Y2K: Working at aWyoming Ski Resort
This is the bridge between two trips as I retell my travel story that began in 1999 at the age of 20. visiting all 7 continents by the time I was 27. You can start at the beginning here. Here is the previous installment . The purpose of this series is to demonstrate what is possible when what you have is ordinary. Trigger warning: death.
When I decided to work the winter to save up for a trip to Europe I thought about how I might be able to make my job an adventure as well. It didn’t take much brainstorming to decide that the coolest place to find a winter job would be a ski resort. My brothers and I had been snowboarding for 2 winters, learning on a little ice hill, called Powder Ridge, an hour drive from our farm. If I could work at a remote resort that would provide room and board, I could do nothing but save money, socialize with coworkers, and get awesome at snowboarding.
When my middle brother had taken up snowboarding I decided to learn as well. I wanted to be that cool fearless tomboy taking big jumps, carving up snow, looking super cool. “Coolness” was the key factor and motivator to dedicating day after day of falling on ice. I did learn to stay up. Eventually. Learning to snowboard is painful. Especially in Minnesota where we don’t get powdery snowfalls. I was told the theory of how snowboarding should work ie “Kick your back leg out” but what is a kick when your feet are attached to one board? I’ve heard a favorite quote that sums up snowboarding well, “The difference between skiing and snowboarding is when you’re skiing you say, “Oh no! I’m going to fall!” and with snowboarding you say, “Oh no! I fell!” I really wanted to be brave and fearless but several tailbone wacks and several head wacks on ice and I was a cautious rider. Still, I was so proud to be able to say “I’m a snowboarder.” How cool does that sound? I even got into a bit of the culture, listening to the punk rock featured in snowboard videos. I chose NoFX as my favorite of the punk bands. My brother was the music curator, also listening to the Swingin’ Utters and Blink 182. Everclear has a fitting snowboard song, even though it’s about heroin addiction, called “Strawberry”. It has a repeating chorus of “Don’t fall down now, you will never get up.”
The winters I snowboarded with my brothers were some of my favorite memories of living in Minnesota. We would drive in a small car, boards and gear piled in back. When my Bug got up and running I got it outfitted with a Thule snowboard rack so we could clip our boards onto the roof of my car. We would get up early, drive to Powder Ridge, snowboard all day, heat up with hot chocolate on breaks, and then usually stop somewhere to share a giant pizza on the way home. We were these awesome Sorenson Siblings, braving the cold, sharing our war stories and encouraging each other to try bigger and bigger jumps.
One time we sat at the top of a steep hill with a very steep jump nearly out of view. Ben was going to attempt his first 360 spin. He is the brave/reckless one of the 3 of us. We got him pumped up, he took off at a good speed, dipped out of view as he approached the jump and moments later he was launching through the air in a beautiful graceful spin — but — Instead of him standing perpendicular on his board and his board spinning like a ceiling fan, physics had shifted at some inopportune point. Ben was now spinning, flat out, like a rag doll, starfished wide, his entire body parallel to the ground, spinning like a slow motion helicopter propeller before he bellyflopped out of view. I laughed all the way down to the landing where Ben laid in a heap of gear, groaning from getting the wind knocked out of him. This is why I don’t take big jumps.
I’m writing my story about my travels and I’m hesitant about how much time to spend describing the 6 months or so at a ski resort. It’s not really “travel” but I’ll still tell you all about it, summarized into this one long “chapter”. The thing about travel, is we are always counting up our arrivals and our destinations. Wyoming, working at a ski resort, was it’s own destination but it was also part of the journey, the means for me to get to Europe. Believe me, I did lots of research to see how I might travel for free but in the end working was the simplest solution. My second solution for free travel would be: Marry a New Zealand commercial pilot and reap in the perks of free flights for family, living in stunningly beautiful New Zealand, and having citizenship to the British Commonwealth.
I don’t remember the exact details of how I found Big Horn Ski Resort. It was my usual way: drive around and ask everybody. First, I went out to Wyoming. I did not have anything special on my resume that would put me in consideration for hiring. I hoped that being young and a snowboarder would be enough but I also worried that the assumption of snowboarders being potheads might hinder my reputation as a reliable employee. My theory was that if I could meet people in person, get a feel for the places to work, it would be harder to tell me “No” when I was standing on their doorstep. Telling a potential employer that I had driven from Minnesota for work should be an indication of my dedication to finding a job, right?
A young neighbor guy had offered to drive with me out from Minnesota to Wyoming with his new pickup, and tow my Bug. We roadtripped together and visited his family out West. It was only as we were heading across the state line that he informed that this was the first time in his life to leave the state and I now wondered if he had only made this trip for my benefit. He was an awkward but sweet guy with a shy crush on me. His family were farmers, he was a hard worker, working full time while in high school. He was also younger than my little brother. I was 20 and preparing myself for marriage. I was only looking for “husband material.”
I drove from his relatives in Wyoming to the closest ski resort. I think I just asked them for what was closest or I had at least seen a ski resort marked on my roadmap and headed towards that. The first resort I came to was closed and it was difficult to even find but someone who told me of a smaller resort a couple hours farther South, that was getting up and running and needed people. I headed there but they were located closer to a town so they didn’t need to provide room and board to their workers but they told me of another place that was still getting ready to open and that they might be hiring. My plan was to drive like this across Wyoming and then into Colorado stopping at every lead until I got hired.
Job search advice for working at a ski resort: Most of the work is contract work. Apply in summers so you don’t miss the hiring season. If you want to be paid to ski or snowboard get EMT certified or at least first responder so you can be ski patrol. Our resort didn’t want snowboarders as ski patrol, they said skiers have better maneuverability.
The third ski resort I stopped at was Big Horn Ski resort, near the top of a mountain. Ten Sleep was about 15 miles down one side of the mountain and Buffalo was 50 miles down the other side. I walked into the empty restaurant and asked to fill out an application. I hadn’t expected a ski resort to have a full restaurant and I was excited to apply as a waitress. Maybe I wouldn’t actually have to be a chairlift operator all year and maybe I could learn the cool job of waitressing.
Here’s the thing about dreams, don’t let anyone diss your dreams and don’t let anyone tell you what is a worthy dream or not. Dreams are about what excites you. Being able to find excitement in small things is the easiest way to enjoy life because life is made mostly of little things. I was nearly as excited to be a diner waitress as I was to go to Europe. The dream to waitress probably came from the movies. The diner waitress is so cool. She is kind but detached and has this worldly knowing about her. She is often haphazardly pulled into someone’s big action adventure. I loved the idea of wearing a vintage looking uniform with an apron, and carrying a round glass pot of coffee to refill thick ceramic mugs while I called grizzly old timers and truckers “Hun.” Waitresses are the swirling currents in chaos, taking care of customers at different stages of their demands, the messenger to the kitchen crew, the bringer of food. They keep everyone informed and overhear all the gossip. They are like the unnoticed sages of the modern world.
It was a quiet day at Big Horn. I had to fill out the application, set up an interview, and be all professional while inside I screamed for the opportunity to waitress AND snowboard all winter. Do you know how many levels of Cool I was about to be? I was interviewed by the head waitress and she was just as hardcore as I had imagined gritty diner waitresses to be. She had a resting bitch face — before that term was invented — with her dark wavy hair pulled back tight, and thinly plucked eyebrows knitted together in a scowl. She told me how hard waitressing is, the demands to be organized and have foresite, and how some people aren’t cut out for all the multitasking. She was so cool. I got the job with the understanding that I would work at the ski resort wherever help was needed.
The interview happened in the main building where the large open restaurant had windows all around and overlooked the lake behind it. There was a bar and cocktail area to the right side, the cabin check-in and hostess desk was at the front of the restaurant.This was the first building you saw as you pulled into the parking lot. On the exterior back wall of the building was an staircase that led to a small living quarters for 3 or 4 of the male workers to live above the restaurant.The living quarters hadn’t changed since the 70s, the rooms were walled in wood paneling, the carpet was worn down shag carpet in rust orange and browns. This would be one of the main movie hangouts for us workers.
Down a small, usually icy hill, to the left of the restaurant, was a circle of cabins for snowmobile groups, the snowmobile workshop, a long house for the women workers and a trailer house for more of the men. I think each living area housed 4 or 5 people. Behind all the buildings was the small lake. To the left of the lake was the ski resort. There was a snowmobile trail that was a shortcut to the ski lodge or you could take the longer way by road. At the ski area there was a two story lodge with the rentals and ski patrol office downstairs and food court and a wraparound porch on the second level. The resort only had two ski lifts, and a jbar for the bunny hill.
Originally, this place was a one man show. The owner sold the lift tickets upstairs and then ran downstairs to fit out the rental equipment. An investor from Colorado had recently bought the place and was busy making it into a fancy resort. Lots of changes had been happening, the ski lodge got wood siding to make it look like it was made out of logs, brand new yellow Arctic Cat snowmobiles arrived as rentals, new ski and snowboard equipment replaced the old rentals, and maintenance was getting the chair lifts operational for winter.
I was offered the choice to live in a house with all the other girls but they also offered a one room cabin down the road. They were hoping to find someone willing to rough it with only wood heat. Have we established my infatuation with log cabins by now? This was my very own one room log cabin! With a wood stove for heat! My dream winter l was getting better and better. No one else wanted to live in the cabins because they were built as summer rentals, not insulated, not well sealed, and for temporary stays. It was a small hunters’ campground across the lake. I could either walk across the lake when it was frozen or drive 2 or 3 miles around the mountain in my unheated bug with the windows rolled down to keep the windshield from frosting up. My cabin had a bed, some shelving, and a table and chair. No wall hangings or any decorations, just curtains for the couple of windows. There was a single bulb and one or two electrical outlets. The showers and bathrooms were at a central bath house. If you stood in the right spot of the cabin you could feel the cold outside air blowing through.
In Little House on the Prairie, Laura Engalls Wilder talks about how one morning her and her sister, Mary, wake up to find that they are buried in a foot of snow piled on their quilts and Pa digs them out with a shovel. Mom had read us the entire series when we were growing up. I had been fascinated about this phenomenon as a little girl. According to the story the wind had blown so hard that the snow had blown in through the cracks of the cabin. I didn’t wake up in my cabin to a foot of snow on my quilts but I did wake up to at least a dusting of snow. Snow. On my bed. Where I was sleeping, and I had slept under it. I was so impressed. Who gets to claim this as a life experience these days?
Grandpa Sorenson told me about how poor he and grandma were when they were first married and how they lived their first year in a corncrib. The spaces between the boards were big enough that you could see through them to the outdoors. This was in Northern Minnesota! He also shared about getting snow blown in and he told me how they would go to sleep and in the morning the bucket of water in the house would be frozen. I kept a bucket of water beside the stove as a fire extinguisher. The morning that I woke up to a bucket of frozen water beside my bed I felt like I had arrived. I was officially frontier tough, officially Minnesota tough. I really wanted to be tough. Maybe it’s Minnesota pride, maybe it’s the Sorenson family pride, maybe it’s being raised hearing all the Little House on the Prairie stories, maybe it’s having 2 brothers, maybe it was all infiltration of sermons and society insisting that women are the weak.. Whatever the spin is, it comes down to weakness. I really didn’t want to be weak. I did want to be sweet so I was already at a disadvantage on the toughness scale but when I could sleep in a space that the temperature was cold enough to freeze a bucket of water solid in the night, I had gained a notch on the toughness measuring stick. I was on my way.
THANKSGIVING IN MONTANA
I got a few days off at Thanksgiving. Not enough to get home but I did have time to drive the 9 or 10 hours North to Polson, Montana where my great uncle lived. I had visited him on my road trip. My other uncle and his wife were hosting Thanksgiving and I was invited.
I haven’t decided if I will keep this story for my final book. I am telling it here while I ponder its significance: Not long after getting my VW Bug, I was on a visit to my grandparents. My grandpa was telling stories of VW Bugs. I guess a great aunt of mine had a black one and she had a dream of a black box rolling over 3 times, then a few weeks later, it was a windy day, she was driving, and her VW Bug got blown off the road, rolling over 3 times. It was a discussion on how light Bugs are and to be careful on windy days but that with their lightness and round top, rolling a Bug was not as damaging or devastating like in other cars. She was fine. The Bug was fine.
I thought it would be incredibly cool to roll my Bug. I talked to God about everything. So I asked Him for this chance. Would it be possible, if he could help me roll my Bug — by accident — and just have the experience? Have everything be fine, no damages and see what it was like? About a year after that prayer I did roll my Bug. I got hit by a gust of wind one day, the car had been responding funny already. The wind blew me across the yellow dividing line, in a panic I overcorrected and veered into the ditch. My Bug rolled right down the ditch. I was too scared to watch the horizon flipping out my window so I watched my door handle while I waited for all the movement to stop. There were no seat belts in the Bug. When I gathered my surroundings I found I was sitting cross legged on the passenger side window with water seeping in from the ditch. There’s usually water in the ditches. I was looking out the windshield to my right at several legs running towards me. I had to open the driver’s side door like a hatch to crawl out and the only “injury” I got was a big bruise on the back of my leg from sitting on the trim around the window when I crawled out.
After I had this experience I had a new respect for answered prayer. I had a long talk with God after this, thanking Him for entertaining my weird whims. I had another hesitant prayer to ask for. I asked very quietly and carefully. Could I please. . . be there to witness someone die? Nothing grotesque, no one I know, don’t kill someone because I want to see it like some gawker, but if He could just line things up with timing so I could be a witness to someone else meeting their fate. I thought it would help me shape my character and help me better understand the kind of person I am. On my mission to build character the way to do that was through experiences. I went on my 2 month road trip remembering my prayer and thinking I might witness a car accident at any time. It seemed like the most logical way I would witness a random death.
It was a year or two after I had put in this request to the Universe, that I was driving on a dark road into Montana. A small pickup had whizzed passed me and I saw in the distance the tail lights, other car lights, and then some confusion, maybe they had driven by posts but the lights had not just seemed to pass by each other, the view of them had sort of chopped up. I slowed and got ready to approach whatever weird thing happened at this part of the road. It took a moment to register that the form in front was not a dark trailer house sitting past the road but the bottom of a vehicle lying on the road, across the oncoming lane. I pulled over so that my lights shined on it to alert any other cars. There were no other lights in sight.
I took a deep breath as I opened my car door. This might be the moment. In my car the event was all still separate from me, still unreal, but when I opened my door I would be letting in all the noise and confusion of the accident and I would become part of the experience. I opened my car door and the night was silent. That’s when I got out and I ran. I ran to the overturned vehicle. There was no sound of movement, no groaning. A couple feet before the vehicle lay a little teddy bear. My heart dropped. There could be a child in this car! I started calling out. “Hello?! Anyone there? Are you Ok?” I ran around to the other side, it was the the little pickup that had passed me. I climbed up the roof of the truck, and took a deep breath before I looked in. This moment is one of the scariest moments of my life. Whatever I might see might be burned into my memory forever. What if it was an unconscious baby? Or so much worse? But I had to look if I was going to try to help. I pulled myself up and peaked in the window. The cab was empty. I was relieved but I knew that meant very bad things for the driver.
When I was up on the truck I looked around. There was another car deep in the ditch. There was an older man in the car staring ahead, looking stunned with a trickle of blood coming from his forehead. I ran over to his side of the road. “Are you ok?” I asked from view overhead. He waved me off, “Yeah, the pickup crossed the line and crashed into the other car, I had to drive into the ditch to avoid the accident.” That meant there was another car somewhere. I looked down the road. Out in the dark, nearly out of site was the taillights of another car partly in the ditch on my side of the road but between that car was a form in the road, with plaid on. That had to be the driver of the truck. It was motionless. I ran up to the body in the road. “Leave the dead, check on the other car”, was my plan. As I took a step to leave the body in the road it gave a moan, a cry. A sound I have never heard and one I’ll never forget. She was lying on her stomach, short black hair, her head tilted to the side, her cheek resting on the pavement, her right shoulder unnaturally underneath her. The crying stopped me in my tracks. I saw headlights pulling up to the car down the road. There was someone to sort that end out. I knelt down by this woman and put a hand on her shoulder. So gently. I didn’t want her to be alone. She had just flown through a windshield. She gave 3 cries, kind of like someone groaning after they’ve had the wind knocked out of them, then she was quiet. Headlights were coming up to me from behind. I ran back to my car and grabbed an old blanket, I made sure my hazards were on. It was only the strange pattern of taillights and headlights that had made me slow down for this accident. I wasn’t sure if this would be visible enough for other traffic and these are usually straight empty roads. I was putting the blanket on the woman when other people were gathering around her. One guy said we needed to roll her over and stop the bleeding. There was a thick black pool of blood coming from her head.
I was pretty sure she was dead now. I knelt back down but I didn’t look for a pulse. She was quiet. No one moved. Someone was on a cell phone to 911.
The EMTS took a while, more traffic slowly gathered, the fire department tipped the truck back up, a semi truck came barreling into the accident and barely stopped in time. I was finally sent on my way. They took statements from what I had seen. I had been the first one on the scene. Well, I guess if you don’t count the guy in the ditch. I didn’t get my blanket back but I tried to. The firemen said it had blood on it.
I went up to Montana, barely slept. I woke early in the morning to call my parents from a pay phone in a grocery store. As soon as Dad said hello I said, “I saw a bad accident” and burst out crying. I cried and cried. It took a long time before I could get any more words out. We talked about it. I Hashed over if there was some sort of training I could have had, could I have helped that woman? I was trying to understand why I was so upset. Death happens all the time, car accidents are a major statistic. I hadn’t even seen this lady alive, didn’t know her, but it’s like I had found this pool of sorrow and fear within me and I couldn’t stop it from coming out. I remember my brother telling me about his teacher witnessing a motorcyclist die on the pavement. She felt his pulse fade away while he laid there unmoving. She wrote a song about her experience. Would I be doing that?
On the ride to have Thanksgiving dinner I was staring out the window, processing all this, when I heard “fatal car accident” on the radio. The announcer had said some name just before that but I missed it. I think he said she was 34? I didn’t really hear that part either. She died just before Thanksgiving. We hear those radio reports all the time but I had forgotten the devastation behind those words. The chaos of an accident, and the disruption it has on all the lives involved. I wonder what had distracted her, what had she been in a hurry for?
Thanksgiving was making Lefse and getting to know my relatives, the cook, my great aunt, had an ashtray by the food. She complained about my batchelor great-uncle, he complained about her food. I never mentioned the car accident.
I don’t know if this event “built my character”. I don’t know if witnessing tragedy is necessary to appreciate life. I’m assuming it shaped me but I don’t know what my life would be like without this experience. I guess I got to see how I handled an emergency. Many years later I asked an EMT about emergencies and this situation and her expertise was comforting. She said that with her job there’s mostly nothing they can do. Either it’s minor injury — practically a false alarm, or you’re collecting the body. There isn’t much for in between and they don’t get to apply their training that often. I was there, for one brief moment so that this unknown woman didn’t die alone. I hope I brought her some comfort. I wish her peace.
ROOMMATE
For a short time I had a roommate. She was from Hawaii. She was her own sort of surfboarder tough, with beach blonde hair and a nice tan and a flat abs. I taught her how to layer on the clothes for winter. We were given 10 days off at the beginning of the season because work was too slow. On a whim I invited her to visit Minnesota. I hadn’t planned to go home till the season was over but we bundled up in my Bug like we were going on a sleigh ride and took off. Cold air would come in where the petals were bolted into the floor and hooked to their cables. Cold air came in everywhere. We were riding in a metal can. Dad had bought me a little space heater that he wired up but it burnt out on the trip. We stopped in South Dakota at a Buffalo farm and ate Buffalo burgers. She had never had one. We drove through, only stopping for gas and food. My treat to stay awake and stay warm is to buy super sugary coffees from the gas stations. I would put in all the flavored sweeteners and hold that warm cup for miles. It was about 15 hours of driving and being bundled up. Several hours of that was listening to her Rage Against the Machine CD on repeat while she slept through the night. I now officially can’t stand Rage Against the Machine. All those hours listening to yelling about corporate greed and government corruption has done my patience in.
In Minnesota my roommate was bored and called it a dead ugly place. I had never seen my winters as dead and ugly. I looked at the naked trees and all the lines of their branches. The sky was usually gray, the snow was white. There was certainly a lack of color. I had never been to Hawaii but I realized Minnesota winters are probably a sad comparison to tropical life. We were there a few days, she met my family and friends, played pool, drank coffee at Java Joint, then we drove back to Wyoming. I was loaded up with all the warmest blankets I could find, including a quilt from my Grandmother. My roommate barely stayed a month before she was bored and her dad flew her back to Hawaii.
THE SNOWBOARDER’S LIFE
I was so excited to get to the slopes and start my year of being a true snowboarder. The first time I got to go out with my coworkers they were both local, a skier and snowboarder. As soon as I was off the lift and heading down the mountain I cut into the powder and buried myself to my waist. It turns out that there is a difference to snowboarding on the ice hills in Minnesota versus actual powder. It’s like the difference between ice skating and sledding. You don’t need to tip your sled on the edge to go down a hill. I biffed 3 times on that first run, within just a few feet of each other and then it was like digging myself out of a kiddie ball pit to get out and back up on my board. I was exhausted by the end of my first run but the brief moments when I floated on the powder was absolutely amazing and thrilling. I was the only one on top of a mountain with giant snow laden pine trees bordering my descent. I felt absolutely weightless and the snow silenced everything.
Wyoming had a record year snowfall that winter. As in, it was the lowest snowfall in about 60 years. It was a record warm winter in the Midwest as well. Avid snowmobilers spent thousands to chase the winter West. There was almost no snow in Minnesota. In Wyoming we had a 2 foot base which sounds like a lot until you learn that a 4–6 foot base is the average. Snowmobilers would arrive with their snowmobiles on trailers, to get in their winter snowmobiling, only to find muddy trails instead.
On the ski resort side, brochures with our fancy runs, half pipe and jumps, had been printed up before winter had even begun. The illustrated map made the mountain look bigger than it was and without the snowfall half the runs were closed. There was certainly no half pipe. I had been looking forward to skiing in the Rockies, the “real deal”, but actually, our runs were quite short. It was a mountain top but with a lake part way down to block the slope. I had heard stories of being able to snowboard on ski runs for half an hour. The resort brought in snow machines and pumped water from the lake to make snow. Workers were put on overnight shifts to create snow all night but it often melted in the noon sun.
The muddy trails broke the snowmobiles faster, more required repair, every rental would be rented out leaving snowmobile groups without their recreational sport and quite frustrated.
Season pass holders at the ski resort were disappointed in the lack of runs and complained about false advertising.
The dramatic love triangles amongst the coworkers would sometimes cause a brokenhearted employee to not come to work for a few days or just up and quit completely. There was a pregnancy scare, I liked someone, this other guy liked me, this other girl liked the same guy I liked. The poor mechanic was at the center of it all, jilted by love and running ragged from the front desk renting out every one of the snowmobiles, leaving none reserved for repair.. He pulled many all nighters.
I sat with the waitresses while they smoked their cigarettes, and listened to them gripe and speculate about it all. I felt way too cheerful and naive to be in their group but at least they let me hang around them. Once in awhile they would turn on me to complain about something I was or wasn’t doing in my job, like The Single French Fry Incident. The restaurant was usually slow business so they really didn’t need me to help out very often. I learned some basics and tricks, never got good at writing menu orders in shorthand, never felt comfortable in managing multiple tables but at least next time I applied for a waitress job I could write that I “had experience” on my resume.
My job quickly rotated as other places went short handed. Besides waitressing, I worked as a lift operator mostly, a housekeeper, laundry worker, and a little bit of dishwashing. There were two engraved name tags that had been left by former workers. “Linda” and “Valerie”. Linda is my hardworking aunt with all the stories of raising beef cattle, and my mom’s name is Valerie, her first job was waitressing. We were required to wear name tags but they never made me one so I was Valerie when I waitressed and Linda when I was on laundry and cleaning duty. I usually didn’t know from day to day what I was doing, sometimes I was told the night before, sometimes I was told at breakfast.
So let me take you through a typical day. I’ll take you through my favorite day: I woke early and in the dark with thick wool socks and long johns for pajamas. I dressed for a cold day outdoors with the chance to remove layers depending on my job assignment. I would start my Bug, no matter how cold it had been it never gave me any trouble when I started it up. I had a manual that said that the engine needed to warm up for 30 min when it was cold out so I left it puttering at my front door while I got ready. I piled on my snowboard gear, mittens being most important, and then left the empty campground to drive the snowy roads to work. It was only a gradual climb up the mountain and the whole road was like one long curve to the right to get to work. It took about 12 minutes. I always drove slow. There was a guard rail with a steep drop off. On the empty roads in Wyoming, places that have had a fatal car accident are marked with a white cross. During my driving in Wyoming I found a place that had a grid of 9 crosses but I can’t remember if that was a marker on my way to work or if that spot is etched into my memories because of the impact of seeing 9 crosses at the edge of a barrier and a 1000 foot drop over the edge.
I loved pulling into the parking lot to see which pickups weren’t starting that morning. There was often at least one. Several guys in snow gear would be out with cables and plugs trying to warm up the battery or jump start it. I loved pulling up in my little ’72 Bug. I’m so dang proud of that little car.
Breakfast was served at 7:00. I aimed to get there at 7:15. Workers would show up, we would wait at the bar and drink coffee. It was scrambled eggs, pancakes, and bacon every morning. I ate mostly the eggs. People would sit around and drink coffee, grumbling about the cold. One thing that was fun to talk about was upcoming Y2K. The year 2000 was arriving soon and all computers were supposed to reset, wiping out the financial system, shutting down the electrical grid, and planes would fall out of the air. The Tribulation should have been happening by now as well, Jesus making his return and final battle to war against rebellious heathens, but I didn’t bring that up. We had a good time speculating survival tactics. We’d probably be fine for a month or two on the mountain with supplies. I felt pretty secure among the survivalists and cowboys.
This particular fun day, I arrived and a coworker informed me, “Hey, you have a snowboarding lesson in 2 hrs.” And just like that I was a snowboard instructor. Over breakfast I thought about how I would teach someone to snowboard. I had had no teacher when I had learned. My education and learning method was, “point the nose of your board downhill. Go. And fall down a lot.” How do you break that down into a lesson plan?
Amidst the trials and tribulations was a Christian family supervising the whole thing, trying to hold the place together. They led prayer meetings and played guitar and talked optimistically. I was on the fringes of participating but my Christian upbringing wasn’t all that love and light stuff, it felt a bit cheesy and I was suspicious of their ever cheery moods. I was more used to a focus on Armageddon, pestilence, and famine, and remembering that I am the best of the best in all the world for having this special knowledge about prophecy, not eating pork, and knowing that God’s real Sabbath Day is Saturday — but I was also dealing with my own moral turmoils this lovely winter.
There was a guy.
And he liked me.
I learned this fairly early on at my new job when a friend of his told me. Then this guy that liked me tackled me into the snow and we had a snowball fight. I thought this kind of flirting usually ended by 8th grade. I was not planning on living out an Anne of Green Gable’s flirt scene. Isn’t 20 adult enough to have conversations about feelings? But I dismissed my first impression because he liked ME. And thus began a winter of fun and so much guilt. He was cute enough. We would hold hands while we snuggled. We talked a lot, told stories about high school. He told me about the times getting away with underage drinking, of outrunning cops because he was in track. He laughed about being young and dumb and trading out a $20 bill for a couple dollars when he saw the money left on a table at a restaurant to pay a check. We played pranks on each other, he liked to call me Susie Homemaker way more often than it was funny. We talked about Valentine’s Day and I went on a rant about how dumb it is but when he brought me a stuffed teddy bear holding a heart I still did the “right” thing and oohed and awwed over it giving him lots of kisses while I wondered if he got it at a gas station, still pissed off about this stupid fake holiday. His #1 redeeming quality: He was a cowboy, working at a ranch during the summers. That was enough for me to be totally enamored. I was dating a real cowboy that liked me! I don’t know what you’re supposed to do or how you’re supposed to act differently when a guy likes you. My solution was to be wherever he was. We ate breakfast together, spent lunch break together, hung out after work, went drinking together, watched movies together. We did lots of making out in his room and I felt cozy with him under his quilt. I had my first kiss a week after my 21st birthday. It was an exciting time but all the harsh language in the Bible filled my head. I was slipping into immorality. I was letting down my future husband and maybe I was a disappointment to my parents for not remaining pure enough. Even if I wasn’t “defiled” (I held on tight to my virginity card), it was now tainted. I had always had this plan that my first kiss would be at my wedding, standing in front of all my friends and family at the moment when the minister would say “You may kiss the bride.” I would have this soul as white and pure as my dress. Sweetest Innocence. I had only made it till I was 21 and here I was kissing some guy I had only known a few months and I wasn’t even going to marry him. I had planned on getting married when I was 23 but that was with the idea that I would meet and marry my high school sweetheart. That had not worked out for me since I had attended an arts high school and I refuse to marry any type of artist — do you have any idea how over-sensitive and moody artists are? With these side distractions I saw I was not going to be mature enough for marriage by 23. I would postpone my wedding plans till I was 24.
The churchy family had a daughter my age and we absolutely clicked. She was so polished, always done up with nice makeup and straightened hair. A contrast in our church upbringings, “only Jezebels and harlots wear makeup” is what our ministers said. Mom even remembers our founding leader saying that “no woman that wears makeup will be in the Kingdom of Heaven.” I don’t remember hearing that quote. This girl, Leah, was amazingingly outgoing, making everyone feel like they were the center of attention and she had this innocent, no filter, way of talking. Every other thing she said would come out either as a terrible innuendo or such an underhanded compliment and the rest of the conversation would be her red faced from embarrassment and laughing, showing off her braces. She was picked on ruthlessly but oh she could dish it out so well. It was an honor to be razzed by her. We talked about dreams and life and had the idea of riding bikes through Africa. We both reminisced and lamented about our bodies, she used to be a swimmer, and took comfort that her measurements were almost the same as Marilyn Monroe’s. I was just fat. Well, realistically I wasn’t that bad but through my 20s I thought my ideal weight was 112 pounds. Instead I was a 10, sometimes a 12. I wasn’t too concerned about getting down to the right wieght yet. I was keeping a list of what I would need to work on to become the “ideal wife”. Long hair, skinny, easy going, and if only I could get more confident at cooking. There was this elusive grace-thing too but I hoped that it was just something that would get activated in my genes. In the meantime, I found where they kept the axe at my campground and I chopped wood in my free time. Amy in Montana had taught me to chop wood and it made me feel so rustic and strong.
Turning 21 and becoming legal to drink was another challenge of mine. I woke up the day after my 21st birthday night and slowly learned that the weird dream from the night before had actually happened. That time when I was walking beside my guy and he was towering above me and I was wondering, “How haven’t I noticed how tall he is?” I figured it was something about me being drunk so I stayed cool and didn’t say anything but he informed me the next day that I had actually crawled on my hands and knees across the entire icy parking lot. When he told me to get up and walk, I had snapped, “I am walking!” Which would explain the other memory I had of being in his living room and my hands feeling like they were on fire and I would stare and stare at them as hard as I could but they wouldn’t come into focus and I couldn’t see any damage on them but they hurt SO BAD. I also hazily remember every once in awhile I would have the need to go to the balcony and stand outside. I HAD to, and I would stand there awhile, lose track of time, forget why I had come outside and go back and sit on the couch. My guy told me that was the times I was puking over the railing. I guess I did that about 3 times.
My guy and his good friend were experienced drinkers. I didn’t want to be the crazy drunk girl so I took my cue from them. I would only drink when they drank. I found out — the hard and painful way — that those two guys could sit and polish off a bottle of Crown Royal together and it would barely make a difference in their speech, they only laughed louder. About the 3rd time that I was coming out of being blackout drunk, puking over a toilet, I decided I needed to adjust my drinking strategy. I told myself,”I will only drink 3 drinks in a night.” We got a free shift drink at the end of our work day. I followed my coworker’s example and got a Long Island Iced Tea — get your money’s worth, right? But then a customer bought me a drink, and a free drink doesn’t really count as one of the three, right? And then someone bought me another drink and another one, and that night also ended with the room spinning and me puking. I did so much puking that winter. Hanging over a toilet I would be thinking about how being a drunkard is another moral failing in the Bible that fits with having “self-control”. The self is this wild animal that we need to keep tame. Involuntarily losing your stomach contents is certainly a sign of loss of control. I was failing my temptation tests so far. Every time that I was puking over a toilet I was so angry at myself for my downward slide.
I did get to spend a night in a cabin! My guy quickly found out my infatuation with log cabins and one night we drove out to some snowed over road for a surprise. We hiked in about 15 min through shin deep snow to the cattle station he tended in the summers. It was a place in the hills where the cattle could graze. The cabin even had a little covered porch. It was barely two rooms, a kitchen and table and a large bed with a quilt. It even had a wood cooking stove and we slept together under the heavy blankets.
In the morning he started a fire in the wood cooking stove and we cooked pancakes. I could look out the window at a snowed-in paddock. I love the smell of wood smoke in the cold air. He brought in water, we heated it on the stove and washed the dishes together, carefully repacking everything back into storage bins. I wished I had a wool skirt and a checkered apron in that moment. I imagined being married, kissing my hubby goodbye as he ducked under the door frame and went out to the barn to harness up the horses. This one night is the closest I got to my fantasy life. It was one of the highlights of wintering in Wyoming but I didn’t tell anyone about it because of my guilt of being unwed and “sleeping together”.
Wyoming, the old West. Did you know it was legal to have an open container and drink and drive outside the city limits? Wyoming had that “fend for yourself, make do, push through” attitude.. I knew mechanics and cowboys and everyone wore Carharts. I was in heaven. In the mountains in the wilderness, I was living my rustic life. My unheated cabin, my days on the slopes. Snowboarding on slow days or between shifts. I did snowshoeing with Leah, tubing behind snowmobiles, snowmobile rides with a guest or coworker once in awhile, and one time we even rode innertubes down one of the straighter ski runs. At the same time there was always an exhaust haze following the snowmobiles in the high altitude, the whining noise of their motors, all the trees that had been cut down to make the snowmobile trails and ski runs. I would watch the skiiers come up the lifts and think about their hundreds of dollars worth of gear, the money spent on the lift ticket and the minimum hour long drive here. What were we all doing invading the top of this peaceful snowy mountain with our noise? Pumping water from the lake with humming generators, blowing ice chips to make more snow that the sun would melt away. Huge diesel motors guzzled fuel to turn pulleys to move long cables of ski chairs in a circle all day long. The exhaust from the generators would hang over the ski resort, the air too cold for the smoke to rise. From my chairlift control box I had a pristine view of a distant wilderness and our ski runs in the midst of it, carved up and marked up by humans. Sitting at the controls in my glass booth, seperate from the elements, I was so disconnected. How much of our life is just a waste of resources? Is this how we live? Redesigning nature for entertainment? I loved my experience but what had been the cost?
I was working on my bravery. Even if I was regularly failing all my tests of character I could still make time to build more character. There was a route of jumps set up on the ski run. I would take my snowboard to my work station at the top and then when I snowboarded down I could hit 7 jumps like a training run. Most of them were small and of no consequence. But to start off the series was a drop off a small cliff, about 8 or 9 feet high. It terrified me. But I did it. And I did it again and again. Every day I did this run at least once. My goal was to start taking these runs faster and getting bigger air but it didn’t work out that way. Instead, I got more and more anxious about that first drop on each run until one day I took it at a full crouch and I stayed in that crouch on my landing. There was no spring left in my legs to absorb the shock and I felt a sharp sensation as my knee seemed to slide to the side, like I could feel the femur sliding off the tibia. I gave a shriek in surprise, more than pain, and sat in the snow holding my knee hoping it was ok. I sat there for a long time, at the top of the mountain wondering how I was going to get down. After some trial and painful error I found I could stand on my board if I was facing up the mountain and basically snowboard backwards.
I took a break from snowboarding but I carried on with everything else. I could walk but it had limitations. I couldn’t trust it when I jumped. I definitely couldn’t use the j-bar to go up the bunny slopes, that ended in a scream and me on the ground for awhile. I would walk my snowboard up the bunny hill when I was giving snowboard lessons. At least I was getting in a good workout. At the end of the season a group of us toured some of the major ski resorts. We went to the Grand Tetons and Jackson Hole. I wore a knee brace and that helped keep things together. As I would be cutting across runs I would sometimes hit a bump and I would feel my knee slide out of place. I would give a shriek but the brace would pull it back in alignment and I wouldn’t fall over.
The Grand Tetons were beautiful and perfect powder. I could have spent every run just gliding down the long slopes in a dream but instead I followed my friends around. They wanted to explore and cut across the mountain runs. It was a small choice but I remember this lesson. I really missed out on a day of epic snowboarding so I could chase after friends, through side, more worried about being left behind than doing what I would have enjoyed most.
The first reason that I began considering writing this book was to share stories that I collected during my travels, not just my own. We all have a story and I have had the honor of collecting a unique variety of stories that may never be heard otherwise. So here are my favorite two stories from my winter in Wyoming. My boss, the ski resort manager told these:
GRANDPA’S LASSO
His grandfather was a true grit cowboy, lasso and everything. When my boss was little, he did something bad and ran out of the house. His grandma called after him but instead of doing what she said he gave some sort of disrespectful remark and ran out the door. What he didn’t realize was that his grandpa was coming into the house and witnessed the exchange. His grandpa called out for him to stop but he knew he was already in trouble and he also figured he had a head start on outrunning his grandfather. How fast can an old man be, right? So he doubled down and made a run for the barn. What he hadn’t paid attention to was that his grandpa had come from the barn and that he had a coiled rope in his hand. Little Boss was running as fast as his little legs would carry him when he saw from above, a large rope loop float over his head and settle down around him. When it was right about waist high his grandfather gave a jerk, the rope cinched his arms to his side and his grandfather hauled him in, pulling hand over hand to drag him back to the porch where his grandfather held him in the air, giving him a good shaking and a lecture about disrespecting his grandmother.
THE DRUNK PARACHUTER
Ok, I’m pretty sure this has to be an urban legend. My engineer husband said that this isn’t possible but I am going to tell this the way it was told to me. Because the way I remember it was as FACT. So when Boss-man was in whatever area of the army that does parachute training he had a buddy that drank too much the night before a jump. Then at some point on the flight up to jumping altitude he didn’t clip his ripchord to the line. It was like a dare or something. But the moment that he jumped out of the plane he passed out and actually never pulled his rip chord. What saved him is whatever perfect timing in physics, as he was falling his fall was broken by someone opening their chute just below him. He rode that parachute to the ground, only coming to when he landed and it was the instructors seeing him walking around with an unopened chute on his back while his buddies gathered up their billowing yards of parachute material that got him in trouble.
Y2K
My brothers and my cousin drove out to Wyoming from Minnesota to spend a couple weeks snowboarding. They slept on the floor of my cabin and snowboarded while I worked. My favorite part was getting them to meet Tim and Ed. Tim and Ed were this dog and a giant man duo. I don’t remember which name belongs to who. Ben’s intro came when he needed a screwdriver and (we’ll call the human Tim) Tim told him he could get one from the cab of his truck. “But -!” Tim boomed, putting his hand out to stop Ben from running off. Tim was this giant man, always wearing Carhart bib overalls, his voice always boomed, usually in very loud laughter. But now he was very serious as he stared down Ben. “Be careful about approaching Ed, he’s the meanest beast you’ve ever seen. He’s half Rottweiler, half cougar, half grizzly. He could take your arm off if you’re not careful and show some respect. He’s going to be on guard” Ben froze and listened carefully. You could see the color drain from his face. “Just be easy, move slow,” Tim tried to reassure Ben. We watched Ben less eagerly head out into the parking lot to test his fate for a screwdriver. Dogs in trucks are nothing to play around with, they are vigilant. A few minutes later Ben came back in the restaurant with the needed screwdriver and an annoyed smirk on his face. Tim looked up concerned, “Was it ok? Were you able to talk him down?” Casey and my Cousin were on the edge of their seats wondering what kind of animal Ben had just encountered. I had been able to keep a mostly straight face. Ben rolled his eyes, “That’s like the oldest Golden Retriever I’ve ever seen.” “Wellll?” prodded Tim.
My brothers and cousin were also with me for New Year’s when it ticked over to the dreaded year 2000. We sat out on the porch steps of my cabin,wrapped in blankets, watching the night sky and smoking Swisher Sweets. Laughing about the end of the world that we wouldn’t even know about.
IT’S A SMALL WORLD
1.I waited on a customer that lived on the same street as my elementary teacher in the town I grew up in.
2. I was talking to one of the ski patrol guys about where we had lived. He had also lived in Minnesota. “Oh, you know St. Cloud?” I said listing a larger city not far from home. “What about Foley?”
“Foley?!” He said. “Of course I know Foley. Do you know Popple Creek?” Which is just a small road in the Foley area. “Well, if you know Popple Creek, then maybe you know our farm!” I said, “Gus Ratke’s old place. He built it.”
“Gus Ratke?! We used to have Sunday dinner at his place when I was a kid!” Said my ski patrol coworker. Small world!
SPRING
In the Spring I said goodbye to my work crew and friends. I told my guy we could write, he said he wasn’t much for writing letters, and that was that. I had known that we were not going to remain a “thing”. I’m pretty sure I had ended up being pretty annoying and needy by the end of the season. I got nicknamed “his shadow”. It had been a good trial run for me, how to be a better partner. I learned I should probably try to be more interested in guy things — like the Bloodhound Gang and football (so boring). With my bug packed up with my quilts and snowboard gear I headed home. I never snowboarded again.
My bank account was loaded up as well. I could backpack Europe for 3 months with a budget of $30 a day and an extra $1000 dollars for unseen expenses. Some travel book had recommended $30 as the ideal daily budget for backpacking Europe. I bought an expensive North Face backpack at an outfitter store in Buffalo,Wyoming and an unlimited Eurail pass for $1000. I didn’t think to ask for help so it was years later that I found out they customize hiker backpacks to your frame and that the backpack I had bought was too big for me. The bag was giant. Learn from my mistakes, people. Ask for help on making big purchases you have no expertise in. My biggest purchase was a 90 day unlimited Eurail pass for $1000. I was finally ready to commit to a departure date and buy a ticket. It was only the previous summer that I had even conceived of making this trip on my own. I got lucky during my search on Travelocity. When all tickets were showing up over $600 some wierd little pop-up opened and said that a one-way ticket was available through Iceland Air, to London for $350. Buying plane tickets online is the most exciting thing. With one click on your keyboard you are invested in taking an adventure. With $350 spent I was going to Europe by myself for 3 months. This was really happening.
Next up: Continent #1, my travel system. The “I have no clue” method and how you can too. A Midwestern girl navigates the Underground and finds herself in Brighton.