DECEMBER 04: Intro
Holiday season in a ski town is an odd and rather awkward time—one of the best, as it turns out, though it may take you a few years to realize it. The foundation for many a mountain friendship is built on Thanksgiving or Christmas Day, with a morning of skiing followed by an evening of dinner and football and women and wine—with never quite enough of the last two to go around.
It is the one time of year when both tourists and locals are slightly out of sorts—visitors because they’ve brought their families to the mountains, away from the comforts of their own home; and locals because they’re away from mom and dad and the kindred spirit of siblings. But while it can be hard to break a 20-year string of holiday routine and nostalgia, the clannish bonds of rookie-year resort life offer their own rewards.
I mostly remember the randomness, the high number of ‘who’s-that-girl-in-the-corner’ conversations. Gatherings begin as smallish, invite-only, well-apportioned social events, with the host planning an intimate evening of intelligent conversation marked by each guy wearing the only decent outfit he owns. Thankfully, few remain that way. Someone always knows someone who wasn’t invited, and that someone always knows a few other someones and soon everyone shows up for dinner, dogs in tow, and the night is filled with plenty of liquor, a few moonlit ski runs, and some dude passing out in the closet.
These house parties develop whenever a dozen or so people who don’t know each other very well get together to celebrate not Thanksgiving or Christmas or even New Years but the ski-saturated life we have chosen to lead. And the dinners are rarely gourmet. At least one orphan will show up with a peculiar pile of yellow glop served in an oversized Petri dish that you’ll end up eating anyway because you’re drunk and it’s got some sort of cheese in it.
Not exactly Norman Rockwell, but high-country holiday get-togethers will end up as meaningful and memorable as the finest winter days of childhood. The waitress and the ski tech are no longer just strangers in the lift line or at the bar, but people with whom you hold a bond by sharing a special occasion usually reserved for family. The snowboarder you hike with the following morning will be a roommate next spring. The hot chick who kicked your ass at foosball will do the same to you on the mountain. And if you end up sticking around town for a few years, you will look back in amazement at the number of friendships that formed over a plate of warm, dry turkey and glass of yuletide mystery punch.
One December, when invited to a small holiday party only a couple weeks away, I informed the host that I’d be attending alone. But that was before an old roommate rolled into my East Jackson driveway, back from Alaska and unable to make the Westfalia crawl even one more mile. Then the Aussie showed up, bearing a shaggy new dog but an uncanny willingness to pay a fifth of the rent while sleeping with his head in the pantry and his body under the kitchen table. The ex-girlfriend even called, having spent fall shacked up in a storage unit south of town.
These are the uncommon commitments made in the name of skiing, and they are the bedrock upon which friendships are built. We bought more beer, showed up en masse, and skied together in the morning.
–Tom Bie