I was a skier, who grew up in a
climbing town, working in a bike shop, and now most people just call me a dirt
bag. I’m your next door neighbor except I live in a unregistered and title-less
13 foot trailer that cost me $300 and is parked in my buddy’s drive way. It’s
not the most glamorous joint but I enjoy it. There is plenty of room for my
skis, my ropes, and my bikes and even more when I manage to put them away in
there prescribed places between trips. But let’s be real the next outing is
tomorrow or maybe even tonight and while drying your skins inside a Rubbermaid
may produce some funny fungi for the weekend it doesn’t do much to increase
glide. Plus, doesn't she look really cute lying there asleep on top of my gear
closet? Oh yeah, I forgot to tell you it doubles as a bed.
I’m a college student in a
valley that creates lifelong residents, fun hoggin’ is fine in Gunnison so long
as your work is done and you let your character speak louder than your wallet. It’d
be pretty easy to call me a slacker but actually saying it wouldn’t be true; I am
a proud conquistador of the useless, everyday; going, growing, and discovering.
Last week my buddy Todd and I skied out of his
back door in Lake City. He lives year round, rent free, without running water
at the base of two of Colorado’s famed fourteener’s Sunshine, and Redcloud. Moose
and bobcat frequent his front yard more often than the wealthy Texans who own
the mansion visible high on the hill above. Todd, however doesn’t have a single
shade of green envy to give his millionaire neighbors. With a Bachelor’s degree
in Biology, he’s is a dirt bags, dirt bag, doing the simple living thing better
than anyone that I have ever met has. So well in fact he almost makes me feel
self-conscious at four in the morning, bundled up in my ultralight puffy, he’s
getting the same damn thing done in a second hand cotton sweat shirt. Todd chops
and sells firewood by the chord to pay the bills, ski’s every day of the
winter, and rides his mountain bike at 13,000 feet on the Continental Divide Trail
as soon as the snow is gone. He ain’t slacking. He’s doing his own thing,
living lightly, respecting you, respecting himself, and giving me something to
admire.
At
home in Bishop, Rowell, Robinson, Croft, and Jensen, were names on the sides of
mail boxes not the bottoms of posters and much like them, I found salvation in
the High Sierra. Blessed by patient mentors and surrounded by idols who I couldn’t
even muster the balls to talk to. Come the eleventh grade I was a full on dirt
worshipping, rock licker who’s best friends shot waterfowl before class, and
thought pebble wrestling was about as liberal as you could get! I’d haul ass up Highway 168 to the Buttermilk
Country after class, run ridges on the weekends, and on a day with more than
six inches of new snow I was more likely to be found on one of Mammoth Mountain’s
first chairs than in Mr. Perry’s first period.
Without the sage, the hills, the
granite, the stellars, and the facets, my existence starts too feel a bit like
the bull frogs; wallowing in the mud and belching to attract his mate. Face shots aren’t the key to world peace, but
they definitely make me a better person and I’d be willing to bet they make you
feel the same way. Because I’m not
sending 5.14, racing The Tour Divide, or skiing the steeps fast enough for film,
what I do out there is probably capable of mattering nothing to you. But
someday we might get the chance to share a glassy January sunset from a high
ridge, a bowl of coveted pink powder laying virgin, waiting for our tracks
bellow. I’ll ski with everybody at least
once but if somehow that event fails to manifest itself you’ll most likely continue
to think I’m just the bum who mounted your skis and tuned your derailleur.
However just like You, Todd, Croft, and Jensen I’m living my life, practicing my crafts, and trying to garner whatever selfish rewards the world has to offer. Like all beautiful things, the warm simplicity of napping in the soft grass of an alpine meadow, with numb legs from a ten hour effort, and a full soul from everything I’ve learned along the way provides me with a simple sense of pride. A sense of pride that makes my 13 foot trailer look like a wealthy Texans vacation home, and helps grinding your blown out ski bases feel more like sculpting Michelangelo’s, David.
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