!!!!!*****WORKING DRAFT*****!!!!!
The sudden change from flat to vertical had become routine by the time we’d passed through Denver. Fir trees, precipitous drop-offs, and thin air replaced the endless wheat fields. I’d driven through the city, but Mike took over once the Interstate ended.
“Why’d they stop here?” I wondered.
Mike answered with a sweep of his arm. “It must take more than one run with a Caterpillar to bulldoze a road through all this.”
We kept going up, and up, and up. Sixty, then fifty, then forty-five was all the little car could do as the two-lane highway wound sinuously into the treeless rocks and hidden snow near the Continental Divide. At every turn, a new vista opened, shocking in its depth, inspiring in its breadth. For once, we both we quiet.
Finally we creeped towards a corner, and the road swooped down. “Loveland Pass,” Mike announced. “We came here in the winter, could only go fifteen-twenty miles an hour it was snowing so hard. My father grew up in eastern Montana, hard winters there, and he says, ‘You can go as fast as you want when it’s snowy, as long as you don’t have to turn or stop.’ Getting stuck going up is no joke; once you stop, you can’t get going again.”
Our afternoon was sunny, however, only a few small white clouds floating like small sailboats just above the peaks, playing with the sun. In their shadow, the wind brought a biting chill, goose bumps to my calves and shoulders; without their shade, the sun was a fire about to singe my skin.
“Can we stop? Get out, get some of those?” I asked, pointing at the dull red flowers lining the ditch between the road and rocky cliff.
“They don’t last long – people pick them, then put them out to dry, save them in a book or picture frame. Besides, they’re better up at Independence Pass, it’s higher there.”
There’s another pass? I wondered. How long could this go on?
We stopped at a gas station near a lake with boats motoring towards the town. Mike asked the mechanic there to “adjust the carburetor for the altitude”, explaining to me how thin air meant the engine didn’t fire right, it needed more oxygen for each spark to make the pistons work. “Maybe we won’t be so sluggish up the pass,” he speculated.
“I think my pistons aren’t working so well either,’ I gasped. Just walking from the car to the restroom left me tired, light-headed. “Is this normal?” I asked.
He grinned. “You get used to it. Just go a little slower, breathe deeper, you won’t notice after a couple of days.”
Back in the car, I wondered, “Isn’t skiing hard work? How can you do it if you can’t get any air?”
He smiled, threw back his head, and laughed. “Gravity does all the work. You try and fight it, yeah, then it’s hard. When you do it right, skiing is mostly standing up, letting the mountain carry you down.”
“But they go so fast, how can they stop?”
“That’s the secret, I guess. Your strength is used to keep you stable. I don’t know how to do it right, yet, so I don’t know how to describe it. But I’m going to learn.”
“Learn? I thought you already were an expert.”
Mike snorted. “No way. I’ve got to spend a winter here to get any better.”
“Sounds like a pipe dream.”
He paused, pulled his lips to one side. “I’ve been thinking. You remember, I had those three AP credits for history and math. I skated out of the language requirement somehow in that French interview. And I’ve been taking five classes each semester, instead of four, except for this last one. So I’ll have more than enough credits to graduate after this semester. I’ve been thinking, as we’re driving up here, I should come back in January, find a job, be a ski bum, stay at my parents’ house, get some money for med school, and ski a lot.”
He paused, biting his finger as he looked over at me. I thought about the fall, at Radcliffe. I’d be moving in with Bev at Walker Street, settling in to what I hoped would be my home for the next two years. After that, I knew I didn’t want to leave, couldn’t ever leave the place that had quickly become more like home to me than Cleveland, or Cincinnati ever had. Two more years there, then graduate school for who knows how long, and after that, a life, a real life. Mike and I had one here, and now, in his car, headed to Aspen. I wondered if it were real, if it were headed anywhere, if our ideas of home would ever mesh. Looking at his bronze face, his sun-tanned arm hanging out the window, hearing his visions, dreams for the future, the immediate future, I decided, “Better not to look too far ahead. Enjoy this while you can, learn and grow. Pay attention to the present, let the future take care of itself.
“…could come up here in March, maybe, at spring break, learn how to ski with me, what do you think?” Mike had been talking all the time I’d been lost in thought. What was he saying?
“Janie? What do you think? Come out here and see me during spring break?”
“I don’t know, Mike. We aren’t even in Aspen yet, can’t I just be here now, do we have to think about the future? Let’s have fun while we’re here, this time.”
“This time” seemed to satisfy him.
We drove through a town, one street wide, all the buildings appearing to be holdovers from an earlier, richer era.
“This is Leadville,” Mike explained. “It’s the highest incorporated place in the country. Twice as high as Denver, two miles high. Big silver mining center, before we went off the silver standard, about 75 years ago.”
“Looks like time passed it by,” I observed. “What do they do here, besides gasp for breath?” I hoped he wouldn’t stop. I doubted I could stand up without feeling dizzy, maybe keeling over.
“No mountains to ski here. It’s high, but mostly flat. And the mountains they do have, they’re putting all of them into wilderness areas, where you can’t do anything except walk around. No machines. And, there really isn’t any summer, so I don’t know if they can get any tourists to stay here.”
We turned right at a sign which read “SR 82 – Aspen”, and passed two more lakes. He went on, “That’s where Denver gets its water, they take it through those mountains up ahead from the other side, store it here.”
No houses, nothing but sagebrush and pine trees greeted us on the way up to Independence Pass. The puffy white clouds had morphed into massing grey brigantines, arming for battle with cold rain, hail, and thunder. At the top, Mike stopped, headed for the trunk, and pulled something out of his suitcase. I braved an exit, pulling on a red and white wool beanie, wondering if I’d brought anything warm enough.
“Here,” he said, offering his puffy blue down jacket.
“What about you?”
He wriggled into a sweater, a blue and white ski sweater, saying, “I love this thing. It’s the nicest – the best – present I ever got. The smell…” He closed his eyes, inhaling deeply through his nose. Opening his eyes, sighing, he went on. “Your smell is on it. Every time I put it on, it’s like I get to be with you.”