THE PUREST THOUGHT: Jackson to Big Sky

I found Joaquin in the Jackson Hole Airpport parking lot. A $50 parking ticket shivered on the frozen windshield. I looked at it briefly, then threw it into the backseat with the rest of the road trash. I stashed my skis across the seat next to me, revved the engine just because, and drove into the glow of a full moon. In less than 12 hours I’d be carving turns off the top of Lone Mountain at Big Sky.

Other than filling up Joaquin’s empty tank, I had no plans of stopping in Jackson. Nothing against the town—I spent some of the best years of my life there and consider it the primo ski community in America—but all of my couches had since found more sustainable futures over Teton Pass in Idaho. Driving past old Jackson neighborhoods gave me a nice dose of ambivalence: happy to be on my way to see friends, but sad about not stopping in the only town I’d truly identified with my entire adult life. It was relief and remorse, a lame-ass state of confusion. So I stomped on the gas—better to speed into the night than dwell on anything that twists your insides.

Joaquin hit 67 mph up Teton Pass—twice what I used to get out of my old Toyota pickup. My immediate focus was Grand Targhee—where Jerry Joseph and the Jack Mormons were playing a free show at the Trap Bar. I got there just in time to see my friends dancing like epileptic buzzards. I slipped in among them, and shook it until Jerry got tired at 2 a.m.

Early the next morning I woke up on my favorite Idaho couch. To the east, the rising sun blasted white light behind the grandest of Teats, the 45-mile range protruding from the earth like a dark row of shark’s teeth. I could see Targhee’s slopes in the purple shadows, though I wished I couldn’t. The ’Ghee gets hammered with 500 inches of snowfall annually, and seeing the mountain meant none of its vintage dumps was brewing. I’d had some unbelievable times there, like New Year’s Day 2004, when my friends and I found it after a 50-inch storm. We lapped it so many times that by closing I needed handle bars just to sit on the toilet.

But even as the mountain sat waiting, I turned my back on it in favor of another. I knew that picking a ski spot in this region was not a matter of right or wrong, but of timing.

The stretch of America between Jackson and southwest Montana might as well be all of America if you like to ski. No crowds. No smog. No big freeways. Just cold and wind and snow and big, empty mountains. But as much as these mountains hold the key to bliss, there are peculiar feelings of bitterness buried just beneath the social surface. It’s a symptom of the rapid change occurring across the West. Discontent appears in the letters section of the local papers. People outside Jackson dismiss those inside as rich pricks. Ranchers don’t want to be told what to do by anyone not native. Newcomers want more say. Meet just about anyone, and the first two questions are: “Where you from?” and “How long you been here?” Your immediate worth often depends on how you answer.

So driving around with California plates doesn’t exactly bring out the welcome wagon. I felt this judgment while eating breakfast in the Trailside Inn in the small farming town of Ashton, Idaho. Six geezers seated a few tables away sneered at the desecrated cop car, with its fake bullet holes and plastering of stickers—and me with my bloodshot eyes. The quiet was thick; I could hear their forks scooping runny eggs into their wrinkled mouths. Feeling like an intruder, I quickly sucked down a plate of biscuits and gravy and retook my rightful place next to my skis. Then I pushed on toward Montana.

Before long I was looking at Lone Mountain, Big Sky’s centerpiece—a huge piece of frozen rock that dominates the surrounding landscape. When I got to its 11,166-foot summit, I stood there for a few, taking in the Madison River Valley to the west, the Spanish Peaks to the north, the vast Yellowstone plateau to the east, and the Tetons to the south. I then skied around the rocks leading to the Gullies on the mountain’s northeast face. The hill fell off the table. I looked down its steep, narrow funnel. Shattered pieces of chalky snow fell from my edges and tumbled downward like popcorn. No longer was I thinking about my place in the bullshit rankings of the booming West. I was only concerned with the snow and rocks beneath me. It was the purest thought I’d had since picking up the car the day before. It felt really good—the way being alive was supposed to feel. So I leaned out over the fall line, pushed off, and trusted that my skis would come around.