Lift

My Brooklyn boyfriend from Bay Ridge has always been scared of the country, though he was loathe to admit it to me when we dated, fearing a lesser stature than myself in just about everything. It was nonsensically competitive, and therefore, doomed to fail. He'd complain about the crickets being too loud for him to sleep well at my mother's house in upstate New York, which made traveling with him exceptionally laborious, as our round-trip flight on "McAir" bore out.

How would he fare out west? A family holiday found my father springing for a ski trip to New Mexico while we were in college, in accommodation of our tastes that were more sophisticated than West Bumblef-ck, Texas could provide. The people were so incredibly rude to us where they lived that we couldn't find any reasons to visit an extremely remote place that took pleasure in being a barren wasteland depressingly littered with broken farm equipment. Not even with free tickets and airfare provided.

So, one lucky Thanksgiving saw us flying pleasantly non-stop from New York with no small plane change-overs to beautiful New Mexico and the Sangre de Cristo mountain range, and what a gorgeous drive it was. The mountains were dusted with snow like a classic Christmas fable, and I thought we'd finally have the happy ending to a holiday story that had eluded us as a family since my parents bitter divorce.

The weather was perfect, too: plenty of light, powdery snow and bright southwestern sun. Until the last day of skiing. We had been doing surprisingly well for non-skiers, mastering the bunny slopes with its lower lifts that surrounded the lodge, which led us to greater heights on the very last day of our trip. Back then, lifts were small, open-air seats with one metal bar to hold onto, and the snow beneath us was strewn with poles, gloves, and hats stuck in the frozen no-man's land of the rising slope.

We'd stood at the bottom of a lift that disappeared into thick, heavy, snow clouds, wondering if it was worth it. I hated the height and the wildly careening seats blown about in the stiff winds, but we reasoned that we were here to experience this, so we might as well do it. Sure enough, my instincts proved correct once we reached the top: a deep squall of fiercely blowing drifts immediately froze our goggles, but we had to make a decision about quickly turning left or right, because the lift was swiftly moving with people skiing off.

We veered left, trying to see a sign half-covered in ice and snow, but as we started our descent, it was already too late. We were on a Black Diamond, expert-level trail covered in compacted blue ice that was impassable, and we were next to a cliff's edge.  We couldn't even skate across it with the edge of our ski blades, so we took the skis off and walked down the mountainside until we reached another lift with another lodge, and then the lights went out and the lift turned off.

Okay....now what? We went inside the abandoned lodge to think. What to do? I guess we could cross-country ski back to the main lodge and our hotel using the service road. Right? The lift operator finally told us the truth: we were seven miles outside of town, and the sun was quickly setting. Well, we thought, it might be okay....he was Mestizo and obviously unused to talking with tourists, but we were teenagers, so he offered us a ride in his old pickup truck instead. Thanks! I was psyched. This trip was over and I was done with skiing, quite possibly forever. Done. 

Of course, my passive-aggressive city boyfriend grumbled that we could have made it back on our own. "This isn't so bad! Look at how level the road is! Oh, Marie. This would've been easy!" The guide shot him a sharp look. "You don't realize how fast the temperature drops at night here." That was true, but I could already see my boyfriend stirring restlessly in his seat. He loved to argue. Yeah, but it wasn't that far....the guide began shaking his head. "You don't get it, son. Cold isn't the only thing that'll get you out here."

He lowered his window just as an orange disk of sun set behind the mountains through a silhouette of dense pines. "The wolves are telling each other we're here." As he said it, we could hear the thin, loud howl of the alpha male. "They're already tracking us, because we're in their territory. They know it's only the three of us." If you've never heard the rough barking of a pack as it runs, I don't know how to describe it to you. It was like nothing we'd ever heard before. Bart turned white, and shut up for the rest of the ride back. The lift operator continued talking with his window down, so we could hear them. "They're following us." And it was true. We heard them signalling to each other with the same speed that the truck drove on the snowy road, speeding across the mountaintops in pursuit, all the way back to the hotel.

Thank goodness for the kindness of strangers.
Happy All Saints Day.