Walking over a crunchy layer of snow under an awakening sky, not long before Christmas of 2008, I boarded my dad’s Subaru Outback for a ride to the ski area. And I was in a bad place.
It didn’t matter how cozy I felt sitting on the heated seat of my Old Man’s aged but immaculately cared-for car; it couldn’t have helped to be back in the comforting halls of my childhood home for the three-week break between semesters. Riding to the mountain that morning for my first shift as a seasonal liftie was agonizing.
Just days before, the young woman I had fallen for while hopelessly playing the role of college cool guy had told me she didn’t want to say goodbye to me. She was about to head out on a semester at sea, after all. She didn’t need any loose ends flailing about in ol’ CU Boulder, least of all mine.
Two days later, my dad and I rumbled toward the resort. In between the monologues of the NPR DJ, an acoustic cover of U2’s “I Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For” played. No matter how much I claimed to detest Bono’s band, there, at an intersection we had passed through countless times from childhood onward, I cried into my company-issued GoreTex parka.
Comical as it now seems, at the time, I was crestfallen. After months of grinding in class and burning the tequila bottle at the other end, I just wanted to ski again. That young woman told me she dreamed of moving to Jackson Hole. But there I was, exhausted and heartbroken in the way only a young man just out of his teens could be at 7 am. Reporting for duty.
After being dropped off, I staggered to my locker, doing my best to avoid any interaction. With skis in hand, I then made my way to the gondola, and as luck would have it, I was alone. It seemed I would have what I wanted: a long, solitary ride to my lift assignment.
Sammyvision/Getty Images
But fate intervened. A nervously energetic fellow liftie—one who had been on the staff for years—joined me, jumping into the cabin and onto the bench seat across from me. “Want to ride together?” he said breathlessly as he sat down. “I can’t stand riding the gondola alone.”
I didn’t feel the same, but relented. He was someone I was familiar with; he was from a well-known family, and his mother had long taught elementary school in town. But more than that, his brother was an Olympian, having at that point been to four winter games, a feat that was so impressive many neglected to ask the other brother simple things; instead of asking him how he was, people usually immediately wondered how the Olympian might be faring. Copies of that interaction repeated themselves minute to minute, something I had seen play out at a house party not long before. That flashed before my eyes as I glanced at him, wistfully looking out over the valley.
As the minutes went by, he and I chatted. It never evolved past pleasantries, but it proved to be a lucky salve against the loneliness I was then feeling. His quirky wit and rapid sentences breathed life into a lonely morning. He rifled through high school friends we had in common and what was then happening in their lives. Still, as is often the way of college boys, I was then only thinking about myself. I thought nothing then of what that fellow liftie must endure, constantly looked over, living in the shadow of his own brother. Instead of wondering about his problems, I wallowed in mine.
At the top of the gondola, we disembarked and put our skis on in unison before poling off toward our separate lift assignments. For half a run, we made turns together down the fresh, soft corduroy of a big December.
And it wasn’t until years later, as the memory casually reentered my mind one summer afternoon, that I realized how much he had given me that morning. And how little I had given in return.
About the Last Chair Column
This article was written by POWDER writer Jack O’Brien for his bi-weekly ‘Last Chair’ column. Click below to read the previous column.
Related: A Technology Cynic Finally Gives The Flip Phone Another Go
