Snow

A sluggish week draws to its close. Mind wandering to the slopes of Colorado, Utah, Idaho, Montana, New Mexico, and Tahoe. Even British Columbia and Alaska.

Regret that I abandoned the ski bum life, that I never really indulged. If I could go back in time and change one thing, it probably would be my move to Seattle after graduation from Boulder in 1992. I should have moved up to the mountains instead, or so the voice tells me.

Fast-forward five years. I'm back from Peace Corps, and the plan is to teach sailing for the summer, then move back out West to ski bum it up. I'm debating between Taos and Tahoe, but I'm scared of both places, afraid that I won't be able to find jobs, worried that there will be no female companionship. I have no way of knowing that I'm headed for my alcoholic bottom instead.

Summer of 1997 moves from a sober 4th of July weekend to a three week bender in September. The past is killing me, specifically my inability to accept the passing of my childhood. I want to be 16, I want to be 8. I want to be carefree, or at least relatively so. Most of all, I'm heartbroken after the abortion of a love affair with a Peace Corps girl--she got cold feet; I reached for the tequila and xanax. I want to start everything over, go back in time, or rewind the years, to be a peer of the awesome high school girls with whom I teach sailing rather than their boss.

Summer ends, the girls leave, taking their youthful vigor with them, and I'm left alone, grieving a lost Eden that I never really had, drowning in alcohol, tranquilized by pot brownies and whatever pills I can find. One night we eat mushrooms. Twice. Before the police take us into protective custody when my friend bumps into the curb at White Hen Pantry. Something happens to my brain, alone in a jail cell, tripping, and drunk on tequila.

My dreams of driving out to Tahoe are shattered when I realize that I've spent all my start-up money on booze. And then my car burns up when I drive it with a busted clutch--to evade the police once again, just a few nights after jail.

Instead of the West, I end up in Vermont. A twenty-seven year old man, broken, living at home, with his parents, licking the wounds of the past, the present, and the unfulfilled future. Though I get a job bartending up at Jay Peak, I'm not living the life. It's as if every run I take is a struggle against the dark forces that have nearly destroyed me. Every turn, every mogul is about survival. I need it, the physical challenge, but you couldn't call this fun. It's ski therapy; there's a desperation that separates me from the rest of the ski bums. I'm a tragedy who can't die and just can't get over himself.

Eleven years later, nine of them clean and sober, the longing returns. The desire to find paradise in a mountain, the ultimate geographical, the finest escape.

Now I know that I'm where I am--teacher, family man, sometime writer--because of the course I've taken, because of the failed attempt at ski bumming, because of the agony of alcoholic insanity and bottoming out--I should be grateful, I know, and I am. Really, I wouldn't trade my life, but man, do I ever want to right now. Just lose myself in the perfection of the present that I've only experienced alone, in the woods, in deep powder.