Thirty Winters
At the World's Toughest Job
❤️ Tap the heart if you’ve ever looked back at something you kept showing up for and wondered when it quietly became your life.
Somehow, thirty years on the job has gone by.
I found this out the other day when I changed out of my perpetual yellow instructor jacket, put on a dress, and showed up at our annual banquet. People congratulated me on what they said was a “huge achievement.” What does that even mean?
I saw it as staying upright and showing up for thirty years, each winter, year in, year out, in powder and on ice, with a smile on your face.
The fancy document in the envelope did not contain a lifetime pension, but it still surprised me to see in writing just how big a swath of life had gone by. The job is seasonal, and you have to bend the rest of life around it to make the pieces fit. It’s a seasonal life, which humans have done forever, and the rhythm feels good.
But it’s also hard, because there are really only two seasons to life: ski season and waiting for ski season.
The last time I opened a large official-looking envelope was when I went to my post office and saw, in writing, that I had been awarded a Doctorate of Philosophy in American Studies. That took years of work, commuting three hours one way, teaching, writing, pushing through.
I thought a doctorate would give me a certain credibility, lead me to some fabulous job, and I’d be able to teach students about literature and the environment, maybe even explore how the cultural and environmental aspects of our lives might integrate.
Integrate? After thirty years, I have to admit the irony.
I loved my college students. I really did. But it was more fun teaching skiing. I laughed a whole lot more. The jokes were less intellectual.
I arrived in Taos with three smallish boys in tow, one set of straight skis, and wearing my then-husband’s parka, eager to escape a domestic incarceration. I had an impressive resume which included a list of countries (10) and states (four) that I had raced or taught skiing in, both Alpine and Nordic.
Honestly, I did not ski that well. Taos has its standards. They put me to work teaching children at first, as befits a person of my standing, which is that of a girl.
My kids grew up as Taos kids, which is to say that if they live through it, they grow into amazing, resilient, wild and tenacious citizens of both the mountain and the world. Thank God they had a mountain, where they were raised by wolves and had a lot of friends.
Sometimes, while teaching, I catch a glimpse of them straightlining or casually popping a ten-foot cornice, and I realize that in this lifetime, I will never, ever ski as well as they do.
Every ski student came seeking something, too. It was my job to find out what that was. They say they want to turn better. It never is. There’s more intimacy with skiing, and that doesn’t just apply to my students, but to colleagues. These are my people, my big, dysfunctional family, the ones who fill up the locker room in the morning with the smell of ski wax and stinky boots and the intimacy of gossip, a word akin to gospel after all.
Each year, when the season ends, it’s like falling off a cliff. This year was not one of deep powder and bliss, the highs we crave and sell our lives for. Like a long- term relationship (something I have been less successful at) in a bad snow year, you have to dig deep, get creative, find your grit, and get out your rock skis. But that’s real love, a lifetime of passion.
As the season ended, with no heroic storms coming to save us, we closed early. But right before, I saw a huge patch of mud, and one after another, a bunch of daring kids launching themselves over a huge band of dirt in order to get land and slide to the bottom. They were flying on boards and skis, throwing in grabs and 360s, and somehow, mostly, landing them.
They were making the most of whatever the mountain had to give them. I had to laugh out loud at their sheer audacity. I hope they can do that throughout their lives in the heated-up and crazier than ever world we’ve handed down to them.
I guess we are not helpless as long as we have mountains. I hope a whole lot of them will set out to save the world in whatever way they can. But sometimes the only life you can save is your own.
And I think they know that, too.
💬 What’s something you’ve kept showing up for that ended up shaping your life more than you expected?
Beautiful!
This is so Michele Potter. This is why I love you, friend!