The Blues (and Blacks)
Today is the last day of the ski season in Telluride. It hasn’t been a great year for snow, and I managed to be away on those few occasions when the big storms rolled through. For the most part, that shut me out of the chutes, kept me off of the ridgelines, and made the trees particularly risky. That left me with the blues, blue runs that is. It was a season for cruising.
Committing to cruisers meant spending a lot more time skiing with friends, teaching first-timers, and bombing groomers with the grandkids. It also meant many more sunny afternoons at Gorrono’s, letting motivation melt away with the snow. Sitting on the beach at the mid-mountain bar with friends on a warm day is my definition of happiness.
The number of days I get to ski, dive, hike, camp, and fish each year is one measure of the quality of life. Another is the quality of the people with whom I get to share those things. Being with great friends is fantastic. Being with them doing things outdoors is even better. The house in Telluride is purpose-built for hosting large groups of friends and family. The hot tub is extra-large so that no one is excluded from the second-best part of skiing.
There are five types of ski days: 1) cruising blue groomers, 2) hard charging extreme terrain, 3) teaching beginners on the bunny hill, 4) skiing straight to Gorrono’s, and 5) perfect bluebird powder days where you abandon all notion of friendship and enjoy every blissful turn on every heavenly run all by yourself. Some days we mix and match. Conditions and relationships tend to dictate the day. Thinking about this makes me miss it already.
There is no better place to have deep conversations about the enduring mysteries of life than on a ski lift: talk, ski, think, and then continue the conversation. It doesn’t seem to matter that we never resolve anything. At the end of a great ski day, we are better friends and better people, who are better equipped to tackle whatever the world throws at us.
This season had more than its share of disappointments. We missed some friends who had to skip the trip, endured a snow drought, and never once made it to Alpino Vino. The snow conditions may have limited my time on the blacks, but I don’t mind the blues (or greens.)
