A Swing, three Pivots and three Strikes and Out!
Today is the last day of ski season, Easter Sunday and also the last day of El Lodge Taos, which if you’ve been following along was launched almost a full year as Ree Boot Eco Tours with this branding.
Who remembers “the blue backpack”? That was my technical co-founder’s doing at the time I was up here managing “Tejas Mountain Lodge” for my friends and working as a ski instructor @sipapu.ski I had just received my level 1 certification after a 4-year journey to complete a lifetime dream. The culmination of a 54-year dream, what came here to do, my (I thought) finish line and the last item checked off on my bucket list.
I thought that was going to be it, my final achievement, the last thing to do, a crowning jewel of a hard life lived but I was wrong, very, very wrong. For within a few weeks after the snow melted and the high open range turned green and lush an event happened that changed the entire trajectory of my life. One that continues to dominate my every waking moment in stark contrast to what I thought my life would be like now just a scant year later as I type this on Easter Sunday morning.
The above cell phone video happened…take a minute to watch it twice and put yourself in my shoes, shooting this vision of Ammegeddon while standing in my backyard.
From that day forward my life has been a blur and continues to be to this day and its not the old type of “blur” like it had been most of my adult life because the trauma of that day caused be to not have a single sip of rum or any alcohol since. Five 28-day rehabs, two divorces, twenty-six incarcerations and over a dozen DUI’s were not sufficient enough to make me quit drinking but the trauma of that sight barreling down the range at me was I’ve come to realize. Needless to say I’m still walking around with that moment in time and I don’t know if I’ll ever get back to smelling the range in bloom at Springtime or notice the thick mud under my feet as I walk around the lodge dirt pathways. I became “numb” on that day to most external things and remain so today.
I’ve been in a zombie-like state now since that day and am not sure but think I’ve only slept more than two hours at a time since. I have only shaved, showered and changed my clothes tops six times in that year and I have not washed a single dish or utensil in my kitchen in all that time. When I do manage to grab fourty winks it’s been generally half on and half off of my desk chair or at best on the sofa, fully dressed, boots on and sleeping bag pulled over my head during daytime hours.
I’ve been hospitalized twice in this past year, once for my third transient ischemic attack or “TIA” in as many years then most recently for double pneumonia and a pulmonary embolism which took out half the capacity of my right lung and put me on six new daily medications each with their own little annoying side effect.
Jumping right into the finance deep end I present to you all what I call “Exhibit A” or the graphic representation of my personal IRA account over this time period.
I’m going to stop on that very sobering note and pick this story back up later after I start Easter dinner up at the lodge and take a catnap.
