside world and climate. I found a winter environment that was cold
and clear, brisk and bracing, snowy and satisfying. The
way winter used to be, the way it should always be.
[1] Later,
with a local Carhartt clad teen, conversation was like pulling teeth, but he finally
loosened up and told me about rodeo.
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